Link popularity has become a very important factor for high search engine rankings. Generally speaking, link popularity is the number of other web sites that link to your web site.

The more other web sites link to your web site, the higher your search engine rankings will be. The idea behind this concept is that search engines think that your web site must be important if many other web sites link to your site.

Of course, the number of links alone is not enough to improve your search engine rankings. It is  also important that the other web sites are related to your web site. Links from unrelated web sites won't do your own web site much good. If the links to your web site include your important keywords in the link text, the effect on your search engine rankings will be much higher.

If you want to be found for the search term "brown shoes" then it's much better to get links like 

than links like

It is very important that your web site has both optimized content and good incoming links. If your web site does not have good incoming links from related web sites then it will be very difficult to get high search engine rankings.

Internet directories are often overlooked by webmasters because many of them deliver very little traffic. However, Internet directories offer many benefits to webmasters that are interested in getting more visitors.

Of course, one benefit of an Internet directory listing is that you'll get visitors directly from the directory. Another benefit is that a listing in an Internet directory also means that you get a link from a related web page.

• Only submit your web site to Internet directories and special interest sites that are related to your site. Directories and sites that are not related to your site will not list you and they might consider your submission as a spamming attempt.

• Being listed on as many Internet directories and search engines as possible will bring your web site many visitors and new customers. Even if a single Internet directory might not bring you many visitors, it all adds up and you'll benefit from increased link popularity and higher search engine rankings.

The Google toolbar will display a little green bar that shows the Page Rank of a web site. There are many hints that the Page Rank numbers in the toolbar are not updated and that Google uses other (internal) Page Rank numbers to calculate the ranking of web sites. The official Page Rank number that can be seen in the Google toolbar is more or less a marketing instrument for Google.

The Page Rank of a web page shouldn't be the determining factor when choosing link partners. A link partner with a low Page Rank that has a similar topic to your site will bring you much better visitors than an unrelated link partner with a high page rank.

If you see a good web site with good content that has a low Page Rank you should trade links with that site if that web site is useful for your visitors. One day, that page might have a higher Page Rank and it will still link back to you.

Ask yourself: Is the web site related to your site? Would it make sense for web surfers if they linked to you and you linked to them? Could visitors of the other web site be interested in your site? If you find a web site you would want to visit or your visitors would want to visit then link to it and ask for a link back to your site.

Just use common sense: If web sites that are related to your web site link to your web site, then your own web site must be important for that topic. If the links are useful for web site visitors, search engines will eventually find this out. Search engines do nothing but try to put common sense into a mathematical algorithm.

1. Good link popularity is important for high search engine rankings.

2. It is difficult to get high search engine rankings for a web page with optimized content that does not have good link popularity

3. It is difficult to get high search engine rankings for a web page with good link popularity that does not have optimized content.

4. Links from related web sites will increase the ranking of your web site on search engines.

5. Links from FFA (free for all) link pages don't have any effect on your search engine rankings because search engines can detect and discount them.

6. Links from web sites that are related to your site are much better than links from unrelated web sites.

7. It is better if the links to your web site contain the keyword for which you want to have high search engine rankings.

· What can happen if you ignore inbound links?

It is impossible to get high rankings on Google or other major search engines without good inbound links. High search engine rankings are the result of optimized web page content and good inbound links.

It is absolutely crucial to the success of your web site that you work on the inbound links to your site. 

Inbound links are extremely important for modern search engines. You cannot get high search engine rankings without good inbound links.