Link Building Strategy
In today’s online market, where millions of websites are competing for the top spot on search engines, only on-page SEO is not enough to take you to the top of the Search Engine charts. If you look carefully at the websites ruling the charts, you will notice that they are the ones with highest number of quality back links developed from a strategic link building campaign. If you fail to plan your link building strategy in advance, you are surely planning to fail in your Internet marketing. So if you are not confident, it’s better to outsource your link building campaign to a link building expert company.

Perfect Link Building Company
If you are looking to outsource your link building campaign, there are many SEO companies offering such services. And because of a cheap man hour rate, link building services in India continue to lure many American & European companies. However, it’s not easy to find a good link building company that can craft a perfect link building strategy for your website as the market is flooded with link spammers and it’s hard to draw a line between white hat link building experts and link spammers who generate hundreds of links every day using link building software. BTW, there should be no second thoughts in your mind that using a link building software will take you nowhere in Search Engine Rankings.

Where to find Link Building Service Providers?
You can easily find a link building expert on a link building blog or a link building forum as these are the two places you can evaluate the expertise of a link building firm. One of the best link building forum on web is highrankings.com and jimboykin.com. These are very informative forum about the latest link building strategies where you will find many link building experts . But if you are looking for an Indian link building company, you can simply Google ‘link building services India’. But beware, quality never comes cheap and same goes with quality links because quality links are hard to acquire and may thus cost you high initially, but the value they give in terms to rank boost is simply worth what you pay for.

Managing your Link Building Campaign
Many people tend to treat link building as a one time process and this is where they get them selves into trouble. Infact in case of link building, quite often we see many slow and steady websites winning the ranking race. The reason why link building is an ongoing process is that your competitors are also constantly building links to replace your site from its top position. So it’s better to outsource your link building process to an expert link building services company who will not only constantly build links for your website but will also take care of link exchange request and dropped ilnks.

This Article is Copyright protected. If you have comments; or would like to have this article republished free on your site, please contact the author here: SEO Articles Feedback. We just require all due credits carried; and text, hyperlinks and headers unaltered. This article must not be used in unsolicited mail. RedAlkemi has been in the for-front of providing top-quality, safe link building services to its clients. We specialize in securing Article & Content-based one-way links, which have achieved great results and top-rankings for highly competitive keywords. Get powerful & ethical content links for your website now.

Free Automated link exchange
Since the day Google launched the Page Rank tool bar, webmasters all around the world have been busy fetching automated links for their websites. As we all know, what makes this Google green bar go dancing are juicy links. Then came the era of free automated link exchange when people started exchanging linksfrom each other, link farms, link exchange directories etc. so much that the quest for free automated link exchange became rampant and Search Engines were flooded with spammy websites & free link exchange directories started ranking on the top of the charts.

Google fights free Automated link exchange
Soon after Google took the initiative when it launched Google Hilltop algorithm and declared officially that it will start penalizing websites, which indulge themselves in free automated link exchange and reciprocal link exchange. It affirmed that only the industry relevant links would count. So what kind of free automated link exchange exist? There are several sites which offer free automated link exchange like – Automated Link Exchanger, etc.

Stay away from Free Automated Link Exchange
When webmasters realized that free automated link exchange is not going to get them far, they turned to a new method of link building i.e. one way links (3-way links) and Free For All Links Directory (FFA links directory), which did not require a reciprocal links exchange system. For some period, these directory link submission did succeed in getting high rankings of websites. However, Google is constantly upgrading its algorithm to combat black-hat link building techniques. Over a period of time, Google has made these techniques and free automated link exchange software redundant and useless. Things have changed now. One has to be very careful while carrying out their link building campaigns. Good advise is to stay away from any kind of free automated link exchange programs, reciprocal links exchange, free link exchange directories. Doing any type of reciprocal text link exchange is also risky since you may end up exchanging links with bad neighborhoods.

Article and Content Links Replace Free Automated Link Exchange
If not free automated link exchange, then what? Preserving the essence of the web, Google and other search engines have been professing securing links, which have editorial discretion. They feel that if an author has written an article about a topic and has cited a topic-relevant link, then it carries real user value. If one tries, it is not difficult to get good quality one-way links from article and content pages.

