What is link popularity and why Frederick Maryland needs it

Why a Frederick Maryland or Montgomery County Maryland Business website needs to improve it's link popularity:

What is it and why you'd better start thinking in these terms.

There can be only one number one. Google has to pick one, just one... everyone else is second place or worse.

How does Google Decide who gets to be #1?

What if it comes down to Coke or Pepsi?

lets say both sites are equal in every metric you can think of... There still has to be one number one...

If Coke has 110,000 other sites linking to it, and Pepsi has 180,000 other sites linking to it... guess who wins?

It's time to improve you link popularity!
Why bother with link building?

Link popularity and link quality are very important because every major search engine now considers them as a part of their ranking algorithms. If you don't have links, you won't rank well for competitive keywords.

If your page includes all the important on-the-page criteria and scores well with Page Primer, it's time to focus on your links. Good inbound links can move your page up the ranking ladder and act as new entry points to your site. But how does your site get those coveted inbound links we hear so much about?

First off, let's make sure we understand the basics. Link popularity is the measure of inbound links to your web site. Link analysis evaluates which sites are linking to you and the link text itself.

Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to improve your link quality and popularity, which will give you a boost in the rankings. Here are some guidelines to help you set up your own linking campaign:

1. Prepare your site first
Before you start your link building campaign, take time to get your site in shape. Make sure your site looks professional, has good content and is easy to navigate. Validate your HTML code and check your links with a tool like HTML Toolbox. If a potential linker goes to your site and finds broken pages, they are not going to want to link to you.
In addition, directories have gone on record saying they may exclude sites with broken links and page errors. Directories want only professional looking sites in their databases, so do your homework on your site before you start promoting it and your linking campaign will be more effective.

2. Budget time for link building
Don't expect to grow your link popularity overnight. Budget time every week to work on link building. If you force yourself to spend a couple hours a week on link building, it will become part of your routine. Pick one day a week and set aside time as your "link building time." If you don't make it a priority, it won't get done.
Link building is an incremental activity. Over time these one or two new links start adding up until they are hundreds or even thousands of links.

3. Establish realistic link goals
Don't expect to see instant results. Link building is difficult, frustrating and time intensive. Convincing another web site to link to you can be exasperating. If you get one good quality link a month you're doing better than the majority of sites out there.
Patience and creativity are key to link building. Track your progress so you know who you've asked already. It could be embarrassing to ask a site for a link if they've already given you one.
If a company initially declines your link request, wait a while and then ask again. Their company focus may change over time. A "no" today may change into a "yes" 6 - 9 months later.

4. Develop internal management support
If you're link building in-house, build support from your company's internal management for your link building. This usually means educating management about the benefits of link building.
Link popularity is unique to the search engine industry - it's not taught in graduate schools (not yet, anyway). Sit down with your management and explain the concept behind link building - don't assume they understand it or have even heard of the term. In fact, most won't have a clue what you're talking about.

Explain link building in terms they will understand and in ways that will get their attention, such as describing the relationship of link building and increased revenue. Talking about making more money usually gets management's attention.

Why worry about management support? You will need it to provide the time and money you need to get into search engines or directories.

5. Link popularity is all about quality
Be selective about the sites from which you request links. Search engines use sophisticated rules when judging the importance of a link, and the popularity of the site linking to you is a key criteria. One link from CNet is worth far more than a link from a personal web site.
And don't even think of using a link farm! Link farms are sites that exist solely to link to other web sites. Link farms are a blatant attempt to inflate your link popularity, and search engines take a dim view of them. Google in particular has been known to ban sites found using a link farm.

Try to identify non-competitive sites in the same field as your site. Links from sites that are related to your area carry more weight than sites from Aunt Sue's favorite horse site. That doesn't mean you should refuse a link from Aunt Sue, just be aware it won't help you much in link quality terms. On the other hand, links from sites within your industry are strong endorsements for your site.

6. Develop a relationship with a site
Before you ask for the link, get to know the web site. Establish yourself as a real human first. That way, when you ask for a link, it's harder for them to say no.
Impersonal broadcast emails asking for links are spam. Sure, it's easier, but it will only result in making another company mad at you. Spam link requests do not work and waste everyone's time. Don't do it!

