What is Link Popularity and how does it benefit your website?

In recent times search engines have begun to look at not only your websites content but also the number of outside websites which link back to your website. Link popularity measures the quality and quantity of other web sites that link to specific sites on the Internet. Link popularity is another way of getting your website higher up the search engines. The way in which link popularity works is that search engines think if people are linking to your site that your website must be good and because of this it deserves a boost in rankings and if you think about it this does make sense as no one would want to link to your site if they thought your site wasn’t up to scratch.

It has been said that there is no need for average websites to obsess over link popularity; however you should make sure that your website is ‘link worthy’ but you should remember that link popularity makes up only a part of the most search engine’s ranking algorithms. It has also been stated that Google places more emphasis on link popularity than most other search engines; however how much they actually boost a sites ranking is debatable and it also depends on lot on the size of the site. One of the best ways to build long term link popularity is to offer good content and features that provide real value to your audience. Link popularity really does make a difference and plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results. It is also important due to the fact that some search engines require at least one or more link coming to a web site otherwise they will drop it from their index.

The philosophy behind the idea of link popularity is that important sites will attract many links and that if a website’s content is poor it will have difficulty attracting any links at all. Search engines such as Google use a special link analysis system to rank web pages based on their link popularity and citations from other website owners help to define a sites reputation.

Link popularity assumes that not all incoming links are equal, as an inbound link from a major directory carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page. In other words, the quality of incoming links counts more than sheer numbers of them.

If is safe to say that all of the major search engines place some emphasis on link popularity within their ranking algorithms. Also there seems to be two main types of links that will work best to increase your link popularity; these two main types of links are links that come from other sites that focus on the same keyword phrases that your site focuses on as well as links that come from relevant categories in major directories and industry-specific portals.

It can clearly be stated that link popularity will continue to be an essential factor when it comes to successful search engine marketing initiatives for the foreseeable future. Links are also helpful for search engines when they are trying to get through billions of documents and find ones that are relevant to their users search requests.


Helen is the web master of Search Solutions, specialists in all your Link Popularity needs.