Incoming Link Popularity Trumps All Other Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization have a lot of different facets to it. You should make sure you have the proper Title, Description and Keyword meta tags. You need strong, locally targeted keyword phrases. And you need to have steadily increasing relevant content. And, of course, there are all the other “white hat” tricks like internal linking, etc.

But the one thing that will probably give you the most bang for your buck, is incoming links from relevant and already highly placed sites.

Incoming Link Popularity

The conventional wisdom says that if I am competing with another site for the top placement in my field and we have: 

• the same keyword
• similar keyword density
• similar content
• and we’ve used the same “white hat” tactics on our sites

if I have more incoming links from relevant sites, Google will place me above my competitors.

The Web is a popularity contest

Why? Because the Web is a popularity contest. And the most popular site becomes Class President. Yes, we’re right back in high school.

However, this popularity contest isn’t based on how charming or good-looking you are or how good a public speaker you are. Google has decided that the easiest way to determine which sites are the most helpful to their searchers is to determine which sites other sites link to the most.

And, of course, the higher placed the sites linking to you are, the bigger the boost you get in the search engine rankings.

In my next blog, I’ll talk about how to pursue those incoming links.

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