SEO Tip # 9: Check your link popularity
I know, I know, we all thought we outgrew the popularity contests in high school but those darn search engines are bringing us right back. To a search engine, it’s all about how popular you are and you can’t be popular amongst the dorks, you need to be popular with the cool people or it doesn’t really count. To determine if you’re cool, search engines look at how many sites are linking to yours and the quality of those sites – the more popular the sites that like you, the more popular you become by association. It’s a high school e-deja vue (only former high school nerds are now often the cool people so who's getting the last laugh now…)
How do we know how many people are linking to us?
There are several free tools out there that check link popularity. I have found that I get different answers depending on which tool I use so I use several and then determine the commonalities among them. You can do a search for “Link Popularity checker” and you’ll get a whole slew of them. My favorite is MarketLeap.com because you can also enter your competitor’s web sites to see where they stand. Plus you can plug in your industry to see a comparison of others in the legal industry.
The results are helpful because they will tell you how many linkbacks (people linking to you) that you have but it will also show who some of the big players and “900 lb Gorillas” are in the industry. Many of these “players” are directories and are sites you might want to target for linkbacks (such as Avvo and FindLaw). I say “might” because I recognize there are politics and money involved with some of these sites, and I’m not addressing that right now (maybe I’ll tackle it in a future post, would certainly welcome your comments), I’m speaking strictly from an SEO standpoint. From an SEO standpoint, these sites will help you. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re the Lindsay Lohan of the online legal marketing world.
Of course, you could always go outside the legal world to make yourself more popular. Look for blogs in your client’s industry and post comments on it with links back to your site. This will establish your expertise in the area and provide linkbacks to your site so it’s a two-fer.
Social networking sites such as LinkedIn offer another free opportunity to increase your popularity. I recommend everyone in your office get on LinkedIn, with linkbacks to your site, of course. That said, before unleashing everyone into the world of social networking, thought should go into some firm guidelines. But again, that’s fodder for another post.
So, go ahead and relive your high school years online (consider it a second chance if need be). Ignore what your mama said because it IS important to be popular and money CAN buy popularity. Ride the coattails of the “in” crowd, your SERP* will love you for it!
*Search engine results page
http://www.sognconsulting.com/admin/trackback/115515
