When using the internet as a marketing tool don’t forget about link popularity. Link popularity is a measurement for number of links to your site from other websites on the Net. Why it is so important to have as many as possible quality links to your site.
The reason for link popularity importance when it comes to using The Internet as a Marketing Tool is that it increases your geographical reach. Because your customers are not limited to just only in your neighbourhood or a neighbouring town, it is worldwide and they can shop anytime they please.
The word “quality” must be stressed here because, because we are not talking about FFA (Free for All) pages here because you just won’t be getting many visitors from links on some sites because in most cases with FFA sites, the reciprocal links are hidden somewhere inside the host website under different directories.
But why is “non-FFA” link popularity growing?
Another factor of linking as part of using The Internet as a Marketing Tool is that some search engines (and Google is one of them) rate your position in search results by your link popularity. They rate your site higher in search results if there are more links pointing to your site. A link from one site to another is considered by the search machines as a kind of “vote” for that site.
If you are starting out you may become seduced by many ads offering to place your link to thousands of other sites in one click for free. This is the FFA links pages (free for all) that we spoke about earleir. Not only they are FAA links useless in terms of link popularity, but you can also be banned from major search engines for using them. Why are FAA links considered useless? You must have seen at least one FFA page. It is one long page with hundreds of links on it. When new link added, it appears on the top of the page and the bottom link is subsequently deleted. Considering that there are hundreds of links added everyday there is very little chance that link to your site that you placed there today will still be there tomorrow. So take a word of advice and avoid being banned from search engines. Let us here at Ipcoweb Digital make these decisions for you – after all our business is your business success.
The best way to get links to your site when linking is part of your overall strategy of using the internet as a marketing tool, is to exchange links with other sites – ask for link exchange and provide reciprocal link in return. Set up a link page directory on your website and start building it. Find sites that you want to exchange links with and email them with link exchange request. Finding sites manually is the best guarantee that you will get quality links. It is time consuming process but at the end it is worth the effort, because you will be getting quality link exchange. And as I mentioned in the very beginning of the article, quality of the links is important.
How many reciprocal links does one need to ensure your site will be ranked well in search engines?
Good question, but no single answer, because it depends on a number of different factors. Keywords are vital. But factors such as keywords, reciprocating links and key-phrases all differ in significance with different Search Engines. This is why it is vital to hire an expert who makes it his/her business to study the market and advise you on the changing trends. And believe me, they change hourly!
To estimate the number of links that you would need, try searching Google for your key phrases and see websites that came on the first page. Check their link popularity and you will have your approximate target. But remember that those sites might be working on their link popularity as well, so you need to set a higher target.
The most important is not to overdo it. Don’t create a huge link page with thousands of links, because you might be considered as a link farm by search engines and banned. Categorize your links pages and limit yourself to few hundred links. This should be enough for most of the cases.
As with anything you get what you pay for. If your business is important to you then you really do want to involve the professionals to help you design the right way to use the internet as a marketing tool.
