WHAT IS LINK POPULARITY?

Link popularity is a factor that many search engines use when ranking web pages within their indexes. Simply put, most search engines give a ranking boost to sites that have incoming links from quality, related sites. This method of establishing importance, pioneered by the increasingly popular Google, is now used in some form by 19 of the top 20 search engines. While it is still possible to achieve high rankings for non-competitive terms without a great deal of link popularity, it is unlikely your site will rank well for very popular terms without it.

Links are a great free way to increase traffic flow to your site. Some sites get as much as 200,000 visitors a month from links. Remember, this is Free traffic. There are more benefits, as we will discuss later. First though, how do you get a link to your site?

ACQURING THE LINK

Look for other sites that might link to yours. Ideally, the businesses that run these sites will be related to yours but will not be direct competitors. For example, if you had a site that sold supplies for swimming pools, it could be useful to your visitors if your site had a link to a swimming pool installer, and useful to his visitors to have a link back to your site. Since your offerings complement each other, neither of you are likely to lose business by exchanging links. When you have found a good number of sites, add a link to each of them from a "links" page on your own site. It is important to do this before contacting the site owners, as they are much more likely to reciprocate if they see that you have already taken the trouble to link to them.

Contact the site webmaster and request a link swap. How though do you do this?

Look on the website for the contacts name and email address. Always use the person's name. You will always get better responses from a personalized message than from a Dear Friend message.

Here's a good tactic for finding the web site owners personal email address and name. You will also find their telephone number and contact address, if you should need it. Go to:

http://www.whois.com

Enter the domain name of the web site at the top of the page after 'Whois Lookup www.'. E.g. enter trafficwave.net. Click on the button 'go'. This should bring up a table of who registered the domain name, their personal email address, name, telephone number, address etc.

Find something about the website to commend them about. Mention the product or service that they are offering.

Be specific. This shows more sincerity and interest in their site and is important if you want them to accept your link swap request.

Highlight to the owner of the website the benefits to him of swapping links with you. Explain how it complements his product and why he should link to it. Always highlight benefits; to him, not to you!

How do you find sites to swap links with?

Going to http://www.linkpopularity.com and typing in a well-known competitor's website is one of the best ways. Check who is linking back to him. Then contact the same sites for links to you. This saves a lot of time surfing the web for appropriate websites to link to your business. For example if you sell Herbalife products. Put http://www.herbalife.com in linkpopularity. This will give all the websites linking to Herbalife. Now contact each one of those websites for a link to your website. SIMPLE!

A short link swap letter that you could modify:

Hello James,

We are wanting to trade links with you in hope of boosting our websites

traffic for both your website(s) and ours. We looked at your web site http://www.dieit.com and were impressed with your professional layout. We sell a traffic exchange program which would complement your marketing program nicely. Your clients could benefit by our affiliate type program that increases traffic to any web site. We have added your link to our links page www.somewhere.com/links

It would be excellent to have a reciprocated link back to us on your

site(s).

Please spend 3 minutes to look at our sites to see if a link exchange is

appropriate:

Yours Sincerely

Joe Smith

With search engine rankings being affected by the number of links to your site, links are now a must for getting high search engine placements.

Want to check websites linking to you. Try http://www.linkpopularity.com

AUTOMATIC LINKING

Link partners can provide a steady flow to your inbox of websites that place your link on their site. They request a reciprocal link, but you are not obligated to give one. This is a great FREE resource that will boost your link count.