Virtual Solutions : WebmasterCorner : ToolBox : Promotion Online Tools : Popularity Analyzer

Webmasters commonly trade links with their friends and fellow Webmasters, it's a practice as old as the web itself. However this practice appears to have a greater significance than some of us were aware of. In trading links, we are not just sharing small amounts of traffic, we are actually increasing the perceived value of our sites. This is a result of the concept of link popularity.

Link Popularity is the idea that the more sites that have links to you, the more valuable your site must be, because of the number of sites that feel you are link worthy. Thus the higher number of sites that have links to yours, the greater your site's link popularity.

What are the advantages of your site having high link popularity?
First, being linked to by another website is an advantage in itself and should bring visitors. The secondary advantage of being linked to by a number of sites is that spiders will be more likely to come across your site just as they come across sites linked to yours.

However, it is the final advantage that might be of the greatest value to your site. Many popular search engines use link popularity to measure a site's value.

There is no doubt that search engine spiders and bots are great at scouring a page and accessing its contents in a thorough but not in an evaluative way. Since the object of a search engine is to efficiently deliver quality sites, link popularity is one of the most logical measures that the engine can use to approximate the quality of your site. This fact can affect the placement of your site on a search engine's page.

What can you do to improve your site's link popularity?
Create a number of feeder sites that reside on other domains that contain links to your sites.

Find another Webmaster to exchange links with. This may not necessarily be the best method as it could potentially lead customers off of your site, and other Webmasters may be hard to convince that it might be beneficial to them. However, if you do find a cooperative Webmaster, it is always a good idea to submit their urls to search engines so that your link popularity is correctly updated.

Consider registering a domain name. Link popularity accessed through a domain name is given priority over individual pages. It is also easier to increase your site's link popularity when it has its own domain.

Click Here for Popularity Analyzer