This Article is Copyright protected. If you have comments; or would like to have this article republished free on your site, please contact the author here: SEO Articles Feedback. We just require all due credits carried; and text, hyperlinks and headers unaltered. This article must not be used in unsolicited mail. RedAlkemi has been in the for-front of providing top-quality, safe link building services to its clients. We specialize in securing Article & Content-based one-way links, which have achieved great results and top-rankings for highly competitive keywords. Get powerful & ethical content links for your website now.

When you publish anything “original” on your website, it is automatically copyrighted to you even if you do not post a “copyright notice” on your website. So when you publish anything that is unique on your website, you being the originator (unless you choose to sell it) automatically become the legal owner of that work which can be an article, e-book or even just a simple little “tip” like this one. To be on the safer side you may even consider getting your content copyrighted through the Copyright Office at the US Library of Congress with a Certificate of Registration with the date of Copyright signed by the Register of Copyrights. This service costs something around $30 US only.

In content copywriting, it’s pretty easy to get attention, but it’s hard to keep it. It complies to server crashing traffic coming from Digg and other social media websites where generating traffic and sustaining the traffic are two different issues. After all the hard work to get the traffic, if your traffic log says that you were unable to hold the traffic on your website for more than 5 seconds, there is no use of getting them. So when you generate traffic, also make sure that a part of the traffic does get converted- either into sale or atleast into a handful of links.

For a good copy, use related words and synonyms for the keyword phrases you are after. Rather than mindlessly repeating the same words ad nauseam, assume that search algorithms are advanced enough to look for proper contextually-related words that support your targeted keywords.
The user must be able to understand what you are talking about. A good rule of thumb is to write for the reader first, then make a second and third pass for the search engines.

Want to write a killer content? Start with the headlines first. Most copywriters start with the content instead of headlines. Your headline is a promise to prospective readers. Its job is to clearly communicate the benefit that you will deliver to the reader in exchange for their valuable time. The thing about promises is, they tend to be made before being fulfilled. Writing your content first puts you in the position of having to reverse-engineer your promise.

A copy appeal that attempts to take a humorous approach will be largely ineffective. Proof is in the number of times a funny advertisement tends to win an award, but fails to sell anything. Copy can have humorous aspects to it as long as the selling points and benefits do not rely on the humor itself to tell the story.

Related Reading:
Search Engine Copywriting

Identify a group of closely related keywords to define the scope of an article. Including too many keyword phrases in one article can dilute focus and results.

Writing good articles on your industry and publishing them on relevant content sites is a useful way of boosting your incoming links and direct click-through traffic. Many sites allow you to place a link to your site within the text of the article.

There are many search engines, Google in particular, that frown on mirror sites or duplicate content. If Google finds that a site is a mirror of another (have resembling content), it tends to devalue the mirror site. The problem is that Google may not be able to decide, which site is original, so you may get your main site devalued. You should take special care to keep your articles content as original as possible and discourage your affiliates from copying your site’s content. You might want to use tools like Article Checker to check the resemblance of your content.

Newsworthy keyword optimized press release is a valuable source of traffic to your website. If optimized properly, press releases improve your rankings on Search Engine and also help you show up in other related sections like Google News. Content Syndication increases your chances of garnering additional press from other media entities.

Don’t forget to use your most important keywords in the title of your article as many people who link to you article use the words in the title as anchor text to link to the article page.

When one’s articles or product information is syndicated, it is much better to have the syndicated copies linked to the original article on the author’s site, instead of linking them to the home page of the author. You may want to check out what Matt Cutts has to say about article syndication in an interview with Stephen Spencer.

Syndicate press releases regularly. Take the time to make it news worthy and email it to some hand picked journalists and bloggers. Writing a personalize email to them is the key to success. Also, you may want to submit it to websites like PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.

Make sure your article is actually informative and not self-promotional, as people might get turned off with such a sales-like tone and some sources might even reject your article submission request. Linking URL to your website (within the article) and a small author bio is all you need to guide traffic to your website.

