Link popularity is one of the most important factors effective in your website ranking on search engines result pages (SERP). All the main search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN consider this factor as the most important one. They believe when a website is important, other websites will link to it to have good and informative resources for their readers. So an important website that has a higher number of incoming links should be ranked higher than its other competitors that have lower number of back links. Webmasters could easily find out that for having a high ranking websites, they have to improve their websites link popularity.
There is no doubt that most websites have no quality content, product and service and are just web pages that advertise others' products and make money through the affiliate programs. So other websites will not link to them because they have no valuable content that can be interesting and informative for internet users. So the webmasters of these websites that loved their websites to have high ranking, started to use some methods like submitting their websites to free for all (FFA) link farms and exchanging links with other websites. These methods could create loads of back links to their websites and they succeed to have high ranking on search engines like Google.
They make thousands of dollars without spending a single cent for advertising but search engines and specially Google that their main concern and goal was (and still is) having quality search result for their searchers found out that link popularity, as an effective factor for the websites ranking should not be limited to the number of incoming links because it is very easy for webmasters to build thousands of back links to their websites through link exchanging and link farms whereas search engine guys wanted quality websites that have quality content to be ranked higher than the others.
It was so easy to ask their programmers to make some changes on their system and algorithm to distinguish real quality websites from the others. So they asked themselves "how should quality and real incoming links be?"
Quality and real incoming links ...
... have different link texts (anchor text) because each of them are posted by a different webmaster.
... are from different websites with different hosting and IP addresses.
... are from pages that have low number of links and more texts and explanations.
... are one way or it is better to say most of them are one way.
Whereas non-quality and in fact fake back links ...
... mostly have the same anchor text with the same keywords/phrase.
... are mostly reciprocal (are created through link exchanging).
... are from links pages that have tens of external links.
... are targeted to over-optimized websites that are enriched with the keywords and key phrases.
... are mostly targeted to home page and not any other pages.
Google made the necessary changes and an stressful and historical Google dance was started. Most of the websites that were used to receive thousands of clicks from Google and its network, lost their ranking and traffic and stopped making money. Google stopped giving any free ride to smart webmasters who had learnt to improve the quantity of the incoming links. It was not a good change for most webmaster and it definitely didn't make them happy. Some webmasters got mad at Google and called it Scroogle because this happened two years ago right before Christmas.
So which one is important? Quality or Quantity?
Both! Links should be from good and popular websites and from pages that have very low number of external links. The pages should not look like link farms that have nothing but links. It should be clear that the webmaster has placed your website link to refer his website visitors to a good resource of information and service not because you have paid him or asked him to place your link for the reciprocal link that you have placed on your website for him. Such links are generally buried in the texts and paragraphs.
When your website's incoming links are all targeted to the home page and carry the same keyword, have the same description and are from links pages and are reciprocal, it means they are created through an agreement!
So what should you do?
1- Create websites with quality content, products and services that other websites link to it just because it is a quality and good website not because you have asked them to link to your website. Obviously it is very hard and almost impossible for small affiliate websites and affiliate marketers.
2- Focus on article marketing. Write a few articles every week and submit them to article directories and also ask other webmasters to post your articles on their websites. Of course keep in your mind to change the resource box of the new articles you write from time to time to have different anchor texts for your website link.
3- Participate in forums and add your website link in your signature. Change and update your signature from time to time.
4- Exchange links with on topic websites and be picky about the pages they will place your website link. The links pages should not include more than 20 to 30 external links and should not be just a link page (or in fact link farm). The page title and also other links it carries should be related to your website theme. Having a reciprocal link from "Others" or "Miscellaneous" page will not be any help and can be even a problem.
5- Submit your website to popular web directories with different anchor texts on each of them.
Do not keep on just one method and forget about the others. For example do not think that only link exchanging can promote your website on search engines. A website that most of its back links are reciprocal OR one way, doesn't seem normal to Google. A normal website has a combination of reciprocal and one way links.
There is another way too. Forgetting about the free traffic you might receive from search engines and focus on paid advertising methods like pay per click advertising. This is what many webmasters do. After the Austin Google Dance, many webmasters who believed that they can not promote their websites through the methods they were used to use, focused on pay per click advertising. Some of them were lucky and could learn to make profit from pay per click advertising like Google AdWords whereas most of them just lost money. That is a different story and I will try to focus on it in some other articles.
Internet and search engines are being developed very fast. In near future, everybody may have a website but only websites that really deserve it, will receive free traffic from search engines and the others have to pay for it.
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About the Author
Vahid Chaychi is one of the www.SirLook.com guys.
He helps the SirLook team to promote the website, improve their products and services and support their clients.
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