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On the face of it Link Popularity would seem pretty
straight
forward. Simply get as many pages as possible to link
to yours
and you will achieve a High Link Popularity. For a long
time I
thought this to be true - however I was wrong.
The real truth behind link popularity is far more complex,
but
once understood, can be more powerful than page optimization.
So why do some search engines place such high weighting
on link
popularity ? This is best answered by Google themselves,
they
call it 'Page Rank' and here is a paragraph from their
site,
"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature
of the web by
using its vast link structure as an indicator of an
individual
page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from
page A
to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google
looks
at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page
receives;
It also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes
cast by
pages that are themselves "important" weigh
more heavily and
help to make other pages important."
In essence this is saying that a high quality page
linking to
yours is worth far more than a link from a low quality
page.
Where quality is judged by that page's own Page Rank
Score.
And there's another thing, where they talk about a
link casting
a vote for a page, it's not as simple as one link one
vote. No,
as I understand, it works like this,
Page A links only to Page B - then the value of the
link will be
Page A's own page rank score.
Page A links to both Page B and C - then the value
of the link
to page B will be Page A's score divided by 2.
i.e. The value of the vote is the linking page's score
divided
by the total number links on that page.
This is a very important point and tells you exactly
why Free
For All links pages (FFA's) are not worth bothering
with.
(An FFA is not going to have a very high score anyway
and the
small score will be shared amongst many).
Although all this is very valuable information it doesn't
give
us all the answers, in fact it raises more questions,
Is the content of the linking page important ?
Is there any benefit in linking back to pages that
link to you ?
Is a Page Rank Score 'fixed' for a page, or does it
vary depending on the search being conducted ?
Is Page Rank just calculated for an individual page
or
does a Site (domain) get assigned a Page Rank ?
What's the effect of linking to your own pages ?
and it goes on, the more you think about it the more
questions
come up. I have spent a long time looking for the answers
to
these and many other questions only to discover more
questions.
Only by knowing the exact algorithms that each search
engine
uses will you be able to get the complete picture. These
are a
closely guarded secret - and even if you did get them,
they tend
to change every month anyway.
After all the research I have come to the following
conclusion.
Obtaining the exact formula isn't really that important
anyway
and could possibly leave you always playing catch-up.
If you discovered the formula used today then by the
time you
get your pages changed and indexed - the formula will
have
changed. No, it is far better to stick with the base
principles
on which the engines work and to understand what they
are trying
to encourage in the Web.
All search engines attempt to deliver the most relevant
pages in
response to a search phrase.
- Links to similar or related material are to be encouraged.
- Links to unrelated material are to be discouraged.
- Quality content is to be encouraged.
Now your linking strategy becomes much simpler,
1) Strive to get links from sites with similar or
related material.
2) Link to other sites which contain similar or
related material.
3) Create Quality content.
(over time people will link to quality content).
Link Popularity takes time to build, but keep these
3 rules in
mind and rest assured your link popularity will grow.
All you need to do now is find those quality sites
which will
link to you. One of the best places to start is by looking
at
who is linking to your direct competition. We describe
how on
the following page,
http://www.trafficfile.com/internet_marketing/link_exchange.htm
Good Luck!
One last thing the full Google article on Page Rank
can be
found at,
http://www.google.com/technology/
Have a read it's good stuff.
We hope you found this article useful and would like
to wish you every success with your online venture. Thanks The TrafficFile Team
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