Domain Popularity By Alan Webb
This article was contributed by Alan Webb from ABAKUS Internet Marketing, a long time friend of mine in this industry with a unique grasp of the International Search Marketing Industry. A buzz phrase for some time now in SEO circles has been ‘Link Popularity’. Rightly so as well.
Google were the first to include link popularity into their ranking criteria in the form of PageRank and were closely follow by inktomi driven search engines as well as others that had the capability to factor in link popularity.
Then came the inevitable. If the ranking criteria could be manipulated, then you can bet it would be. Link spam became a plague first on guestbooks, then forums and finally blogs. Also of course, there were a great number of link farm schemes and huge link networks. Google reacted well it has to be said, and eventually discounted a large majority of the guestbook link spam, some forum and a lot of the linkfarm and organised link network shenanigans.
Also my research has shown that Google now counts multiple links from a single domain as just one link when it comes to PageRank and for the ranking algorithm. Hence a sitewide link is no better than a single link on a homepage.
Therefore it is not the number of inbound links that are important, but the number of different domains that link to you.
It is very important to remember that. Especially if you are using Google for your backward link checking. I am fairly confident I can pronounce:
“Link Popularity” is dead, long live “Domain Popularity”!
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