Link popularity has recently become an important aspect to consider when promoting a website. Many search engines have started to use link popularity to help determine ranking in their listings. Gaining links from other sites is also very beneficial because you gain added traffic when users follow the link from another site to your site.

What Is Link Popularity? Link popularity is basically the number and quality of links that point towards your site. A link from a very important site is worth more than a link from a smaller site. The search engine companies think that an important site would only link to your site if your site was important, and it makes sense too. Try getting the main page of Yahoo! to link to you and you’ll fail, but if you did get a link, then your site must be worth something. You couldn’t even get a link to your site from a medium size site unless your site was important enough and had something to offer. Both of which are important aspects in determining relevancy - a search engines main goal.

The number of links is also important for the same reason. Your site must be important if many sites link to you. Search engines know these things, and that is the basis for link popularity.

Linking Strategy Rules

The most basic way of gather and exchanging links is to simply visit websites and email the webmaster asking for a link exchange. However, there are a few rules to keep in mind.

1. Related, Not Competitive - You should try to focus your linking strategy on sites related to yours, but not in direct competition. For example, a search engine submission company site wouldn’t want to link with a competitor. They would be better off linking with a website that teaches various ways of promotion. The object is not to lose business to competitors, but to gain business from similar sites.

2. Offer A Link - Most sites won’t just give out a link for nothing in return. Have a link to their site setup and then email them asking for an exchange. Even go as far as to give them the URL of where their link is located. This basically just makes the offer more serious because you already have a link setup.

3. Be Selective - You shouldn’t just fire off an email to every website you find asking for a link exchange. Be selective based on the importance of your site. If you have a large site that has been around a while, you can be more selective with your linking. You just want to be sure that you aren’t wasting your time with sites that will benefit greatly from your link, but won’t do much for you at all.

4. Mini Yahoo! - When I created my links page, I had in my mind a picture of a small directory. Yahoo uses actual people to decide where and if a site gets added. Although my link page is obviously much smaller than Yahoo, I try to keep the same idea. I set up a page with different categories that relate to my site. This makes your links page professional and also offers another free service for my visitors to use. They can use my links page as a targeted directory where they can easily find specific, relevant information.

Best of luck to you,

JC Anderl www.Redlionbooks.com, JC@Redlionbooks.com

Visit my site or email me if you have any questions about marketing or website promotion.

When trying to optimize your website, you will need to gather all the information about the few visitors that you now have. This will help you make improvements to your site and increase your traffic. One of the best ways to gather this statistical data is through the use of a counter.

Some of you may not know that dropping a counter onto each page of your website will not only show you the number of hits to that page, but also logs tidbits of important information too.

The following is a list of some of the data that is collected from a stat-counter.

Screen Resolution:

Knowing the screen resolution tells you how the majority of visitors view your web pages. For example: If your design is based around 800 x 600 screen resolution, and the majority of you visitors use a 1024 x 768 resolution, you may want to redesign your layout.

Keyword:

If a visitor was directed to your site by a search engine, then knowing the search term used will help in optimizing your page around important keywords relevant to you sites topic.

Length Of Visit:

This is important that if everyone is showing up to your site, but doesn’t seem to stay, then check for slow loading of you page or some other reason that might turn away visitors.

Enter-Page/ Exit-Page

If your visitors are leaving from the same page they first come to, then you will need to figure out why they are not visiting other pages. Maybe the links to the other pages are hidden by are too small or non-descriptive.

Returning Visitors:

This will help you determine which pages your visitors find important. You can then concentrate more effort on those topics.

There are many more tidbits of statistical data a stat-counter can provide, and best of all you can get them for free. Theses services are provided for the benefit of building back links, and in hopes to sell you upgrades.

If you think that a counter looks tacky, you have the option to make it invisible. This will still enable you to collect important statistical data without your visitors seeing the counter itself.

So if your serious about getting more traffic, you must first learn all you can from the traffic you already have, and a free stat-counter is one of the best places to start.

People keep asking me where I’ve been so I thought this would provide insight. Let me show you some sites that impacted me recently. Energize your camping trips and feel secure while you’re gone.

The Right Tent

I went on a week long fishing trip last week. The weather was supposed to be nice but you’re supposed to prepare for the worst. Shopping before a camping trip is fun - especially online. We found a good camping tent. Shipping a tent online can be stressful…luckily the dang thing made it to us on time. We got the camping tent we ordered…you know, you sometimes worry about online orders. Shipping was expedited for 2 day delivery. The tent was here right on time for an awesome one week camping trip in the mountains! Maybe next weekend!

Security Systems

High tech home security is in the house now because of this vacation. As a family we started getting more electronics, photos, etc. Memories. Theft does crazy things to your head I think. You feel so violated. It took a day or two to decide on a solid home security company that would install a security system. I was surprised how easy it was to get it installed. Camping couldn’t have gone better knowing the house was safe.

eFusjon Opportunity

Don’t go on a camping trip or long drive without an energy drink. The stockpile of eFusjon energy drinks didn’t last long enough for the trip. With two kids running all over on top of hiking, camping and fishing - it was a relief to feel energized all day. We joined the ‘a’ team at efusjon and bought in for the drink alone. The money is awesome Learn to love the energy drink - order some today.

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