Boosting Link Popularity

"How important is link popularity? I have used a trial version of WebPosition Gold which compares links and popularity, but how valid is this assessment? Is there better software available which performs the same function?" -- Sharon Wilson

Link popularity is very important to achieving a higher position in the search engine rankings -- for very competitive keywords, perhaps as much as 50% of the ranking algorithm.

WebPosition Gold 2.0 (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm) includes an enhanced Page Critic feature that computes your link popularity and compares it to the link popularity of competitive sites. You can do this without paying for WebPosition by using WebPosition Link Popularity Check (www.linkpopularitycheck.com), which searches Lycos/AllTheWeb, MSN, and AltaVista to determine how many pages on the Internet contain links to your site. The result, of course, is only an estimate, but it gives you some idea of how many quality incoming links you'll need to acquire in order to match your keyword competitors. You'll find other free link popularity checkers by searching for "link popularity" on Google.

Also see my article with Eric Ward, "Linking Strategies that Improve Traffic to Your Site," Web Marketing Today, 4/2/2003. http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/linking_ward.htm One approach to finding linking partners is to use Ken Evoy's free SiteSell Value Exchange. It (1) registers your site as one that is willing to exchange links with other sites that have a similar theme/topic and content and (2) searches for sites with similar topical content. http://sales.sitesell.com/value-exchange/