A look at Link Popularity…
Link popularity is single most effective way to diagnose how good a web site would perform in major search engines. Link popularity of any web site is calculated from the number and importantly, the quality of links pointing to the particular web site.
- Link Popularity importance
- Big classes of links
To achieve high rankings in search engines through applying perfect planned link popularity strategy it is necessary to know why it has gained enormous importance while optimizing any web site.
In recent past the web site’s optimization and ranking was decided diagnosing some old fashioned (on-page) search engine strategies such as:
keyword density
Meta tags
Title tag
Neat and clean source
Web masters learned to ploy search engines to return their web pages by over stuffing keywords into their web pages then the search engines had to be a bit judicious. They were only analyzing the On-page factors to determine the rankings of any web site so they decided to involve the factors which are not in control of web site creator (Off-page factors) to determine the ranking. Search engines released a statement that the more the number of links from other websites pointing to a website, the more popular the website is and as a result a more quality source. This was great in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.
Web masters searched scores of ways to get incoming links pointing to their websites such as through using link farms, pages that contains nothing than a poorly organized collection of links, the quantity of links was misused so the search engines resurrected the old statement “quality not quantity” and assigned a QUALITY FACTOR to each of the links pointing to any web site. Now those web sites that had GREATER NUMBER OF HIGH QUALITY LINKS were looked upon favorably by search engines. It became itself a science to refine the links in terms of QUANTITY and QUALITY and today it is still the most time-consuming and exasperating activity for a SEO.
Inbound links:
All links that are pointing to a PARTICULAR web site are called Inbound links for that PARTICULAR web site, for instance, a link to Site1 from Site2 is Inbound link for Site1:
Site1 <—– Site2
Outbound links:
All links that are pointing from a PARTICULAR website to other websites are called Outbound links for that PARTICULAR web site, for instance, a link from Site1 to Site2 is Outbound link for Site1:
Site1 —–> Site2
There are two additional classifications of links:
Reciprocal links: It is also called a link exchange, as by its name it’s all about exchanging links through a contract between Site1 and Site2, it is when Site1 links to Site2 and in exchange Site2 links to Site1: Site1 —–> Site2
AND
Site1 <—– Site2
One-way links:
One way links are opposed to Reciprocal links they are either pointed from Site1 to Site2 OR Site2 to Site1:
Site1 <—– Site2
OR
Site1 —–> Site2
To gain high link popularity inbound one way links are very important to have. This is how natural links are built. Webmasters create links pointing to their web sites as they provide multiple benefits:
1. High rankings in SE
2. Relevant traffic if submitted in relevant category
Outbound links are not vital to achieve high search engine rankings and link popularity although they are not bad anyways if pointing the relevant source. It is said that Outbound links decreases the link popularity but there is not anything similar to this statement as they are not counted to your link popularity.
Achieving Reciprocal links is still a Grey hat tactic, it can be counted as SPAM anytime but it is still a good way to link with a web site that has a higher PR and link popularity. Remember their strength is not as powerful as of one way inbound links. Reciprocal links are presumably created by communication between the owners of both sites.