Inbound Links - External Links - Link Popularity


	Inbound Links

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Inbound Links - External Links - Link Popularity

The most significant process of site promotion today is building external links or as they are also known as Inbound Links (IBLs). The goal of this process is to have as many websites as possible that will link to your site.

Link Popularity

The term used by professionals is Link Popularity. The more incoming links a site has, the higher its popularity with search engines is.

A tool for testing incoming links on several search engines concurrently:
Link Popularity Check

Testing for Number of Inbound Links

Search engines enable you to check which webpages link to a certain webpage with a "link" command. The use of this command is as follows:

link:www.domain.com
link:www.domain.com/bonbon.htm
link:domain.com

The first example will return all sites that link to your website's homepage. The second will return all sites that link to a specific page on your site. The third example is brought here only to point out that it is different from the first example, and that it only returns results of pages that link to a site without www.

It is worth mentioning that the Google search engine currently displays only a sample from all of the links on its results page. In the past it seemed the pages that appeared on the results were only those with a PageRank of 4 or higher, but today Google's criteria for display is not that clear. Therefore, if a link doesn't appear on the search results, it doesn't mean that it doesn't count!

Additional Information Regarding Advanced Search Commands:
Advanced Search

In order to get a better idea concerning the number of incoming links to your site, you should use Microsoft's engine, which displays the full links list. We usually use the English engine, since the Hebrew one is packed with advertisements.

Lately, Microsoft added a new command to its search engine: "linkdomain". This command enables you to see all the pages that link to pages inside a domain, and not only to the homepage or another specific page.

linkdomain:seoisrael.co.il

Microsoft's Live.com Engine:
msn search

Inbound Links for Your Website

There are many ways to obtain incoming links to your site. Following are some options:

Directory Listing
Listing your site in directories and professional websites of the same topic are essential steps for increasing the number of incoming links to your site, and your site's relevance.
Reciprocal Link Request
Sending Emails to owners of websites of a similar field to your website, containing an offer to create a mutual link between the sites (Reciprocal Link) is a solution that requires a lot of work, and lately, Reciprocal Link value was greatly lowered by Google.
Posting Messages in Forums
many forums allow a signature that includes a link to your website. This link is regarded as any other link. When you register to the forum, make sure that you also include a link to your site's URL on your profile.
Writing Articles
Writing an article on your field of expertise and suggesting site owners to publish the article (with a link to your site) is a solution that creates links and also establishes you as an expert in your field.
Forums, Blogs and Guestbooks
Many websites enable their visitors to add a message (forum message, blog comment or signing a guesbook). It is sometimes possible to add a link to this message. This solution is not a recommended way to get your link popularity up, unless the message is for a blog, forum or guestbook that is really related to your site's theme.
Buying Links
Sometimes buying a link from a well established website from your field can dramatically help a new website. You will be surprised how effective this type of link is in terms of cost/return.

Link Development Software

One of the easiest ways to create a system of links to your site is by using software that automates the reciprocal links creation process between your site and other websites. This software performs the following tasks:

Locating websites that you should link to
Building a links page for your site
Sending emails to potential affiliates
Checking whether a link to your site was created

Link Development Software:
ARELIS

How Do You Evaluate an Inbound Link?

Additional information regarding link quality:
Link Quality

Inbound Links Distribution

Site owners initially tendency is to have incoming links to their site's main page. This is not necessarily the best strategy. In most cases you should direct to internal pages inside your site in order to increase their importance with search engines.

It is hard to say which is necessarily preferable, but many claim that search engines give more weight to exact directions (directions to a specific page) rather than general directions (to the homepage). In any case, it seems that the right strategy is to distribute your directions between various pages.