Link popularity relates to the number of hyperlinks and authority referencing a website, as determined by the Page Rank algorithm. The more the number of links, the higher their weight or link popularity. This helps your web page to get a higher SERP ranking because when your site has links to web pages with high link popularity, it has a higher chance of appearing at the top of SERP results.
This is referred to as link juice. When the linked web page rank and authority are higher, they add value to the backlinks. Websites with higher authority will pass on more link juice to the page that is linked.
Ranking based on link popularity is prone to manipulation, as website owners can buy or exchange links. The relevancy of links is not paid attention to when links are bought. It can mislead the searchers when they search for a particular topic. The idea behind link popularity is that when people link to web pages or websites with relevant and helpful content, that particular link becomes more popular.
Historically, when people saw that links add value to their site and influence the ranking system, some started using manipulative methods such as link farms to buy links. But that puts a threat to the quality of the web pages. Suddenly we have websites that don’t have good enough content to answer the customer’s pain points and resolve their queries, these insufficient and manipulated pages start to rank at the top.
In this article, you will find
- Link Quality
- Domain Popularity vs. Link Popularity
- Why Does Google Give Importance to Link Popularity?
- How to Increase Link Popularity?
- FAQs
- Final Thoughts
- Final Thoughts
Link Quality
How do you determine whether a link is of good quality or not? Through content. Search engines now consider building link popularity as an off-page criterion to determine the quality of any content. Just like how citations from authors add to the site’s reputation, off-page SEO factors such as links help define a link’s popularity. The reality is that, ultimately, sites with good content will attract links.
Links that come to your site are known as inbound links. Not all inbound links are treated equally. Inbound links from a major directory or influential website or brand carry more weight than an inbound link from a random personal page.
Domain Popularity vs. Link Popularity
Domain popularity is a method to measure the volume of inbound links, which indicates how many domains provide links to a given web page. Domain popularity does not consider the number of backlinks that come from each domain. In other words, it makes no difference whether the domain has 1 or 1000 links; domain popularity counts as one link per linking domain.
To evaluate domain popularity, there are several metrics, such as evaluating the network and analyzing the IP popularity.
Compare that to link popularity, where every backlink is counted separately. These are counted as backlinks, even though they are from the same website, but from different blogs placed in different locations on the site or blog.
Compared to link popularity, domain popularity is also given importance as it provides crucial information about the quality of the backlinks.
It is important to get a high-quality backlink as it redirects people to your website who click on it.
Why Does Google Give Importance to Link Popularity?
Gone are the days when Google relied on link profiles to determine its ranking. Link profiles are inbound links pointing to your sites and the characteristics of those links. Any link profile is built based on three main factors.
- Types of links pointing back to your site
- Anchor text optimization of those links
- How the links were acquired
Google follows these guidelines to ensure the links you use are not built via unnatural link-building tactics.
Check the quality of inbound links and whether they come from legitimate and authoritative sources. Not just that, but ensure the links are relevant. For instance, in a blog on digital marketing, you cannot have an inbound link from a website that gives guidance regarding cracking a medical exam. That’s completely irrelevant.
You cannot have an anchor text as content marketing and link a page with content regarding cracking a medical exam to get admission into a medical school. Many fall into the bait as the link contains high authority and would down its link juice to the page where it’s linked.
A characteristic of a good link profile has lots of high authority links and no spammy links. When we say spammy links, they are from spammy directories or sites with low-quality content and irrelevant information to your particular brand, presentation, or niche sites. Links from such spammy sites might be attractive initially, but later, you might be penalized by Google’s algorithm.
Google introduced updates such as Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird to combat former spamming methods that violated Google Webmaster Guidelines in order to achieve a higher ranking. Spam comments on blogs and forums, entries in web catalogs and directories, and links from social bookmarking.
Search engine optimization looks for high build link popularity and domain popularity which means that it looks for and penalizes:
- Links from irrelevant blogs
- Buying links
- Irrelevant content
There are other search engines, such as Baidu, whose algorithm is still based on link popularity. It is based on the original Google algorithm but needs to follow suit with the updates of recent years.
How to Increase Link Popularity?
A site’s popularity is based on the links that point to your website or any web page from external websites. Link popularity is a feature used to rank higher in search engine algorithms. One definite way to improve your search rankings is to increase the number of quality links to your site. You gain link popularity with search engines when you have quality inbound and outbound links.
Understanding the importance of link building will help you to increase your site link’s popularity and improve its SEO ranking.
Quality links are defined by content relevancy, popularity, and anchor text. An anchor text is a text in a link that correctly describes what the link is all about. Having relevant text for both external and internal links also contributes to the ranking factor on SERP.
Analyze Your Website
Before working on your website’s link popularity, it is important to know how your website fares on SERP. You’ll need to start by determining the external websites that link to your site.
Analyze the Content and Quality of the site where your backlinks are placed.
When you offer backlinks to other websites, make a backlink analysis for better rankings. You can use tools like SEMrush and Majestic to audit the websites to get an idea of how your website is performing. One way to increase the link’s popularity is the creation of a link magnet. Other methods are, avoiding link farms, aggressively buying links, and stuffing with too many links.
Content is Your Link Magnet
If you provide link-worthy content that people find informative and contain relevant information, it will attract links from other websites. Create content to attract your audience based on your business and your target audience.
You can create an infographic that gives detailed information about certain statistics, a whitepaper, or a report on your niche. When your audience finds it useful, they will share the link on their websites, like a magnet attracting the right audience to your website.
Avoid Link Farms and Buying Links
Usually, link farms have poor quality links and risk your website’s legitimacy as these violate Google Webmaster guidelines. Assuming that you can increase link popularity and linking from link farms will only penalize you, know that link farms must be avoided at all costs.
Whether you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or a learner, it is essential to be aware of powerful websites you should know that can help you promote your website and reach a wider audience.
Powerful websites you should know because they offer no value and are considered spammy links. Penalization includes that you might not be formally notified, but you notice a drop in your web traffic and search engine rankings.
There are chances that your website might be removed from Google search itself. Avoiding link farms is the best idea as Google may review manually, or there might be instances where a frustrated user or a disgruntled client might report you to Google’s team when you have linked a worthless link in your content.
Buying links is a black-hat SEO. It is good to earn links as they are legitimate. The fruits of such labor are long-term. Sometimes, when you buy links, you might be requested a link exchange.
FAQs
1. What are bad links?
Bad links are those that hurt your site’s traffic and offer no value to your rankings. Mostly, bad links are from sites that are irrelevant to your website.
2. What is a link farm?
A link farm is a website that provides links to other websites for the purpose of increasing the link popularity of that website. The link farm’s purpose of creation is to provide incoming links.
3. What is a reciprocal link?
Reciprocal links are the ones exchanged between two websites to boost each other’s SEO and site authority.
Final Thoughts
Link popularity boosts the SERP ranking of your website. Since links are considered as a vote of confidence by Google to weigh the credibility of a web page, link earning is given much importance. The organic way of earning links or building links is through having the right content that your targeted audiences are looking for. At LinkDoctor.io, we build links for your website; through white hat techniques that bring organic traffic to your website.
