Link popularity measures the total number of web pages that links to your website. It is important because search engines’ ranking criteria gives some weight to the number and quality of inbound links that a website receives. Quality of inbound links are more important than quantity because by quality inbound links we mean links from high traffic websites.

Article directories

To achieve link popularity, your website needs exposure. Write articles and submit them to article directories. Article directories are websites that host thousands of articles on diversified topics. One important aspect of article writing is that the article must be free from any sale pitches. It should give good and useful information to the reader and must not be seen as only trying to sell the good aspects of your product. Inbound links are made possible and generated by writing articles as the article can be signed off with an anchor text link back to the author’s (which is you) website.

Deceptive methods of achieving link popularity

There are various methods of fraudulently trying to receive more backlinks to your site. One common technique is the buying of links. This is a black-hat SEO technique and a website found to be doing this may be penalized or banned indefinitely. Backlinks should be achieved via good and informative content and not through pay others to link to us. Link farms is another form of deceptive links. Link farms are groups of websites that link to each other. Reciprocal links are links between two websites whereby both of them mutually link to each other. Building links is important and acceptable provided it is done in an ethical way. For example, registering for pay-per-click advertising is also paying for links but it is a form of advertising which is an acceptable and legitimate way of selling our product.

Participate as an information giver

The Internet is about information, information and information. A white-hat SEO technique is to actively participate in giving useful information. Involve in discussions at Google Groups, give answers at Yahoo! Answers, participate in Squidoo (a popular publishing platform), to name a few. These are large communities where you can proactively be a giver of useful information in return for inbound links back to your website.

A word about outbound links

Your web pages should have outbound links too. Though it does not count towards the link popularity of your web page, outbound links (where your site links to other sites) direct your site’s visitors to other useful sites containing good useful content. Be selective in giving out outbound links and it will in return give your site the impression that you have good content because you are linking to other sites containing good content too.