Link Popularity and how it pertains to your pages is a key metric in the relevance model of search engines. Just like high school, it was all about popularity and getting in with the clique. Somehow this characteristic carried over into search engines and how they assess your site.
They say that beauty resides within, similarly, then much can be said about starting from the inside (your websites internal links) and strengthening the self-referral mechanism for your content to attract recognition (external links).
Just in case you forgot, increasing link popularity through virtual theming (strategic deep linking) and optimized internal link architecture allows what percentage of link popularity you garner from others to go that much further in propelling your site up the rankings.
How popular is your website?
Despite the narcissistic love affair we can develop with our own sites, sometimes on-page factors are just not enough, you need to nurture your content with links to get the job done. Here are 10 ways to increase your reach, increase link popularity and make your site more attractive.
- Getting links from Blog Rolls (site wide links) a few of these from the right place and your set.
- Blogging Frequently and Expanding your Audience through RSS Feeds (emphasize quality in each post, since you never know which organization or power-user may link back to it and send a barrage of traffic your way).
- Or if that is not your angle, then at least by updating your content more frequently, you will entice search engine spiders (who will frequent your site expidisiously to share your content with the world). The more pages you get into the search engine’s index, the higher percentage of traffic, exposure and conversion your pages can potentially reap as a result.
- Offer a Free e-Book. Spiders crawl PDF’s (and their links as well), in addition, the download serves as an off-line brochure with links pointing back to your site. Another savvy option is to distribute the e-book (via bit torrent) as a link building strategy.
- Have you considered Article Marketing and using links in the authors box to deep link to your most relevant pages.
- Directories – more like a time released link building method, but a great way to augment other methods.
- Reciprocal links (yes, they still work, but the more targeted the niche and the less links on the page the better).
- Offer value through tactful comments on related blogs that are contextually ethical to drive traffic (no spam / link dropping). If your intelligent reply wins the favor of the readers skimming the comments, you could be looking a steady stream of relevant traffic (which is the real goal of link building).
- Forums, find a thread, propose a solution. Not to mention forums have the ability to sprout page rank quickly and pass valuable link juice from the sheer number of pages.
- Social bookmarking, never hurt anyone, share the link love while getting a boost in the SERPs (search engine result pages) from sites with massive link weight.
- Build links from your own sites internal link dynamo, never look past your own pages as authority links (sub folders often are treated as external sites and can pass vital ranking power among the sites internal link architecture).
What are you still doing here reading this? Just think of all of the link opportunities that are could be passing you by. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes you just have to do the work to polish the reflection in order to share that beauty with others.
Search results don’t magically appear in the top 10, so get out there, mix it up and start building link popularity – one link at a time.
