Link Building & Popularity

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Link popularity is basically the calculation of number of links pointing to your website. The websites that have the most links pointing to them are considered to be important and thus worth the visit.

Link popularity is an increasingly important criteria for better search engine ranking. So the better your popularity, the better your ranking. You may be thinking that you'll lose traffic to your website if you link to other websites. Sure, that can and will happen, but you should gain as many or more NEW visitors that you not have otherwise visited your site.

Whether you're new to the internet or a seasoned online marketer, developing a plan to increase the number of reciprocal links back to your website can help you increase the targeted traffic to your website as well as improve your ranking in the search engines.

It can be answered in two words: QUALITY CONTENT. If your site has nothing new or important to present, why would someone want to link to it?

How to choose the websites for reciprocal linking?

There's been a lot written about how to choose websites to link to. But I think the one thing that can often be overlooked is the fact that people all around the world have diverse interests and although they may be looking for specific information, etc on one day doesn't eliminate them from clicking on a link to a website that is totally different from what they wanted to look at yesterday.

They may not be targeted to your website but their interest brought them to you. You would be surprised to find the information you may be searching for on a website that compliments yours but does not directly compete with you. It happens all of the time. This is where your list of primary and secondary categories for your website will help you decide what webmasters you want to contact to set a reciprocal link with.

Tip : Search Dmoz & Yahoo for websites with the keywords related to your website as the websites which are linked from these directories considered more important.

On the links page you are going to describe how a webmaster can add their link to your Links Pages. You can call this Favorite Links, Personal Links or something similar. Basically anything that lets visitors know you have a Quality links page available.

Your Main Links Page should have several categories for visitors to choose from. Each category should link to a separate page on your site where the category links can be viewed. Remember to set each link so that it opens in a new window when a visitor clicks on it because you don't want them leaving your site altogether and forget where they started out from.

You also want to indicate to your visitors that a reciprocal link back from their website is a requirement for obtaining a link on this page. Those who are serious about Reciprocal Linking will understand and be willing to place a link on their page.

How To Contact Webmasters?

Again the best webmasters to contact are the ones whose websites compliment yours in some way. How do you find the sites and contact the webmasters?

The simplest way is to go to one of the major search engines, enter in the terms that describes websites you want to link to and let the search engine bring up the lists for you. You can get several hundred email address just by visiting these sites and contacting the webmaster.

It is always best to send a short email to the webmaster introducing yourself and stating the reason you're contacting them. You may want to give the information for them to add your link to their Link Page or simply start a dialog to see if there is a mutual interest in linking.

For best results I like to find websites that compliment mine, then add them to an appropriate link page and then send the website owner a personal email telling them I liked their site, have added it to my Quality Links page and ask if they would link back to my website. I also like to tell them of some of the benefits of Reciprocal Linking and even go as far as helping them set up their own page if they don't have a good quality links page. Some will link back to you and some won't. If they don't simply delete the link.

Implementing a reciprocal linking strategy does take time and effort, but it is easily manageable. Combined with an overall web promotion strategy it can be a powerful way for you to develop relevant, targeted traffic to your web pages as well as help to increase your websites overall position in the search engines.