Link-based popularity

While the above sections of this introduction to search engine optimization have discussed how content can improve a page’s relevance, there is another key factor that the search engines consider when determining the order of results: popularity. As well as the information contained within a page, the search engines also pay close attention to what other pages have to say about it. The more sites linking to your page using similar information, the higher the ranking will be for that page. For example, trying performing a search for the phrase miserable failure on Google and you’ll find that George W Bush’s biography on the official White House website appears number one in the results! The page certainly does not describe Dubya as a miserable failure, but the number of other websites that link to the biography using the phrase has ‘tricked’ Google into thinking the phrase is highly relevant to the page. Using this knowledge, we can better design the links between pages of our own sites. Clickable text should include the key terms for the corresponding page wherever possible, and avoid using terms such as ‘click here’ which are of no consequence. Where using key terms is not appropriate (e.g. in your main navigation, where you want to keep the links relatively short), it is possible to add a title attribute to the code for the link; these titles will allow you to expand upon the displayed text and can be populated with key terms (in proper context).

Having other reputable sites (the quality of the linking site is an important factor) linking to your own will also have a positive impact on your ranking. In addition, if this link is one-way (i.e. you do not link back to the site that links to yours) it can improve your ranking even more