Search engines rank websites in their search listings using a whole host of factors built in to their search algorithm. Link popularity remains a significant part of these algorithms, accepting that different search engines will calculate this popularity in a different way. Also they will add greater weightings to the elements of link popularity they regard as more important.

Nevertheless, whichever search engine listing you want to improve your websites ranking on, you must regard link building and link popularity as an area on which to focus at least fifty percent of your efforts.

Links from one site to another act as a vote of confidence for the site receiving the link. The link is a measure of a sites popularity and trust. Counting the number of links to a site is an easy task for a search engine, but the question of trust can be seen as much more subjective and so other factors need to be brought in to play.

Trust can be measured through the quality of the inbound link. A site with excellent, relevant and up to date content that is itself well respected across the web and has a high level of link popularity will carry far greater weight than a site that doesn’t possess these features.

The reason is simple. An outbound link from a site has value, both financial and reputational. A quality site will be well aware of this value and will not link to any old site, especially one that is not relevant to its audience or to a site that contains a lot of spam content and listings.

Trust can also be mentioned through a sites authority. This extends beyond its link popularity and includes factors such as brand, online awareness, history, reputation and being held in high regard in its chosen field. Again, these sites are not going to give away valuable links to any old site.

This indicates a sites global value and its local value or specialism value can be considered separately. This makes perfect sense as there are very few websites or businesses that can be world leaders. By contrast there are a far greater number of countries, regions, localities and specialisms or niches in which a website can make its mark.

There are several metrics which would include authority and trust when giving a website a score of value. Google’s page rank, SEOMoz’s mozRank and Technorati’s Authority are just a few that it is well worth considering when assessing a sites value.

How a site links to yours is also of importance. That is what words does a site use in its link to you? This text is known as the anchor text. If the anchor text contains keywords and phrases that are in tune with your keywords, products or services then the link will carry a stronger weighting.

If there a multiple resources linking to your website that can be considered as authority or trusted resources then your site will make significant strides in climbing up the search engine rankings.

Furthermore, if the anchor text used to link to your site covers your major, say top ten, keywords then this can only enhance your chances of being highly visible on the most popular search engines.

Of course all of your competitors will be looking for the same resources to improve link popularity and so finding quality websites to link to you isn’t a one off exercise, rather it is a continual process.

Carl Fletcher writes for Indexed Results, the Web Directory specialist.

Carl Fletcher writes for Indexed Results (http://www.indexedresults.com), the web directory specialist.

Author Bio: Carl Fletcher writes for Indexed Results, the Web Directory specialist.

Category: Internet
Keywords: link popularity, search engine rankings, link building, anchor text, inbound links