Link Popularity

Why is linking so important?

Linking is very important becauase the search engines weight it heavily in their algorithms. But more than that it logically makes that the links of a web site will help to define what a site is about. Internal web site links, links on your web pages, are very important because they point to and from the pages on your site.

Each web site has important topics, and many web sites have only 1 important topic or theme. Generally speaking if your site is about "cars", then you would probably have many links that have link text that contain the word "car" in them. You may have a link with the text of "How to buy a used car", or "Why buy a used car", etc. It would be strange on a "car" related site to have an internal link that had a link text that said "Salami Half Price". The reason is that it would be out of context for what the site is about. Now there is nothing that will prevent a web site owner from having such a link, and even a page on the topic of half priced salami, but would it make sense? Or would it just possibly confuse the search engine when it attempts to categorize and define what your site is about.

Because after all the site that we are talking about is a site about cars, not about salami.

What is an external link and why are they important?

Another important type of link is an external link. An external link is a link on different domain that points to your web site. The external link is just like an internal link in that it too has link text and a url or page location that it points to. Theoretically it makes logical sense that an external link would be more as valuable, if not more valuable than an internal link. The basic logic follows that if your site is about cars, and provides worthwhile information then 3rd party sites also about cars will link to your site. And the search engines also implement this logic in thier algorithms. If you were a web master for a car web site, it would be very common for you to link to

1.) Car repair shops
2.) Car dealerships
3.) Car parts store
4.) Car accessories
5.) Forum for Car enthusiasts
6.) Pictures of your favorite cars
etc, etc, etc.

So, by entagling your site in a web of links related to cars, about cars, for cars and more, you are associating your site with relevant sites, and making the job of the search engine easier. When the search engine sees all of your internal links related to cars, and if you have many external, or incoming links, with cars in the link text, you are on your way to increasing your relevant web site traffic.

How is link popularity measured by search engines?

Link popularity is a measure of the importance of a web page as calculated by the search engines. A search engine will calculate your popularity by attempting to gather a snapshot of all links pointing to and from your web pages. Link importance is a key factor that Google will use in determining what your page is about, and how it should rank relevant to all other web pages with the same topic. Simply put, the more relevant your incoming, outgoing, internal, external links the better your site will rank in the search engines for targeted keywords. Google has stated that they interpret a link from page A to Page B as a vote for page B. Stated another way, Google is saying that the page with the most incoming links wins. Well not exactly, this leads into our next topic which is link relevancy.

What is Link Relevance?

The relevancy of links is argued to be more important than the quantity of links. Link relevancy is the determination by a search algorithm that two web pages linking to another are on the same topic, or they are relevant based on industry, similarity, or theme. So while a web page about "cars" is not the exact same topic as "car parts", the two topics are relevant to one another.

Learn about building relevant links

To build relevant links takes a lot of time, skill, and dedication. First you will need to make a determination about what your web page is about, and what keyphrase you want to target for that page. Once you make that determination, you will need to make sure that your page has been built with the proper HTML tags to help identify the page topic to the search engines. Next, you will need to try to intelligently build links to this site from relevant sites, that provide relevant or similar content. Well you might not realize it now, but building internal relevant links is easy, and yes internal relevant links are weighted by the search engines. To build internal relevant links you simply put links around your web site in a calculated way to help define your page importance and theme. The next topic, which has been separated for importance is the building of external links to your site.