What is Link Popularity?
Link popularity measures the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to a webpage. It is used to determine a site’s authority and relevance in search engine rankings.
Link popularity is an essential factor in search engine algorithms. Search engines consider links from other sites as endorsements. Consequently, sites with high-quality backlinks are deemed more trustworthy than those with low-quality backlinks.
SEO tools and search engine algorithms calculate link popularity using different methods. Some focus solely on the quality of the backlinks, while others, like Google’s PageRank algorithm, assess both the quality and quantity of the backlinks.
Importance of Link Popularity
Backlinks are among Google’s top ranking factors. Google considers them a vote of confidence from the linking site to the receiving site. Therefore, the more quality backlinks your site receives, the more authoritative it appears to Google, and your site is more likely to rank on search results pages.
This makes link popularity a major signal for assessing the popularity of your site and the quality of the backlinks pointing to you.
How to Increase Link Popularity
You can increase your link popularity by acquiring more backlinks as described below:
1 Create Linkable Content and Assets
The first step in building backlinks is to create content that is worthy of linking to. You should create content that is so good and provides so much value that other bloggers would want to link to it.
The content should provide unique insights into a topic or cover it from a unique angle. It should also include linkable assets like high-quality images and infographics wherever possible. For example, a case study or an exclusive research report is more likely to fetch you backlinks than a regular blog post.
You could also create 10x content, which outshines the next best content ranking for the same keyword by tenfold. This type of content stands a better chance of gaining backlinks and featuring on search results.
2 Promote Your Content
The next step is to promote your content to bloggers who are likely to link back to you. However, you want the backlinks to be natural. So, you will ensure that you are not explicitly asking for a link. You cannot rely on activities like guest posts as the main source of your links, as Google requires the links in such articles to be marked as nofollow.
You can reach out to bloggers who might be interested in your content and inform them about your newly published post. Another tactic is to identify broken links on websites that link to similar content and suggest that the blogger replace the broken link with one to your site.
These are just a few of the link-building techniques that will get you follow links. You can also refer to this guide for more techniques to build backlinks to your site.
These are some great ways to increase your link popularity. However, you should ensure that you receive the backlinks from relevant sites. For example, if you run a recipe site, a link from a food website will be more appropriate than a link from a furniture review site.
You should also ensure to get these backlinks from multiple authoritative sites. The more authoritative the site, the better it is for you. Wherever possible, ensure that the links are set to follow, as a nofollow link will not pass authority to your site. You also want to ensure that the links are relevant to your site.