Based on what I’ve seen when I’ve analyzed top ranking pages in search engines, and on what many other search engine optimization experts have told me, link popularity is another technique for promoting your website.

Incoming Links (the amount of links other sites have pointing to your site) is becoming a more and more important factor when determining how high a site will rank on the results list of search engines.

Google paved the way for link popularity as a relevance factor (their algorithm uses link popularity as a major factor when ranking pages) and their success has not gone unnoticed among other engines. Altavista and Inktomi, for example, seem to be following this trend and are apparently decreasing the amount of attention they pay to the actual page submitted to them.

Instead, they are placing more and more weight to how many other sites are linking to the page, what kind of sites are they and what kind of text is located in/near the links. It seems that NATURAL links from sites dealing with the same subject as you and links from very popular sites (such as human-edited directories like ODP and Yahoo) can help your ranking in the search engines, while USELESS links from low quality sites and other random link lists will often be ignored completely.

This change of policy by some major engines is probably caused by the massive amount of doorways and other worthless machine-generated pages that have been flooding their indexes. The logic is that pages other people think are valuable resources will often get linked by other webmasters, while pages that are of low quality or do not contain any information at all will not gain many links - thus, the Top 10 places will be filled with sites people regard as useful.

I’m afraid that this change might make it even more difficult for small and new sites to make it to the top and favor big, high-traffic commercial sites, but only time will tell if this change is going to make things better or worse. But it’s no use to complain or get depressed about changes in search engine policies - we’re just going to have to live with them no matter what.



How to build your link popularity

The emphasis on link popularity makes two things even more important than what they have been. The first is, as always, content. Good content ensures that other webmasters link to your site just because they think it’s a valuable resource to their visitors - giving you traffic from the links, and a boost in your search engine rating too! The second thing is reciprocal links. They will also have a “double effect”, increasing your visitors from the links and from search engines. The more links you have pointing to your site, the better.

There are also some “link-share” services that are designed to boost your link popularity. The way they work is simple: Each member of a link-share program places a machine-generated page on his site and links to that page from his front page. The machine-generated page has links to all other sites participating in the program. Each member submits his machine-generated page to all search engines, and the result is that each member has a link to his site from everyone else.

These programs have produced some positive effects in the past, but many search engines now regard them as spam and some completely ban sites that participate in these programs. Additionally, given the current emphasis on links from similar sites by the search engines, they are in most cases completely useless or even harmful, which is why I would strongly recommend that you do not participate in them. Focus on creating good content and establishing reciprocal links instead.

In order for all these tricks to work, you must remember to submit any pages that link to your site to the search engines, unless they have already been submitted by the site owner. People will often link to your site without letting you know they have done so, so some will fall trough the cracks, but at least submit those you have knowledge of.

To check your link popularity, Google the term “link popularity checkers and tools” to find loads of resources that will provide you with real time statistics dealing with incoming links to your website. Read on to “Social Bookmarking.”



By: OML

About the Author:

There is currently a big buzz around the terms social bookmarking and due to its fairly new introduction to the market, many people are confused as how to go about market effectively in these web 2.0 sites.  For those new to this term, a social bookmarking website is a site where users can post their own article information from their own site/blog and other people can vote on them.  If many people vote on your content, then your article will be visible on the main page of the site, which could translate to ten thousands and even more users to your website.  However, usually your article will not stay there for very long as there are many other sites posting articles all the time and wanting this position. 

 

To most effectively market yourself in these social bookmarking websites, it is very important to not spam in these communities.  You first need to lurk around on the website to get a feel for the atmosphere.  Once you have a better understanding of the culture on this social bookmarking website, you can introduce yourself.  Remember to not only make postings of your own information but to be active and vote for other people as well.  When you are very active and give lots of credit to other sites, people will respect you more and more.  As a consequence, they will start voting on your information.  If you just post your own information and if they are full of self promotion or low quality content, you can expect your site to be banned from this social bookmarking website. 

