Building Link Popularity
By Amrit Hallan
The search engine algorithms attach lots of importance to how many websites link back to your website, that is, how popular you are on the Internet. Just make sure the links are there where it actually matters. You can even be penalized for being linked by penalized websites.
In the business and professional circles the worth of a person is gauged by the sort of contacts, and the number of contacts he or she has. To an extent, it is true on the Internet too. The search engine algorithms attach lots of importance to how many websites link back to your website, that is, how popular you are on the Internet.
Until a few years a popular mode of getting linked was organizing link exchange programs. They were like, if you put my link on your website, I’ll put yours on mine. Some got so carried away by the whole thing that they opened link farms! The search engine companies soon got the whiff of the scandal going on and they changed their evaluation algorithm. Now, simply exchanging the links wouldn’t work; the linking should be meaningful.
I’m not exactly sure how much leverage you can get out of building your link popularity chart, but here are some perfectly legitimate ways to make people link back to you.
Submit free articles
So far, this is the best way of building your link popularity. Write articles that the other webmasters would love to put on their websites. Everybody loves content, and everybody needs content — yes, you too — so in exchange of attaching your resource box in the end of the article — that should contain your link — they publish your article provided it matches the overall inclination of that website. You too can do the same thing once you start collecting content from other authors.
Have a linkable website
Even if you’re not interested in submitting your articles for free, make your website so useful that the other webmasters link to it on their own for the benefit of their visitors. You can do that by making your website as content-rich as possible, or by making it graphically very attractive, or by publishing tips and tricks to achieve certain tasks in a better way, or by hosting discussion forums or various online events.
Participate in online forums
Online forums not only help you make new contacts and showcase your expertise, they also let you leave your links behind. Most online forums let you create a tiny signature for yourself that is attached to every message you leave on the forum, and you can have you link and a small description of your profession in that signature. Please make sure that you only participate if you have something worthwhile to say. Some people do more harm than good by making a fool of themselves in various online forums by leaving nonsensical messages.
Publish a blog
You gotta be living in caves if you haven’t heard of blogs, so I assume that you’ve heard of them. Now, since a blog is regularly updated, whenever you update it, you generate a new page. Every page has a navigation bar, and this navigation bar can have a link that links back to your actual, professional website. Most websites connected from regularly updated blogs often rank well.
So these are a few things you can do to enhance your link popularity. Just make sure the links are there where it actually matters. You can even be penalized for being linked by penalized websites. Follow good, healthy and natural link popularity building tactics and sooner or later it’s going to pay.
Copyright © 2010 Amrit Hallan
If you want to publish this article, please let me know.
Amrit Hallan is a freelance copywriter, and a website content writer. He also writes optimized content for better Search Engine Ranking. To know more about his services, visit his content writing and copywriting website at http://www.amrithallan.com He also publishes his thoughts on content writing, blogging and online copywriting on his blog at http://www.contentblog.net.
