Link Popularity and Link Relevancy

Two schools of thought on getting links. Get any link you can regardless of relevancy of the content and only link to relevant, related website content! The choice you make in the beginning will put you on the road to becoming and authority site or to be known as something less.

What is your sites topic and content oriented too? It's niche?

Let's say it's "horses".

Ok, along comes Jane Doe, she is looking for information or products related to "horses". Wow, your site is among the very fortunate few that are found in the top 10! Upon looking through what you have to offer she has not found what she wants, assuming she knows what that is

What do you think she will do next? Well, if your a good marketer you will have an easy bookmark option (since your site is a good content site worth later review), and you will have a related links section to help her find more information.

Just for example related topics would be things like:

horseback riding horse pictures wild horses thoroughbred horses horse racing

I'm sure you get the picture, keeping your links focused on things that will be useful and related to your visitors interests will build your sites reputation as an authority.

If your links page is full of links to unrelated topics, what impression will you be giving your visitors? You want to establish your website's reputation as a source for good content, products, services and resources. This will make your visitors want to use that bookmark back to your site that you had them make.

Remember Jane Doe? Does she click on your "related links" page and finds links that are relevant or unrelated? This is the whole crux of link exchange theory and practice. You should not link to sites that are unrelated and don't have relevant content.

The best reason for putting links on your website is to provide the user with helpful related information. This is the best link exchange strategy to follow and will go a long way to establishing you as an authority in your niche.

As a side benefit only, Also know that you show the search engines the same thing and that is you are an established authority in you marketing niche. After all the search engines are smart enough to know what your site is about and if you are linking to related content.

There was a time when simply exchanging links with any website (related or not) would give you a boost in search engine rankings. It does not work like that any longer.

With so much junk in the search engine returns to filter through, your visitor's will appreciate the fact that you are helping them along.

So among the first things to consider when linking to or getting reciprocal links from is whether or not your links page will benefit your visitors as well as will it be relevant to your web site's content in a positive way.