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Inbound Link Popularity Is Crucial
To Higher Search Engine Ranking |
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| Subia Creative, February 2003 |
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| Preface On The Value Of Link Popularity |
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At the present time, link popularity is
of prime importance to search engine ranking. As more and
more webmasters master the art of maximizing the derived value,
the search engines could de-emphasize its importance or manipulate
exactly how it is measured. Right now the following overview
is the basic strategy of taking full advantage of its ranking
benefits. |
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| What Is Link Popularity? |
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| And how does it effect “higher
search engine ranking”? Once you’ve maximized
“on-page” optimization ranking criteria, building
link popularity will make a competitive difference…particularly
for heavily competitive, high volume search terms. |
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| Google’s interpretation of link popularity
measurement is called PageRank™ hereafter referred to
as “PR”. It is premised upon “voting popularity”.
If Page A links to Page B, then Page A is casting a “popularity
vote” for Page B. Google deems more popular sites as more
important sites and gives them a ranking boost (advantage).
However all links (votes) are not created equal. Votes cast
by more popular sites (abundance of quality links) carry greater
voting power than less important sites. Read this paragraph
again – it gets a bit tricky. Essentially…the higher
your PR, the more powerful your vote. |
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| It’s sort of like having a beauty contest
where votes from the most attractive judges count as greater
value than votes from less attractive judges. Yes, beauty and
attractiveness is a bit subjective and so is Google’s
PR measurement system. But never-the-less that’s the premise.
If you expect a search engine ranking advantage, you must have
a PR strategy. |
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| A PageRank™ ranking boost is applied
to all websites that to some reasonable degree demonstrates
content relevancy to a search query. If relevancy criteria were
equally satisfied by all competing websites, the one with the
greatest PR value would win. |
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| Look at it this way, getting back to the beauty
contest. Assume that all contestants equally satisfy the requirement
of beginning beauty. The winner would be the lovely lady that
received the greatest transfer of “voting power”.
Ranking is therefore based upon best satisfaction of content
relevancy criteria combined with high PR value. |
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| The detailed intricacies of PageRank™
are highly complex and only Google knows the exact measurement
criteria which are subject to subtle changes. But if you are
into mathematical complexity read “
PageRank™ Uncovered”. This is an exceptional
document study by Chris Ridings of Support Forums.org and Mike
Shishigin, PhD of Website CEO.com. |
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| Most website owners need to only know one
thing about PageRank™. Get as much as you reasonably can.
But there are proper ways to go about this, otherwise mistakes
can be severely punishing. Google will penalize your PR to zero
value and even banish your site from its index if you don’t
play the game by its rules. |
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