Link Popularity Ranking Tips

Linking for traffic, rank will follow!

Your linking strategy should reflect a long term commitment to maintaining a web presence. Gone are the days of putting up a new site and getting a top 10 ranking in a week or a month yet so many opportunists still persist. The goal here in this article is to portray a picture of how the linking between sites can be symbiotic and mutually benefit the internet community.

Linking for traffic is referral marketing as it should be. Imagine this, your traveling and away from home, the though of lunch comes to mind so you stop at a roadside cafe. On the table is a paper place mat with advertising on it. You see there another restaurant in the area that you would like to visit or you see that a local pub has happy hour soon. Perhaps you see that one of your favorite bands is playing there too!

So your off to the pub and when you get there happy hour is in full swing with a buffet and of course good music from your favorite band. With a good time had by all you see fliers on the bulletin board for other places of interest. Perhaps you ask the bartender where another good place to meet people is and get a referral.

This is in fact how your website gets traffic from referring links. Any good website owner that caters to his visitors needs knows that his customers will leave eventually and they will go someplace. So in that though you can control where they go by providing alternative destinations via your related links page.

Don't put just links that link back to you, put some time into what your customers would want to see when they leave your site. This way you give a real link to a deserving site that is relevant to yours in some way. If it really hurts you to simply link to another site without a link back you may be in the wrong business.

Over time and through steady marketing of your own site you will get natural links back to you in the same manner, provided that your website has good content and provides a useful service to the internet community. As these links grow the search engines (who are all seeing) will reward your honest efforts with a favorable page ranking. In the beginning of your linking campaign you should be linking for referral traffic and rank will follow.