7. Provide the linking code
Make it easy for other sites to link to you. Send the prospective linker the exact HTML code you want in the link and suggest which page you want the link from. This ensures the right words are used in the link and reduces the burden in setting up the link. Everybody on the Internet is pressed for time and if you don't make it "drop-in simple" by giving them the exact HTML, you've made their job too hard. Make it easy and your success rate will go up.

8. Get directory listings
Jumpstart your link campaign by getting directory links first. This is especially important if you have a new site or a site with no inbound links. A shortage of inbound links puts your site at a severe disadvantage because link analysis is an important part of every search engine's ranking algorithm.
The way to overcome this disadvantage is to get a few quality links. A good way to start is to get listed in as many directories as you can. There are many directories out there, and the more you can get into the better.
A few to target include:
• Open Directory
• Yahoo
• LookSmart
• Zeal.com
• Joeant.com
• Business.com
Be aware that most of these directories require you to pay for a listing. It's worth the expense.

9. Consider bartering for links
It's a good idea to have something to offer in return for a link. Many sites won't link to you unless you link back to them or otherwise make it worth their while. Create a Resources or Partner page that allows you to have a place from which you can easily link to them.
You might also offer to work a barter arrangement with them. If you have a popular site with their target market, they might consider free advertisements in exchange for a link. If the link is of great value to you, be prepared to give something back.

10. Link building alternatives
If time constraints keep you from link building, consider outsourcing your link popularity work. Link building is undoubtedly the most time consuming part of search engine optimization. You may find it is not cost effective to do it in house. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, it just means you hire someone else to do it for you.

Many top SEO firms have turned to outsourcing this function. For example: Jill Whalen of highrankings.com uses Debra O'Neil-Mastaler's link building firm.
Outsourcing to a reputable link building firm ensures good links and could be a more efficient model for you if you are already time limited.
One word of caution if you do chose to hire a company specializing in link building: make sure any firm you hire follows good link building practices. Ask them to describe the process they use to request links Make sure they follow a personalized approach, and don't simply spam sites with requests for links.

If they refuse to discuss their link building methods you can assume they use impersonal widespread email drops or link farms - that's spam. They may call it a fancy name, but if the process involves sending out large numbers of form emails, it's still spam and will only set your campaign backwards and injure your company's professional reputation. Go find a different company or develop your links in house.

Just do it!

Link popularity is important and the link building process needs to be given high priority. Link analysis is only going to get more important to search engines, not less. Search engines have found it highly resistant to manipulation and a legitimate way to measure the importance of a site. Since link building takes time, the sooner you start the better.

So think of link building as a long-term investment in your site. Put in a little time now to improve your linking today to insure a good search engine ranking in the future.

Contact David Bruce Jr @
davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com 240 315-1515

Inbound links... Why and How

Inbound links, link exchangesand link acquisition

Link text (the text that is clicked on when clicking on a link) is singly the most important factor when Google determines the rankings for any given searchterm. This article isn't about that aspect of inbound links, although it is briefly touched on. This article discusses inbound links for their link popularity/PageRank value, and provides ideas on how to acquire them.

Why do we need inbound links?

Even before Google came on the scene, link popularity (linkpop) was being used by one or two search engines as part of their algorithm when determining the rankings for any given searchterm. Then when Google arrived with their link-based PageRank, link popularity took off and became an absolute essential ingredient in achieving top rankings.

The idea behind linkpop is that the more pages that link to a page, the more important the page is and it, therefore, deserves a higher ranking than it would otherwise have.
Some engines simply counted the number of links coming into a page (inbound links), but Google took the idea a step further. Each inbound link comes comes from a page which itself has inbound links. The more inbound links on the linking page, the more important that page is and, therefore, the more important the link to our page is. So Google gives more weight to inbound links from important pages that it does to inbound links from lesser pages. They call the idea "PageRank", and you can learn all about in this PageRank article.

Google is the world's number one search engine, and currently provides the results for around 80% of all the searches done in the world. Because of that, it is vitally important for any website that relies on search engine traffic to do well in Google. Doing well in Google means making the site 'important' in Google's eyes and, to do that, the site must have good inbound links - as many of them as possible, and preferably from important pages (pages with medium to high PageRank values).

How do we get inbound links?

There are a number of ways. Some of them are:
-
Directories Directories usually provide one-way links to websites, although some require a reciprocal link. Personally, I have no time for those that require reciprocal links, because they aren't really trying to be useful directories. Submitting to directories is time-consuming and boring, but there are a number of cheap directory submitting services that do a very good job.

