October 9, 2006 As with all things in the website world, the idea, practice, and importance of link popularity is always changing. The rule used to simply be, «get as many links as you can from anywhere at all.» This is no longer so. After that rule, it became, «make sure the site linking to you is relevant in some way.» While this still holds true, the term «relevant» has undergone some modifications. It has never been to difficult to find sites that are remotely related to another with a little bit of time and initiative. So it was easy to make this rule work in the favor of the SEO Specialist. Very soon after that rule, it became the next to most recent one, «make sure it’s a relevant site, that has a higher PR (read more inbound links) than your site.» This made it just a little bit more tedious and tricky. Hence the price for a «real» link popularity service. But it was still easy to manipulate in your favor. But you know what’s not easy to manipulate? Someone else’s page all together.

Enter the new definition of «relevant» in the website world. What Google is leaning toward is not only link popularity, but that the relevant site should make use of internal linking within their content, using the desired search terms for the linked site. Confused? Let’s digress.

I have a pet store site. I have a good ranking for all my «dog» terms. (dog food, leashes, whatever). But the terms for all my «cat» products result in nothing. So I will need to modify my link-building campaign a little to gear toward the feline-loving community. During my search I get a link on some other pet store in a different state. They agree to make the anchor tag reflect my desire. This helps, but more importantly they make use of internal linking with key terms such as «cat leashes» or «cat nip» or «cat shaving device.» (I couldn’t help it) The fact that this site makes use of these terms in internal linking give it a lot more relevance in relation to my inbound link.

So, as this goes further, be ever more vigilant when approaching another site in reference to link exchanging/requesting. I know this post was a bit tricky, so as always, please feel free to e-mail me.

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