Article syndication is also useful to establish your website as a preferred brand in the online market. If a user enters a keyword and finds not only your website, but also your syndicated articles ranking for that keyword, it helps building the trust as an expert in the relevant industry. You need to make sure that all your syndicated articles are properly optimized, relevant and contain information that is truly useful to the readers.

Article marketing is definitely a numbers game. The higher the number of articles you submit, better the traffic and branding results you get. So choose one of the higher ranked article directories and go deep with lots of articles on that one directory and others.

Related Reading:
Content Syndication Tips – Part 2

You may use this quick shortcut to find directory websites with specific URLs for their link pages – i.e. links.html, add_link.html, add_site.html. Just go to Google and do a search for “inurl:links” or “inurl:add_link”.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the modern format of conventional content syndication, where you have the chance to dominate the Search Engines with your presence on the SERPs as you syndicate your web content to other sites and have it read by individuals with a news reader application – either on their desktop or online. Unlike article syndication, RSS feed can even be as small as a news item or expert advice like this one. Search engines pay a lot of attention to RSS feeds to evaluate the ranking of a website. Also, the fastest way to get your content indexed in Yahoo! is to add your feed to a MyYahoo page.

Here is a wonderful resource to understand the types of Content Syndication and how to do it. But if you are looking to publish your feed, you may want to check out this tutorial.

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you buy a new car, you see it all over the road? When women get pregnant, suddenly they start seeing other pregnant women everywhere. When couples give birth of to their first child, they stop noticing pregnant women and start seeing babies around every corner. This is called selective perception. Human tendency makes us watch out what matters to us most. Here is a wonderful article on copywriting that explains why targeting selective perception captures immediate attention and how to use it to trigger sales.
Pretty much like Mascots, content copywriting is an art of using your command over language to tap the right emotions and evoke positive feelings in the minds of the visitors. Here is a wonderful resource on how to write powerful headlines to write impact headings of your blog posts and headings.

A well planned link building strategy is crucial for achieving long-term search engine optimization results. Quality link building promotes your website thus bringing new visitors to your website. Link building companies incorporate link building programs to increase traffic to your business resulting in improved visibility, credibility, search engine exposure and revenue.

Ways to Improve Link Popularity
There are many different ways to implement SEO link building to increase popularity, but you need to be careful. Many methods are ineffective and use black hat techniques. It is essential to utilize only white hat techniques in your link building efforts. Increase link popularity from a variety of online resources like directory submission, article submission, blogs, forums and other social media marketing sites. This Link building is not just about adding links, in fact, what matters is adding quality links using search engine friendly ways. Quality of links is determined by trust, the age of the domain linking to you, and “what company they keep” (website’s linking to their site). Acquiring links from trusted websites can positively impact your rankings and hence improve your position in search engine result pages (SERP).

Search engine results are based on 2 underlying factors; relevance and popularity. In order to achieve top search engine results, a website must build popularity through backlinks (links on other websites that point back to your site). Hire link building agencies that will help your site gain higher search engine rankings, increase page rank, enhance the site’s trust ranking and most importantly drive potential end customers. You need link building experts that understand the majority of Google’s ranking factors. Perform this process naturally so that you’ll automatically achieve better placement than your competitors.

Use White Hat Techniques
Create natural backlinks and use link building strategies so that you can retain high ranking in search engine result pages. As Google continues to figure out ways to find real and relevant links, so link building companies continue to understand the major search engines’ algorithms & identify which links count. Based on thorough research, a good link building agency will create a variety of valuable links pointing back to your web site, utilizing the most innovative white hat linking strategies which keep in mind search engines’ best practices and quality guidelines.

In the recent years, as the search engines are evolving with increasingly intelligent algorithms, inbound links are not jut viewed as clickable content which takes a user from webpage A to webpage B. Though a long time has passed since Google recognized the value of hyperlinks and used them as an important component (with other SEs following the precedence), the technology was not precise enough to distinguish between different types of links. Therefore, it was quite easy to rank the website and even the spammy techniques worked quite effectively. But nowadays, all links are not considered equal. The quality of linking domain and page, its relevancy, link popularity, age of links and even the placement of link on the page is considered as quality parameter. It is quite evident from the patents filed by various search engines, links are increasingly been accessed upon on various parameters to determine the reason and importance of link being placed on that particular webpage. A website with ten links from ten different sites will stand a better chance of being favored by search engines than a site with twenty links from one site.