 

 

Another important element is to lurk around on various websites and find one in your niche.  The reason why you should use one in your niche, is because the competition is less and also it will be easier to build up your profile as an expert in the field.  Once you have been on a social bookmarking website as an active and responsible user, many users would like to syndicate your information on their websites.  So the key is not only to appear on the main page of the social bookmarking website but to distribute quality and useful content which the users will like and therefore, they will syndicate all your new postings on their website.  This can become extremely powerful advertising tool, so make sure you do your research first before you post and becoming active in the social bookmarking website.  Not only will it bring traffic but the referrers will also trust you more.  This will results in more sales for your business and could lead to long term relationships.  So how many social bookmarking websites should you participate in? Do not get involved in lots of websites as you will not be able to keep up a quality profile in the long term. I would recommend to pick max 3 niche websites to focus your efforts on.  You will find out that this will take up lots of your time already.  It is very important to build authority so keep watching what people vote on the most.  Also look at the big guys in that social bookmarking site and try to emulate their techniques and writing style.   



By: Johan Hedin

About the Author:

Have you ever heard of social bookmarking? This is yet another traffic-generating tool that works exactly the same as how you would bookmark your favorite website. However, the favorite websites are stored through social bookmarking website services like digg, reddit,delicious, and stumbleupon. This allows other users who share the same interest to view the same website. When your website is bookmarked, there is a greater chance that it will be viewed and accessed by millions of online users and this will surely result in an increase in traffic. Here are some ways to excel in social bookmarking:

1. Bank on your content. To increase the chances of your website being bookmarked, make sure that your content is useful, interesting, and relevant to your target niche. In addition, your content must be easy to understand, flows naturally, concise, and most importantly it must be original.

2. Use relevant keywords. Know the keywords or keyphrases that are usually being used by your potential clients when they use search engines. Use these and include them on your content so they will be directed to your website the next time they search the net for these keywords.

3. Update your website regularly. When online users bookmark your website, they are most likely to visit it everyday. If they don’t find fresh information, they might be discouraged to come back or worst, won’t recommend your site to other people. To avoid this from happening, I suggest that you upload new content on a regular basis so your readers will be glued to your website and they won’t have reasons to check on your competitors.

4. Write about tips, how-tos, step-by-step guides, and DIY topics. Based on studies, these are the most searched topics online because they empower online users to do things on their own. Join the bandwagon and start writing these kind of topics to increase your chances of being bookmarked.

5. Make sure you join bookmarking sites that are popular. While I don’t recommend spamming social bookmarking sites, it’s okay to use them and submit your best post once in a while as long as you are aware of these sites and that it is not a guarantee that you’ll get visitors, but you are giving them a chance. If you do obtain a lot of traffic, it’s usually just in the spur of the moment and doesn’t last long; but, you do get some new readers and possibly more bloggers linking to you. All of these incoming links will help with search engine optimization.

So go ahead and sign up to some of these social bookmarking sites and start increasing your website or blog exposure to potential readers.



By: Diana Ajih

About the Author:

Social bookmarking is a fun activity on the web. It’s a  great way to make friends online or to meet people with the same interest as you are. But more than that, social bookmarking is a way for internet users to organize and store websites, articles and blogs. Social bookmarking sites are popular among internet marketers and to those with affiliate marketing programs. Through these sites, they can use it for free in promoting a product and it’s an effective way to get back links and drive traffic to website and or blogs. The more number of links on the internet that points back to your site will increase your page rank. Especially when people will like your site and most probably will tag your site.It’s a great way to make money from websites and increase visibility and earnings from affiliate marketing programs.

This is bookmarking with an added features. While you can mark a document for later use, you learn from your networks too. It’s a way of sharing sites or pages of a website that you come across with. If you have been thinking on promoting your websites, you can just post a link to your profile for your friends and friends of your friends to see it. Joining in a social bookmarking sites is easy. You have to consider the sites that is related to your site. Relevant sites will make it easier for you to promote your product. Also consider the popular bookmarking sites which have the most traffic and where you can make the most of social bookmarking .

