subject: How to increase link popularity [print this page] There is a term used in the optimisation industry- "content is king". This is very true. SE's (Search engines) love content, especially regularly updated content. With this in mind, you must remember that "links are queen". Having inbound links to your website is a very important factor of the SE' s algorithms, if you want to increase your visibility on SE's then you must increase the amount and quality of the links that point to your website. For many small to medium companies the cost of paying for a full time link building campaign is far too expensive.
Companies, webmasters and web site owners should be constantly trying to improve link popularity (inbound links to their website), an increase in inbound links will cause an increase in visibility on the SERP's (search engine results pages).
The times of "a link is a link" have however passed. Reciprocal links should only be arranged with websites that are about the same topic or share similar content. Websites that reciprocate links with websites that are not similar are deemed as artificially trying to increase link popularity by the SE's. One way inbound links are more valuable than reciprocals, and remember that it is the quality of links that also bears more weight. One link from an authoritative site with high PR (Page Rank) is worth many links from that friend of yours that just built his personal website!
Anchor text- This is the word or words that are used to link to your website. e.g. "seo consultant " is anchor text that actually points to my home page . This is often called the links "title". Use the keywords that you would like a high ranking for as the anchor text.
For instance Smith LTD sell widgets of all shapes and sizes. They would like to rank well for the term "plastic widgets". They start submitting their website for inclusion in free web directories. When asked for the anchor text or links title during submission it would be far more beneficial to use the text "plastic widgets" rather than Smith LTD.
With all this in mind you should start your link building campaign as soon as possible? Google will spider links to your website several times before accepting their importance, this process is known as "waiting for the links to mature". This can often take several months.
So, here are my top 10 ways to get inbound links to your website.
Submit your website to free web directories. (Make sure you submit to the right category).
One of the most important free web directories to submit to is the open directory) DMOZ is used by Google for all of the contents of their Web Directory. Many SE's and directories also use DMOZ results for their directories. Google also gives a link to your site from DMOZ a lot of credit. Beware DMOZ is edited by humans and getting listed can take anywhere from 1-18 months, so the sooner you do it the better!