Link Diversity
If the number of links is considered as the votes which signify the popularity of a website on the internet, then your link profile must look natural and multidimensional. Just as a political candidate must be popular with all sections of society to do exceptionally well in elections, a website needs to be popular on all the sections of internet in order for it to beat other websites. Also, such a website will have much stable rankings in a long term. The recent Google Caffeine update was one step ahead in this direction. With this update and number of other minor updates, search engine have tweaked their algorithms to identify the whether a link comes from a commercial website, social media, news or magazine website etc.

Spread Your Link
In order to be successful in your link building strategy, you have to follow a holistic approach. Apart from the normal process of link exchange with other relevant websites in your industry segment, you should also put in efforts to secure links from other types of website.
You can secure some links content links from article and Press Release websites.
Get multiple bookmarks and inbound links from social bookmarking websites.
Create profiles and pages in social media websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace etc.
List you websites in niche industry directories or yellow pages.
Promote your website in industry forums or through limited number of blog comments
l set up blogs on free blog hosting websites which can link back to you
This way you can spread your reach to different online communities and websites. Giving your website a multifaceted link profile can prove to be successful strategy in gaining top search engine rankings. But whatever you do, just make sure focus on quality and relevancy and stay clear of spammy techniques.

Links building is one of the most important and more tedious tasks of search engine optimization. Search engines nowadays place high importance on the links. It is not only the quantity but also the quality of the links that count. All links are not created equal in the eyes of the search engines. There are many quality parameters to look for when securing the links. Therefore, link building becomes one of the most time consuming and painstaking activity in the entire online marketing world.

Benefits of a mixed-PR Link Building campaign:
Though there are a number of quality parameters to gauge a links, many of these are wrongly interpreted. The PageRank for example is still considered one of the most important parameter. Although this is true that PageRank is still one of the prominent parameter to look for ambiguous, it alone cannot guarantee the top rankings as it only represents raw link juice. Some of the top linking factors to considered are mentioned below:
The relevancy of the linking page, or the context of the link
The domain and page authority of linking source
The location of your link on the page
Anchor text of incoming links
The potential of passing Raw Link juice or PageRank

Measuring ROI:
Not only are these criteria difficult to attain, but a lot of clients or website owners are not directly concerned with these parameters or do not know how to interpret it. For them, all they want to know is the return on investment (ROI) a particular link building campaign can provide. One of the ways to assess the value of link building is through keyword rankings. But as the keyword rankings are becoming more and more fluid, the best way to measure the value of link building efforts is measure the traffic brought in by targeted keywords and their variations. It would also be a good idea to take into account the referral traffic coming to the website from a link. Here the Google analytics play an important role in tracking the keyword traffic and referral traffic.

The formula to calculate revenue through ROI is:
Total LB revenue = (Total KW traffic + Referral traffic links) x conversion rate x average organic transaction value

To calculate Link Building ROI:
Hence, Google analytics or any other webs analytics software can be used as an effective tool to measure the ROI of a particular link building campaign.

Link Building for Improved Search Engine Ranking:
Most webmasters who are familiar with Search Engine Optimization and involved in promotion of websites realize the importance of link building to achieve high rankings in Search Engines such as Google. Even a preliminary reading on the Internet guides them to initiate link exchange with websites, particularly with higher PageRank link pages. The more enlightened webmasters pursue links from related industries and also focus on customizing their Anchor Text (link text) in the incoming links.
However, very often their understanding is limited to this information and lower PR links are generally considered worthless, not fit to pursue. This article attempts to simplify & demystify a lot link building issues and show you how in fact, lower PR incoming links are also important & can give you a greater mileage in your quest for high rankings of your website.
Benefits of a mixed-PR Link Building campaign:
Before we discuss the benefits of a mixed-PR link building campaign, it is important to briefly understand the key role incoming links play, in your site’s ranking process. Search engine ranking is a function and combination of primarily two aspects:
Importance of your web page
Relevance of a web page (related to search query string)
Higher “Importance” Improves Ranking:
Search engines rank, what they consider as “important” websites, higher in their result pages. The importance of your website is assessed using various algorithms of a search engine; prominent aspects being:
PageRank: A measure of the PageRank (PR) of your web page on a scale of 0 to 10. Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com) tells you the topic-independent, absolute importance of a web page, 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Each PR value between 1 and 10 is 6-times more important than its previous number. For example, PR5 is 6-times more important that PR4.
Links from “Authoritative” Documents: Links coming from documents considered having higher authority in a particular industry. i.e. links from reputed industry sites or pages having several incoming “related-industry” links. Links from authoritative documents add both, “importance” and “relevance” to your web pages. There are no publicly available qualitative tools to identify or qualify a document as being “authoritative”. Search Engines like to keep this information a secret.