But why do we need to participate in social bookmarking? One thing is that, it is the best way to express different perspective on information and resources though social bookmaking is an informal organizational structure. It’s the great way to influence other people and a great opportunity to gather information in order to create a new product. The information provided by social bookmarking can be a great business asset if you do it right. Also a great tool of knowing your prospects and make these prospects into a customer and encouraging them to keep coming back. Simply put, social bookmarking serves as an advertisement for your business. Providing more information to readers through the social bookmarking sites, definitely you will have customers especially when you know what they want.

Social bookmarking needs to be crafted well for what you are promoting is important. A very good content will definitely please a reader and most probably will be interested to your product. Submitting quality content is essential and once you get traffic flowing into your websites and blogs, the sales will follow naturally. You have to be unique and being plain will make you just like a spammer and nobody likes a spammer. More importantly, you have to make a lot of friends to help you promote your blogs and affiliate programs.  Also, you have pay attention to other blogs, articles and websites that are bookmarked the most and ranked the highest because this will give you an idea of what people like to see. It is important to know your audience especially when you are promoting affiliate programs. Social bookmarking when done properly can be an efficient way to get traffic to your website and promote your online business.



By: Gwyn Estember

About the Author:

Everyone seems to be talking about social bookmarking nowadays. Just like blogging used to be a hot topic previously around 2004 and 2005. So what exactly is social bookmarking? What makes it so popular? How can we make use of it?

Well, social bookmarking is basically the collective act of bookmarking and also a platform for sharing of internet links and resources such as websites, blogs, articles, videos and many others. Different social bookmarking services currently available on the web allow people to upload, store, bookmark and share various interesting information.

Some of the popular ones include Del.icio.us, Technorati, Flickr, etc.

Basically, social bookmarking involves the use of tags assigned to various Objects.

Most of the time, the object is linked to a unique webpage related to the assigned tag. However, it can also be a file format or any other format.

One can simply make use of such social bookmarking service to promote your websites, blogs or affiliate marketing programs. Such bookmarking sites are particularly suitable and popular for affiliate marketing programs as they offer a free and effective way to get inbound links (or backlinks), greatly enhancing search engine visibility, which is great news for affiliate businesses.

So, now you see how powerful social bookmarking can be?

Let us get started with some basic pointers.

1. Join major social bookmarking site

Try to choose some more popular ones such as Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Popular sites have more traffic and they allow you to submit and bookmark websites and blogs just with the click of a button. In addition, they also take advantage of RSS feeds. RSS feeds can be used to syndicate user bookmarks or contents with the same tags. Users can also syndicate bookmarks that are created by other users using RSS feeds.

2. Site research

Different social bookmarking sites may cater to different types of users. Get to know the site that is popular with your targeted niche. Do some research and find out whether other users share similar interest in your niche. Pay close attention to the websites or articles that are being bookmarked with highest ranking or most popular. This will help you to determine whether your affiliate program will receive attention or not later.

3. Contents

Make sure you submit quality content to bookmarking sites. Do not submit for the sake of submitting. Do not ever (I repeat) spam. This defeats your purpose in your niche affiliate program especially if you are focusing on conversion optimization. This will only affect your status and only damage your reputation. And this is not the way to do affiliate business.

Unlucky (or luckily for you), most marketers have not caught on to social bookmarking as a method for generating links (or backlinks) as yet. So by reading this article, I bet you are already one step ahead of many others. At this moment, there are still quite a number of people who have no idea what social bookmarking is about.

Very soon, online social bookmarking will also become another norm method used for marketing. Slowly, it is already spreading like wildfire in the internet world. Dwell hard into this area if you are seriously into affiliate marketing. You will not regret it.

Copyright 2008

 



By: Anthony Heng

About the Author: