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How Google Measures Link Popularity
Link popularity is by far the most important factor for determining your
search engine ranking. You need to know what link popularity is, why it
is so important, and how Google measures your link popularity (over 50%
of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to
the top of Google, you will rise to the top of all the other search
engines as well). But, before we talk about how Google measures linking,
we need to cover some basics.
Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to
your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites
linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines
use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how
important your site is, which translates into your search engine
ranking.
The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to
calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the
relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example,
if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source
of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins,
then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity
will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be
very good.
It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality
inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant
or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto
insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a
much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has
3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.
If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only
will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently
removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you
can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that
directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines
usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.
Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need
to look specifically at how Google measures it. Google uses a number of
variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The
higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.
One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total
number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your
score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated
than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be
ranked higher than a website that has more links.
The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your
links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is
a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link
still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if
it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.
Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that
has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your
site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to
your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to
your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of
information about jewelry is being written or discussed.
Also, Google gives an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor
text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For
example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about
lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if
the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more
about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you
will be able to learn about it.
Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the
diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if
you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are
from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google
considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have
links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to
handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.
It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you
understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to
improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and
blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when
you post, include a link to your site. As long as you are persistent and
tailor your strategy towards Google, you will do fine.
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