Higher “Relevance” Improves Ranking:
Relevance is always measured in context to a search “query string” or keywords used in a query string. The higher the relevance of a query string to a website, the higher the website would rank. Relevance of your website pertaining to query string are a function of the following:
On-site Keyword Relevance: Keywords and query string appearing on your web pages improve your site’s relevance to the same keyword phrases. This can be achieved or improved by carrying out Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your web site using well-research, industry-relevant and important keyword phrases.
Keywords in Anchor Text: Keywords or query string appearing in the “Anchor Text” (clickable portion) of an incoming link, irrespective of the PageRank of the linking page improve your site’s relevance to those keyword phrases. Primarily based on Hilltop algorithm of Google, the Anchor Text single-handedly outweighs most associated relevance values on a linking page (although there are several more complex parameters and nuances Google studies on the linking page).
Topic Sensitive Page Rank (TSPR): TSPR attempts to combine the value of “relevance” and “importance” of a web page, by computing the “PageRank” of your web page using only “context-sensitive” incoming links. There are no publicly available tools to measure TSPR value.
Mixed-PR Link Building campaign:
The objective of a good Link Building campaign is to boost both Importance and Relevance of your web pages, while maximizing the mileage of your link building budget.
A mixed-PR campaign attempts to achieve both these parameters effectively as follows:
The incoming links in a mixed-PR campaign are secured from all kinds of web pages ranging from PR0, PR1, PR2, PR3, PR4, PR5 and PR6.
The higher PR links (PR4, PR5 & PR6), help you gain importance for your web pages. Although these links are difficult to find and are more expensive, they improve an important ranking parameter for your website.
The lower PR links (PR0, PR1, PR2, PR3), help you gain the relevance of your website by leveraging the Anchor Text value from incoming links. Although the higher PR links also add to your website’s relevance, the lower PR links are more economical and therefore achieve the objective of improving “relevance” of your website much more cost effectively. The lower PR links are easier to find and therefore help set a good pace of your Link Building campaign.
As far as possible, links should be secured from your industry-related web pages, so that you get the benefits of improving your site’s TSPR as well as having a better chance of getting links from “Authoritative” pages.
Catch Lower-PR links in the “Cradle”:
It is worth noting that the lower PR link pages increase in PR over time, more rapidly as compared to higher PR link pages. For example, a PR1 page is likely to jump to PR3 much faster than a PR4 page would jump to a PR6 page. In effect you get the chance to “catch them in the cradle”, which means that you can get (and pay a lower cost) for PR0 or PR1 links, which may turn into PR3 or PR4 link in just 3 – 6 months time. A study of past 20 projects has shown us that about 39% of PR0 and PR1 links jump in PR in 6-months time.
Avoid “Bad Neighborhoods”. Focus on One-Way or Non-Reciprocal Links:
Linking to “Bad Neighborhoods” should be avoided at all costs. Websites which are penalized by search engines, websites having spammy link pages, link-farm network pages or websites deploying dubious black-hat techniques are considered “Bad Neighborhoods”. Linking to such sites can earn penalties for your website too. Excessive linking to “Bad Neighborhoods” websites can trigger a penalty filter for your website and sink all your link building investments and promotional efforts.
Even an expert eye can sometimes not detect or identify a bad neighborhood. Already-penalized websites and websites deploying black-hat SEO techniques are not easy to identify. Unless each site is very carefully evaluated, linking to another website through exchanging links exposes you to the possibility of your website unknowingly linking to bad neighborhoods. Even if you link to, what you consider a “safe-looking” web page, it can later turn into a spammy page full of links or become part of a penalized website. Links to such bad neighborhoods can be disastrous.

