Link Popularity – An Important Factor In Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Link popularity is, somewhat obvious, a loose term to describe the number of links pointing to your website, as well as the importance of those links. In a way, this is circular – as you get higher link popularity, your outbound links gain power making the websites you link to rise in link popularity making their links gain power. On and on it goes.

A common way of describing your link popularity is by the use of (google) Pagerank. While this is not completely accurate, for the purpose of most hobby SEO:ists, it is close enough.

To gain link popularity you need to get more links pointing to your website, the more the merrier. Not all links are of equal value, links on important pages and/or on trusted websites are far more valuable than links from link pages used solely for link exchanging.

The time it takes to get the link should always be proportional to the quality; great links aren’t easy to come by, but if you can find them it will be well worth your while.

Gaining more links pointing to your website can be accomplished in many ways, some better than others. A few easy ways of attracting inbound links are;

Writing articles

Writing and submitting articles to various article directories will help you gain very high SE rankings on the targeted words. Be sure to target clever keywords within the anchor text(s) and you will see some great results.

Exchanging links with other websites

Reciprocal linking, where two sites link to each other, can be highly beneficial for link popularity and SE rankings. Relevant link exchanges will always work far better than linking to anyone and anything.

Actively blogging

Make a blog in your niche, try to update is as often as possible. Read and comment on other blogs in your niche, but do not spam. Link to your own posts only if they are relevant and on topic.

Using social bookmarks

Make use of the various – and ever so popular - social bookmark services easily found all around. Use their buttons on your blogs and pages, and see to it you actively take part in at least one of the most popular ones.

Submitting your site to various web directories

An easy way of gaining one-way links is to submit your websites to web directories. Many of them offer free one-way links of medium quality. The problem with directories is the similarity of them, as well as the lack of content. Websites consisting only of links are rarely treated well in SE’s, its only logical the outbound links are treated similarly.

There are plenty of more ways of gaining links and link popularity, but the above methods are fast, cheap (or free) and available for everyone.

No matter what method(s) you are using, altering your anchor text will be crucial for your success. Be imaginative; try to make the links look generic and not like YOU have added them all. Its no secret google and other SE’s are constantly tweaking their algorithms to take SEO into account. No need to be obvious.

By: Theo Swan

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Theo Swan, webmaster of Yet Another Directorywrites about SEO, internet marketing and using affiliate programs.