Promote Your Website: Part III Link Popularity
By Nowshade Kabir, Rusbiz.com
Promote Your Website: Link Popularity
What is link popularity?
The quantity of links in different websites pointing to your sites
is called link popularity of your website. The more popular is your
site the more links you get from other websites
and vice versa.
Why is it so important?
Links from high traffic websites furnish you with constant stream
of visitors. Other website
marketing efforts i.e. email marketing,
might give good influx of visitors while the campaign lasts but
the quantity diminishes once the campaign is over. Links are a
different story! Once a link is installed, it might start bringing
a steady flow of visitors all the time, depending on the website
where the link was placed.
Link popularity is also crucial to search engine ranking of your
website. Search engines, especially Google, claim that link
popularity is one of the key factors that they consider in their
search algorithm while indexing a website. What would be the rank
of a website in a search result depend on its link popularity in a
very big way.
So, how can you conduct an effective link popularity development
campaign and build traffic for your website?
Content is the king
Prior to start a link popularity campaign, you should seriously
question yourself, what would be the reason for the other sites
to post a link pointing to your website? Most high traffic sites
are quite picky about putting links, and would not do it without
any apparent reason.
If your site boasts quality content that the visitors of other
sites might find valuable, chances are there that those sites
would be interested in posting a link of your site on their
relevant web pages. High quality content that gets updated
regularly will definitely help you getting more links and
subsequently more visitors. If even you are just a web store,
you can still add much sought-after content to your site, such
as, detail product information, articles related to the specific
products.comparison tables, etc.
If it is really difficult to get relevant content for your website,
try getting a valuable tool that might be interesting for visitors
and incorporate it to your website. You must have noticed that free
search engine submission forms ar.common on Search Engine
Optimization sites. Giveaways like e-books, white papers, articles
and other freebies are also good for creating interest to a website.
Submit website to various directories
When your new website is up and running, first thing you should do
is to submit your site to many search directories such as, Yahoo!,
DMOZ etc. available on the Internet. Not only, this will help you
get quality backward links to your site, this is also the fastest
method for your site to get crawled by search engines spiders and
get indexed by them.
Don't underestimate the value of the many regional and industry
specific directories. Try submitting your site as many as possible
relevant local directories. Examples of these directories are
municipal business directory, local chamber o.commerce directory
etc.
If you are a seller of, for example, metal related products, get
your site enlisted in as many metal industry associated directories
as you can manage.
Get reciprocal links
Since backward links are so important, building link popularity
by exchanging links with other websites should be a priority in
your online marketing effort.
Which are the websites that you should consider to get backward
links to your website? Your objective should be û not just having
any backward link from any site, the sites that you are getting
reciprocal link has to be relevant to the content of your website
as well. First of all, if you get a link from a website which has
nothing i.common with your site, you, most probably, will not
receive any traffic from that site. The second and most important
issue is û the search engines, while calculating your website's
rank in a specific keyword search result, consider, mainly, the
backward links which are relevant to your site.
Search engine Google uses a unique Page rank system to determine
how relevant your website is. Your site's Page Rank depends on
backward links to your site. However, if the page from where your
website gets the backward link has more outbound links then
incoming ones, the value of this link gets reduced. A link to
your site will have the biggest impact on your Page rank:
- If the page itself has a good page rank.
- There are very few outbound links from the page.
To check out your site's Page rank, download the Google Toolbar
from
toolbar.google.com/ and install. After that, go to
your website. On the tool bar, you will see the rank of your
index page in a scale of 0 to 10. The rating is considered good
if it is five or more.
Make sure, while exchanging links you select the websites that
have page rank no less than yours.
How to find the websites that you should swap links with?
The easiest way is to check out the backward links to the
website of your most prominent Internet base.competitor or
industry leader of your field. Other option is to run a search
based on the most relevant keywords to your website and check
out backward links to the first ten websites.
In the search box of Google, Altavista and AllTheWeb type link:
and then the URL of the site to view all the sites that have
backward links to this site. Visit these sites to find the best one
to exchange links and then contact them with a nice email.
I will also suggest you to check out the number of visitors the
site receives before offering a link swap. The tool that will
help you figuring out the quantity of traffic a site gets, you
can download from
download.alexa.com/ by clicking on the
button "Free Tool Bar". This is also a very good tool to analyze
web traffic. The tool also shows which other similar sites people
tend to visit alongside with the site that you are viewing now.
If a site gets significantly less visitors than yours, what is the
point of having a link form that site?
While looking for websites to swap links, don't forget about your
partners, suppliers and buyers. These sites are capable of bringing
major traffic and are indeed relevant to your site's subject matter!
Your link popularity campaign should also include the following
methods. However, mind it, these techniques require tedious work
from your side.
Issue Press Releases
Press releases are a good way of exposing your website to mass and
increase your link popularity. Whenever you ar.coming up with a new
product or service, overhauling your website, adding new elements to
your site or conducting a
seminar, etc. you should issue a press
release. It is also a very cost effective method of getting
publicity
for your site. To broadcast your press release you can use one of
the
free media release sites:
prweb.comWrite Articles
If you are dedicated to popularize your website, you must have
substantial knowledge of the subject related to your website. Why
not, write articles on your subjects of expertise and circulate them
on the Internet and post on your website? Apart from this will add
good content to your website, if other websites and newsletters
publish your articles, you will get free publicity and increase your
link popularity.
Build an Affiliate Program
If you sell a product or service through your website, you should
seriously consider developing an affiliate program for your site.
An affiliate program is when a visitor from your affiliate is site
comes to your site using the link that you provided to the affiliate
and buy something, the affiliate will get .commission from you. The
affiliate program can expand
Your business substantially. Since your
affiliates require posting your links on their sites, this increases
your link popularity as well.
Participate in Discussion Groups and Forums
This is also a great way of increasing your link popularity. There
are literally thousands of discussion groups and forums on every
conceivable subject on the Internet. You should actively participate
in some of them, those which are most relevant to your area of
expertise. The signature along with your website address that you
post there while asking a question or answering to a question also
boosts your link popularity.
Link Exchange Programs
You can also participate one of the link swap programs available on
the Internet. Unfortunately, most of the automated link exchange
offers that you receive through them are random and irrelevant to
your site.
But, however, I would suggest you to give them a try, as chances are
there that you still might receive some good offers. You can also
actively search for sites to swap links in their directories.
Development of link popularity is an on going process. You have to
work on this constantly. But, the outcome that you might achieve
from
your endeavor also could be significant.
About the author
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO
of Rusbiz.com. He has Ph. D. degree in Information Technology.
Dr. Kabir has over 12 years of experience in International Trade
and has worked as an advisor to several government projects.
You can contact him at mailto:/group/article_announce/post?postID=0hHqo7_g5gfPbi3Y1YnbU64_R85SW6h0HoQRWEwbPXQek1fPMchJOvNrHf73TguFk_VlgR4jjPs2nGHY nowshade@...,
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