Insist on One-way Incoming links:
One good way to avoid linking to bad neighborhood websites is to go in for a one-way non-reciprocal link building campaign, where you only get incoming links but you do not need to link back to such sites. Search Engines go by a premise that if “Bad Neighborhood” sites link to your site, it is neither your fault nor in your control unless you link back to them. Your site would not get penalized even if several bad sites link to you as long as your site does not link back to them. Non-reciprocal link building campaigns are very safe for this reason and your site does not lose reputation even if the incoming links turn “bad”.
There are several link building companies who offer one-way non-reciprocal link building services. These providers use their own online properties to offer links to potential partners and request them to give a one-way link to your site, getting your website “only-incoming” one-way links.
You can also deploy creative ways to secure one-way links to your website:
Offer “Link to this Site” information on your website describing how other websites can link to your website.
Have very good content on your website for your visitors. These could be in the form of informative articles, tips & tricks, how-to series, advisory information etc. Website owners are happy to link to sites having good, unique content.
Offer rewards and goodies to sites that link to you. Rewards can be in the form of free e-Books, free software downloads, free trial offers, discounts coupons, online tools, content syndication or other items of interest.
Offer link backs in exchange for good incoming links, from other non mission-critical online properties or personal pages you may own.
Outsourcing Link Building Quality Guidelines:
If you are planning to outsource your link building campaigns, you must insist your service provider to conform to the following quality guidelines for your Link Building Campaign.
Securing “unidirectional” or only-Incoming (non-reciprocal) links
Links with relevant “Keywords” in the Anchor Text
Links from sites having a different range of PageRank
Links from industry-relevant pages
Link to your site should not be through a “redirect” script
No JavaScript links
No links from “framed” pages
No “flash” embedded links
No robots.txt excluded link pages
No Robots Tag excluded link pages
No paid or time-bound links
Links spread over different domains
No email spam used to solicit links. Must conform to CAN-SPAM act.
No links from Link Farms
No links from FFA (Free-For-All) link networks
No links from Blogs and Blogspots
No links from pornographic and other sites containing offensive content
Full data sheet of links created at the end of each month
Only relevant established links are counted in the final report
Links campaign pace as per client convenience

Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your website from other websites on the Web
Generally Search Engines consider your website important and rank it high in Search Engine Result pages (SERPs) if other websites link to your website. Link Building improves the Search Engine Ranking of your webpage if done in specific ways. Besides an improved Search Engine Ranking, there are certain other benefits that your website derives from carrying out a Link Building Campaign. In this article we list out other benefits of Link Building apart from an improved Search Engine Ranking. Link Popularity is usually viewed in isolation, and most of the people do not realize the complete benefits of a well-defined link building campaign . While improvement in Search Engine rankings for specific keywords is a very important objective of link building, it is not the “only” way a link building campaign can be beneficial to a website.

What is Link Popularity? Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your site, from other sites on the web. The Search Engines consider your site important and rank it higher if several other sites link to your site. Type in your domain name in the box below and hit the ‘search’ button, to find out the link popularity of your site.

You can also search for this on Google by typing in the following command –

Link: www.yourdomain.com

The above command gives you a selective list of links, usually from PR4+ link pages. For a more extensive list, you may search the following syntax –

“yourdomain.com” -site:www.yourdomain.com

For a detailed Link Popularity report, you can use our Link Popularity Analyzer Tool, which checks the link popularity of your site across various search engines like Google, MSN, AltaVista, HotBot, Yahoo and AlltheWeb.

History behind Link Popularity and Google PageRank
Web, by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other prominent sites. If you take the logic that you would tend to link to sites that you consider important, in essence, you are casting a vote in favor of the sites that you link to. When hundreds or thousands of sites link to a site, it is logical to assume that such a site would be good and important. Taking this logic further the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page formulated a Search Engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. They evolved a formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page ) where the algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.

