Link Popularity- why do we need it?
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Link popularity is one of the key factors that search engines use in determining where to place your site in search results. Generally, the more links on the Internet pointing to your site, the more popular your site is. This popularity is clearly compared to other sites listed under the keyword phrase and results are therefore, determined.
Google was the first search engine to focus on link popularity as a factor in ranking sites. Google concluded that sites receiving tons of links must be highly relevant, full of good content and should appear higher in the results. Ironically, Google has downgraded the importance of link popularity in ranking sites. Instead, it now focuses on the quality of links. This change was due to spam linking abuses.
Spam Linking
If the amount of links were the key to good rankings, why wouldn’t someone create a program or site to trade links? That is exactly what people did and links were being traded in high volumes. This became known as spam linking and the results were amazing.
Quality links are those from a site that is RELEVANT to the subject matter of your site. If you have a clothing site and other clothing-related sites link to it, you have the quality links. Alternatively, if it has pharmacy or animal sites linking to it, you have bad links and the site will drop in the rankings like a rock in water.
To further combat spam linking, Google through in a time factor in the linking process. The search engine smiles on sites that slowly and consistently obtain links. If your site suddenly picks up a few hundred links, Google assumes you are trying to pull a fast one and downgrades your site.
Yahoo, MSN and Google control most of the search engine traffic on the Internet. MSN and Yahoo have followed Google’s theory on linking and you should as well. If you can master these three search engines, you will be a very happy site owner.
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