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Google paved the way for link popularity as a relevance factor (their algorithm uses link popularity as a major factor when ranking pages) and their success has not gone unnoticed among other engines. Altavista and Inktomi for example seem to be following this trend and are apparently decreasing the amount of attention they pay to the actual page submitted to them.
Instead, they are placing more and more weight to how many other sites are linking to the page, what kind of sites are they and what kind of text is located in/near the links. It seems that links from sites dealing with the same subject as you and links from very popular sites (such as human-edited directories like ODP and Yahoo) can help your ranking in the search engines, while links from low quality sites such as FFA's and other random link lists will often be ignored completely.
This change of policy by some major engines is probably caused by the massive amount of doorways and other worthless machine-generated pages that have been flooding their indexes. The logic is that pages other people think are valuable resources will often get linked by other webmasters, while pages that are of low quality or do not contain any information at all will not gain many links - thus, the Top10 places will be filled with sites people regard as useful.
I'm afraid that this change might make it even more difficult for small and new sites to make it to the top and favor big, high-traffic commercial sites, but only time will tell if this change is going to make things better or worse. But it's no use to complain or get depressed about changes in search engine policies - we're just going to have to live with them no matter what.
How to build your link popularity
The emphasis on link popularity makes two things even more
important than what they have been. The first is, as always, content. Good content ensures that other webmasters link to your site just because they think it's a valuable resource to their visitors - giving you traffic from the links, and a boost in your search engine rating too! The second thing is reciprocal links. They will also have a "double effect", increasing your visitors from the links and from search engines. The more links you have pointing to your site, the better.
There are also some "link-share" services, for example LinksToYou, that are designed to boost your link popularity. The way they work is simple: Each member of a link-share program places a machine-generated page on his site and links to that page from his front page. The machine-generated page has links to all other sites participating in the program. Each member submits his machine-generated page to all search
engines, and the result is that each member has a link to his site from everyone else.
These programs have produced some positive effects in the past, but many search engines now regard them as spam and some completely ban sites that participate in these programs. Additionally, given the current emphasis on links from similar sites by the search engines, they are in most cases completely useless or even harmful, which is why I would strongly recommend that you do not
participate in them. Focus on creating good content and establishing reciprocal links instead.
When acquiring links by using FFA's, reciprocal links or any other methods, try to get your primary keywords into the link text. For example, getting someone to link me like this: A promotion guide - learn to promote your site would be excellent for my search engine placement, because it would contain the two most important keywords for my site; promotion and promote.
On the other hand, a link such as this: click here to see a cool site wouldn't be as good, because it doesn't contain any words that are related to site promotion. You can aid this process by naming your site so that it contains at least one of your important keywords - people will often use the title of your site when linking to you.
In order for all these tricks to work,
you must remember to submit any pages that link to your site to the search engines, unless they have already been submitted by the site owner. People will often link to your site without letting you know they have done so, so some will fall trough the cracks, but at least submit those you have knowledge of.
To check your link popularity, you can either visit the engines and check it from there, or you can use this free link popularity checker. It currently supports Altavista, MSN, Lycos and Hotbot.
Reciprocal links
High quality information about reciprocal links,
website promotion, meta tags and search engine optimization.Reciprocal links are one of the most common and most effective forms of website promotion. The basic concept is simple - you link my site, I'll link yours and we'll both get an increase in traffic. But there is more to it than just exchanging links with a random site.
The very first problem is to find the right site to do an reciprocal link exchange with. A good partner has content that appeals to the same kind
of visitors as your site does, and vice versa of course. For example, a Futurama fan site could have reciprocal links with a Simpsons fan site, a free stuff site with a sweepstakes site and so on. To create successful reciprocal links, the exchanging sites need to be similar yet different enough so that they don't compete with each other.
After you've found a site that fits
the above description, there are a few other important things that need to be figured out. First, is the other site interesting? If it's filled with banner ads and typos, you're better off finding another site to exchange with. A good rule of thumb is "If it doesn't interest me, it's not going to interest my visitors".
The second thing is to figure out how much traffic the site gets. Usually you can make a rough estimate just by browsing the site - if it looks and feels
professional, it probably gets a pretty good amount of visitors. If it feels like it was a poor site to begin with, and no one has updated it since 1997, it probably doesn't get more visitors a day than you have fingers in your hands.
For the exchange to be useful to both parties involved, sites performing an exchange should have similar amounts of traffic - that way one site doesn't just rip visitors off the other one without giving any in return. Because most webmasters know
this rule (some even monitor the amount of traffic they receive/send out), it's unlikely that a low-traffic site can get a link exchange with a high-traffic one. But if your site is really good, your proposal for a link exchange could be accepted even if you get less visitors than the site you're trying to exchange with. The old "content is king"-rule applies here, too :).
After you've found a site that seems to be suitable, it's time to contact the webmaster of that
site. Tell him that you run a site that has a similar topic and describe your site a bit (remember to give your front page's address). Say that you like his site and have included a link to it in your site (give him the address of the page where the link is), then ask him to return the favor by linking to your site. If you never get a reply or your proposal gets rejected, just forget it and find another site.
If you manage to make a deal
and get the other webmaster to link to your site, keep your end of the bargain - don't remove your link without contacting the webmaster of the other site first. Because there are some webmasters who agree to do an reciprocal link exchange, add your link on their site for a few days/weeks and then remove it without noticing you, you should also check the site of your partner every now and then to see if he's keeping his part of the deal. If he is not, contact the guy and kindly ask him to explain why your link has disappeared. If you don't get a satisfactory explanation, remove the link to his site from your site and find another partner.
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