Link Popularity and Your Company

Don't be bothered if someone offering your business some SEO or search engine visibility services tells you that your web site has zero backlinks. There's an easy way to find out.

You can go to Google, Yahoo, or even AllTheWeb and type the following in the search box:

link:www.example.com

(just substitute www.example.com with your company's domain name)

You will then see a list of webpages that have a link pointing to your web site. Armed with that, you can easily refute third-party claims that your page has zero link popularity.

Out on the web, a link that's wholeheartedly pointed to your site is like a vote. The more links there are pointing to your web site or page, the higher the value the search engines will place on your site. That translates to your site getting a higher rank in the search engine results, which means your greater visibility can translate to more visitors.

The "wholeheartedly" means people were not forced to link to you, or were not paid to link to you, or are quality pages that point to you because they truly believe their readers will benefit from the link endorsement. They did not link with the intention of increasing your link popularity.

If someone claims they will automatically or efficiently build hundreds or thousands of backlinks for your site, then watch out!

Ask for a sample of a web page that will link to you. See if the content of that page is something worth reading, or if it's just a bunch of meaningless gobs of text strewn together just to "make" a web page. And if these SEO (search engine optimization) service providers choose not to show you a sample, then quietly walk away from the deal.

Even if they insult you, or try to shock you, or attempt to make you feel they don't need you, just smile and quietly walk away. Afterall, it pays to be careful when choosing SEO providers.

(If there are any SEO experts out there who are also offering web copywriting services, please let me know. Thanks!)

[ First posted on 02/02/2007 by Manuel Viloria ]