Google’s PageRank is important because it is one of the primary off-page factors that influences your page’s ranking in the search engine result pages.

PageRank in Google’s own Words
Google explains PageRank as follows ( http://www.google.com/technology/):

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

For more information on Google PageRank, go to

http://www.google.com/technology/

http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html

Benefits of Building Link Popularity
Building Link Popularity is one of the most important and critical aspects of any effective Search Engine Optimization campaign today. The ‘off-page’ factors such as link popularity, PageRank and Anchor Text in incoming links play a major role in your site’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP).

Search Engines consider your site more important if more links point to your site. Building link popularity improves the PageRank of your web pages (Read more about PageRank). The higher the PageRank of your website, the higher its importance for search engines and higher it gets ranked in the search engine result pages. Search engines also take into account the PageRank of the pages that link to your site and its industry relevance to your own industry. Links from higher PageRank pages and industry relevant sites give your site a higher value.

Types of Links
There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One way is to trade links (Link Exchange), where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner sites. The second method is to establish ‘only-incoming’ links also called ‘one-way links’ or ‘Non-Reciprocal links’.

Only-Incoming Links
Only incoming links are the links established on the other websites where you do not need to link back to them. There are various compelling reasons and methods to establish such one-way links which include linking back from a different website that you may own, publishing articles on sites, content syndication, listing in trade directories and giving out press releases in news networks.

Link Exchange
Link exchange is an easier way to establish links from other websites to your website. In link exchange process, you trade links with prospective partner sites by offering a link to their site from your own site. This method is a fast way to establish several hundred links to your website. However, it may not get you great benefits.

Only Incoming Links vs. Link Exchange
Google developed the PageRank algorithm to provide authentic and quality information while making it difficult for webmasters and site owners to contaminate the search results by artificially inflating their PageRank.

The new algorithm came into effect with the launch of Google in 1998. Google’s PageRank was based on the logic that more the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.

As Webmasters realized the importance of PageRank, they found ways to artificially inflate their PageRank by manipulating direct link exchanges. This defeated the very essence on which the Google PageRank algorithm was build. To counter this, Google has constantly been fine-tuning and updating its algorithms. Read about Google’s latest algo updates.

The search engines are aware that a large number of sites are deploying link exchange campaigns to boost their site’s PR. Search engines are working towards fine-tuning their algos to discount direct link exchanges in order to preserve the effect of their link popularity related algorithms and rationalize artificially inflated links popularity of sites.

While the algos are yet to reflect this change, we believe that it may happen soon enough. In the long run, we recommend investing your resources in an ‘ only-incoming links ‘campaign for your website which is likely to benefit your site more as opposed to a direct link exchange campaign.

Important Parameters to Consider while Building Link Popularity
Some of the important parameters that you need to consider while establishing links with any website are discussed below:

PageRank or PR of the Linking Page
PR of the linking page is one of the most important factors. PR of the linking page determines how much value of importance is passed on to your page. Higher the PR of the linking page, higher the value you get. The home page PR is not as important, but it is an indicator of how much PR a linking page may jump to, in due course of time. For instance, if the PR of the site’s link page is 0, but the home page PR is 6, then, there is a bright possibility that in a month or two, the link page PR may also jump to a PR of 4 or even 5 due to the internal linking structure of the partner site. While sites would be happy to give out links from a PR 0 page, you can estimate that in two months time, this link page can jump to a high PR, giving you great value in the future.

Identifying Total Number of Links on the Link Page
The value your web page gets from a linking page is equal to the total PR value of that page divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page. Getting a link from a PR4 page that has only 20 outgoing links is much better than getting a link from a PR4 page that has 60 outgoing links. With the same philosophy, it is better to get a link from a PR2 link page that has only 10 outgoing links than getting a link from a PR4 page that has over 100 outgoing links. It is therefore as important to evaluate the total number of outgoing links on a links page, as it is, to evaluate the PR of the linking page. This is where many people often falter, as they usually insist on getting a link from a high PR page, but if that page has 100 outgoing links, your page would only get 1/100th of that value.