There are several of them in this forum thread.

Forums

Join forums and place links to your site(s) in your signature line. Use your main searchterms as the link text - I'll come to why that is necessary later in this article. But before spending time writing lots of posts with your signature line in each post, make sure that the forum is spiderable by checking the robots.txt file, and make sure that non-members don't have session IDs in the URLs. Also make sure that links in signature lines are not hidden from spiders (view the source code to make sure that signature links are in plain HTML format and not in Javascript).

Link exchange centers

Find a join free link exchange center like LinkPartners.com. There you can find a categorized directory of websites that also want to exchange links. Be careful not to sign up with FFA (Free For All) sites because they are mostly email address gatherers and you can expect a sudden increase in email spam soon after you sign up. Also, only sign up with centers where you can approach other sites personally, and where they can approach you personally.

Do not join any link farms!!! Link farms, such as LinksToYou.com, sound excellent for building up linkpop and PageRank, but search engines (Google in particular) disapprove of them as blatant attempts to manipulate the rankings and they will penalize sites that use them. Once a site has been penalized, it is very difficult to get the penalty lifted, so avoid all link farms.

Email requests (a) Search on Google for your main searchterms and find the websites that are competing with you. Then find which sites link to them by searching "link:www. competitor-domain.com". Email them and ask for a link exchange. (b) Search on Google for websites that are related to your site's topic, but not direct competitors, and ask them for a link exchange.

Buy them
There are websites that want to sell links. They are usually medium to high PageRank sites, and often the link will be placed on multiple pages, or all pages within the site. It's possible to approach individual sites where you would like your links to appear, but it is much quicker, easier and more reliable to use a middle-man service (or broker).

Link brokers offer links for sale on behalf of other websites (you could use the service to sell links on your site!). With these services, it is usual to be able to choose the type (topic) of the website(s) where you want to place your links. I am not aware of any disreputable practises with link brokering.

Finally, there are even links for sale by public auction, such as the one at LinkAdage Auctions.

What type of links?

Inbound links serve three purposes:-
(1) they add linkpop and PageRank to the site,
(2) they send traffic to the site, and
(3) if the link text (the text that is clicked on) is good, then the page's rankings can be improved.

(1) for linkpop, either text or graphic links are fine,
(2) for traffic, text links are known to be more effective than graphic links, and
(3) to positively affect a page's rankings, text links are the best.
So get text links and not graphic links.

(1) for linkpop, get links from anywhere,
(2) for traffic, get links from related sites, and
(3) to improve the page's rankings, get links from anywhere - the higher the PageRank of the linking page, the better and, whenever possible, make sure that the link text is one of your main searchterms (see Search Engine Optimization - the basics).

Summary

Inbound links are important for websites that want to move up the rankings. Inbound links, with the right link text, are essential for achieving top rankings.

Most websites are not natural link magnets, and link acquisition can be time-consuming and frustrating. Many websites that are approached by email will say no, but some will say yes. For top rankings, it is essential to take the time and get many inbound links.

UpdateGoogle's "Big Daddy" update, which was rolled out during the first part of 2006, was largely concerned with their crawling and indexing functions. The update contained a new concept for them - making a mathematical calculation to determine how many of a site's pages to have in the index. The mathematical formula is concerned with the nature and trustability of links coming into a site, the nature of links going out of it, and the quantities of those.
The new crawl/index system doesn't specifically penalize sites for having too many links of the 'wrong kind', but it doesn't give them credit for crawl/index purposes, and many sites suffered by having large numbers of pages removed from the index.

This is important, because it means that exchanging links willy-nilly can actually cause some or many of a site's pages to be removed from the index, due to the lowering of the site's IBLs/OBLs score. So it is better to exchange on-topic links than to exchange off-topic ones. The days of a link is a link is a link are over. The helpfulness of an over-abundance of reciprocal links are gone, and it can actually cause some of a site's pages to be dropped from the index.

Article by Phil Craven
from http://www.webworkshop.net/inbound-links.html

Note from David Bruce Jr. -Frederick Web Promotions
You can also get inbound links from the services we provide- a Google Blogger Blog!
for only $120 Frederick Web Promotions will create and manage a company Blogger Blog and list it in many directories and blog search engines...

Want to see proof that it works?
Go to http://frederickwebpromotions.blogspot.com






Contact David Bruce Jr @ davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com 240 644-7530