Links are the powerhouse of the internet which is why everyone is trying to increase their link popularity. It is well known that the search engines treat a link as almost a vote, a vote that the site you are linking to is good enough to deserve the link! This means that the more links you have then the more popular the search engines think your site is and the better it will be ranked for certain terms.

So you may think the best way to get more traffic is to increase your link popularity and you will magically jump up the search engines…. well not quite. You see there are a few more factors, like what does the link say? If someone links to your site with the word ‘Dog training’ as the link, then they are saying that your site is a good dog training site. Now if you have a lot of dog related links to your site then that will increase the link popularity of your site for those terms, but won’t help you with any searches for cats!

Another factor is the quality of the sites that link to yours, after all, if a one day old, one page site links to you then that does not mean you are a good site. If a PR 8 10,000 page site that has been around forever links to you that is definitely going to count and increase your link popularity. Another thing to watch for is sites that have been banned or de-indexed by Google or other search engines, if you have a link from one of those sites then you are guilty by association and it may adversely affect your rankings.

So now you know what you need to watch for when you increase link popularity for your site, lets now move onto the methods to get those links!

Method one – articles

Everyone knows that article marketing works to get traffic to your site, but think about it for a second, each article you submit has a link to your site on it… what a fantastic way to increase link popularity! The best part is that the big article directories are usually high PR, high traffic sites that the search engines love, so the link is a really effective link. This is by far my favourite way to increase link popularity.

Method two – ask

If you don’t ask, you don’t get… how many times have you heard that one? Well it is true with links! If you want to increase link popularity then you have to actively go out and seek sites that are on the same topic as yours and try and get them to link to you. Linking is a two way process, so don’t expect to get a link to your site without returning the favour.

The best way I have found to get someone to link to you, and to link in the way you want, is to email them. Tell them the url of the page where you have already put their link (gesture of good faith) tell them why you like their site and then give them the code they would need to link to your site and ask them to put it on their site. The sneaky thing about this is that you can make the code link to your site with the keyword of your choice! Whereas if they did a straight link they would probably just use the site name. This means you can increase link popularity for certain keywords.

Method three – forums

Forums are a fantastic medium for advertising (in your signature, not directly!) but that also means they can increase your link popularity by displaying a link to your site. Just include a link to your site in your signature with the appropriate anchor text and when that thread is indexed by the search engine then it will index the link as well. Another great point about forums is that the content is constantly updated, so the search engines love them and they are constantly being indexed.

There you have three devastatingly effective methods to increase link popularity – the next step is up to you and is the hardest of all, taking action with your new found knowledge…