Industry Relevance
Search engines give high importance to links pointing to your site from your own industry segment as opposed to those from an un-related industry. For instance, a hotels and reservations website is likely to benefit more from links pointing from a related industry site like travel, vacation packages or cruises, than those from an unrelated industry like a drug site.

Industry relevance also needs to be given a high weight while creating resource directories. For example, if you have a site related to hotels, then you can create a resource directory related to your business that could be pertaining to travel, tourism, cruises, vacation rentals, vacation packages, car rentals, food and beverages etc.

Page Relevance
Most sites offering links have several categories listed on their sites. Try and get a link from a category that closely matches your own industry. For instance, if you have a site related to hotels, then, on your partner site, a tickets site for example, try and identify a resource directory pertaining to hotels, resorts, reservations, vacation packages, travel, tourism, food and beverages etc. If the concerned site has a directory on hotels, you should request a link in that category, as a link from that page would be relevant to a hotels site, thus getting you more benefits. An algorithm called “Applied Semantics” determines the industry relevance of a page within a site. Applied Semantics algorithm studies various keywords on a web page and tries to determine the industry or business segment of each page. Applied Semantics estimates the industry segments that are relevant to a particular page. If the link to your page is coming from your business specific segment, then you are likely to draw more benefit.

Anchor Text
Anchor Text is the visible hyperlinked text on a web page. Since anchor text is very important, make sure that your most important keywords appear in anchor text from the link pointing to your site. You should try and work with at-least 10-20 keyword and link text options. If you are creating a large number of links using only one standard link text, then the search engines are likely to detect a pattern. It is possible that future algo updates may do away with all repetitive and similar looking links to your site. You can also refer to our article on Anchor Text Optimization for more details.

Pre-Indexed Pages
Try and find link partners in Search Engines like Google and Yahoo, and check if the links page is already indexed in the search engines. Search Engines frequently re-index the pages in its database. They are likely to detect your link faster on a page already existing in their database as compared to a ‘yet-to-be indexed’ page. The safest way to check is to copy the prospective link page URL and paste it into Google Search. If the page is indexed, Google would show a result in response to your search, otherwise it would respond with a ‘no result found’.

The robots.txt file
robots.txt is an exclusion file that contains specific instructions for search engine robots regarding the content they are not allowed to index. Links placed on a page that the search engines robots are not allowed to index, would not benefit your site. Considering the importance of robots.txt file, it is a good idea to study a site’s robots.txt file to identify the excluded pages before approaching a site for establishing links with your site. Read our article on Working with robots.txt file.

Dynamic Link Pages
You should also watch out for any link pages that are generated dynamically. Chances are that such pages would not get indexed soon enough, which means that a link from such a page would not benefit you. Some dynamic link pages are intentionally generated in such a way so as to prevent them from getting indexed. Some unscrupulous webmasters do this to trick you to prevent any PageRank leaking from their site to yours. Links from such pages therefore do not give you any benefit.

Java Script Link Pages
It is also important to identify pages that are generated through Flash or a Java Script, as Search Engines cannot read flash pages or the links embedded within flash. These are some of the tricks unethical webmasters use. While a site can claim to have placed a link to your web page, in effect they are not giving you any benefit.

Re-Directed Links
A link that is first re-directed to another page within your partner site before pointing to your site is a re-directed link. You should watch out for such links, as search engines do not give weight to re-directed links. It is very unlikely that your site would draw any benefit from a re-directed link.

Frame Sites
Avoid getting links from framed sites as search engines cannot read texts within frames. A link placed on a frame site would not get your site any benefit, as search engines would not be able to recognize such a link.

Directory Depth
It is important to evaluate the depth of the directory of the linking page. Avoid getting links from pages that are embedded in a very deep directory or pages that are more than two directories deep (e.g. www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/linkpage.php is not a good link page). Deep directories seldom earn high PR. They are also slow in getting indexed, if at all.
Building Link Popularity is a great way to help your site gain competitive PR. Links from other sites also sends direct human traffic to your site. Observing a little care in developing links will go a long way in getting your site rank high in search engines.