Optimizing each page on your website is the first step to achieving superior ranking on search engines. In this article we focus on link popularity - the more sites that list your site, the better your rank will be. Your goal is to get you into the top twenty ranked sites in the short term and top ten long term.

Determining the number of links to get you into the top ten can be determined rather easily - for example, let's say your chosen keyword for your page is "Internet Marketing" Google will tell you that over 3 million sites use that phrase.

Now, take the 10th most popular site and cut & paste its web site name into the search box at www.wholinks2me.com. Then click on search and you'll get a link count on how many sites link to the web site in question.

In the case of the keyword "internet marketing" the 10th ranked website had close to 600 links. However, for most of us, we're looking to promote something closer to our area of expertise.

Let's say, for example, you specialized in women's empowerment through workshops. "womens workshops" would result in 70,000 web pages and the 9th most popular site had 40 links to it

If the search term was "motivational speaker", there's 1,280,000 references, and number 10 in Google search has a mere three links.

Now we have an achievable goal in developing link popularity, knowing that your page has been optimized for relevancy around your keyword (Title - Description - Keywords -Content from Part One) and that most sites haven't taken the care you have in designing you web pages.

To build link popularity, there are many strategies:

1) Trading Links Research websites that are complementary to yours - offer to exchange links through a "Resource" page on your site.

Make sure that the site you exchange links with is a site you are comfortable to recommend to YOUR web site visitors - after all you are looking to develop and maintain your reputation as a quality information source.

2) Writing Articles Ezines (email-based magazines) have become one of the most effective ways to build mailing lists and return visitors to your website.

Many ezine publishers are looking for content for their ezines and, after they publish and distribute, will archive a copy of the ezine, complete with links, in the "resource" or "articles" area of their website, where it stays forever. Article length varies - 400 to 600 words.

Make sure that you include your name, copyright notice and the link to your site as esential parts of your article.

3) Community Sites This applies especially if you are using your website to build your personal brand as an artist (i.e. your personal name or your band name). By setting up profiles and links to your site within these more popular, high traffic sites, you improve your search relevancy to the search engines and their "spiders" (i.e. programs that search engines use to track links to and from websites)

By following the suggestions in Part 1 (Making your Website "search engine friendly") and working on building up link relationships with other, higher traffic sites, you will see your website move up in "Web Visibility".

All the best,
bernie schmidt

This article in its entirety may be copied and used, just so long as you include my attribution, copyright notice and website link.

As well, if you felt this article was useful, you can reward me by checking out my music and buying a song or two! Thank you.