External Links and Link Popularity
Link popularity refers to both the number and the quality of links that point to a given Web page, such as the home page of a website. Search engines will apply more "popularity weight" to a website that is linked from other, well-established sites with a large volume of visitors, than a link from a lesser-known site.
Search engines also look at the content of the page that is linking to our sites, which means it also important to be linked by websites that publish content similar to your website. Not every link to a website will add value to a website's "link popularity" weight or rank. The links should be from websites and Web pages that contain content that is relevant to business practices or localities.
How Search Engines Use Link Popularity to Rank Web Pages
Most search engines currently use the popularity of a Web page as one of the criteria for how it will be ranked when a user performs a search (other criteria include the content and keywords on the page, is covered in the Keyword Selection Section). Each incoming link to a website from another website is seen by the search engines as an editorial endorsement from the other website, and will increase the sites popularity in a search engine's ranking algorithm. However, not all incoming links have the same popularity weight; links from Web pages that are popular themselves and that contain similar content are of more value than links that appear on less popular or relevant pages.
It is important that business owners seek out external links for their websites to improve ranking. This can be done by posting blog comments, having your network link to you, or by hiring an SEO company to do the work for you.
