As the battle of the search engines continue, it is becoming even more apparent that the links pointing to your website will directly effect your rankings. The more sites that are on the web that link to your website the greater you can rank on the search engines.

Link Popularity is a calculation made by the search engines derived from the number and value of the links leading to your website. Strategic linking, or reciprocal linking, is known to be a contributing factor for search results in Alta Vista, Google and possibly Ask Jeeves (Teoma).

You can increase your Link Popularity using these Strategic Linking steps:

1) Brainstorm some keywords that are related to your business. If you have a primarily regional target market you could even form affiliations with companies that provide the same services in other cities or states.

2) Go to major search engines, such as Google, and type in your list of keywords. Click on each search results and evaluate whether or not this would be a suitable website to trade links with. If you determine that is, search the website for the email address of a marketing representative or webmaster. Search for each keyword on your list to compile a sizeable Strategic Linking mailing list.

3) Draft a letter requesting a Reciprocal Link with the website on your Mailing List. Be sure to include the value to their search engine rankings by agreeing to swap links with you. See our sample Strategic Linking letter.

4) Once you have sent the Strategic Linking letter, compile another list of people who agree to trade links. Send this list to be applied to your website. Also, be sure to make a note to check these websites and verify that a links was in fact placed on their website.

Strategic linking not only helps increase search engine rankings they also build additional lateral paths to your website that can produce additional traffic. Let's face it if your site doesn't have what the visitor is looking for they are going to leave anyway. Why not send them to someone who is also sending you traffic.

Link Format

The format of the reciprocal link given to your potential link partner is very important. Be sure that the term you want to increase your rankings for is the actual hyperlink to your website, and not your company name. Your website will already rank well for your company name, you want to improve rankings for your main keyword. For example: <a href="http://www.cybermarkintl.com>Internet marketing services<a/> from CyberMark International. In this link we will see improvement for the term "internet marketing services" while still branding our website, even though this listing is on someone elses.

Link Popularity Resources

We use a free tool available at www.linkpopularity.com where you enter in your email address and web address and they check your popularity out and send you a report via email once a month. This is a great way to find out if you need to work on this portion of your internet marketing plan.