Link Popularity Vs Link Reputation

Link Popularity is the number of links pointing to your page. It is the number of inbound links to your web page.

More links to your page means more people are talking about your page and thus increasing the popularity of your page.

Therefore more the number of inbound links, higher your page’s popularity.

When determining your rankings, search engines don’t just look at the link popularity alone. They also look at the quality of the links – Quality of links is determined by the link popularity of the web page that is providing you the link.

So, the links you get from a page with a higher link popularity carries more weight than a link from a page with less popularity.

Link Reputation is the anchor text – Link Reputation are the words that describe that your page. And so while popularity is important, what other pages are saying about your page is more important.

If most of your inbound links to your page use the words ‘strawberry short cake’ then you will rank well for that phrase. The thing is, it really does not matter whether your page is about strawberry short cake or not – because that is what most pages are saying about your page when linking to you, that is the phrase you will rank well for.

SEO experts say that Link Reputation is more important than link popularity. The anchor text has to be consistent – So that is why wherever possible, when you are getting links to your page, make sure you use the keyword you want to rank for.

Where you rank in search engines is a combination of link popularity and link reputation plus a few other factors – As far as linking goes, focus on getting more links with the right anchor text – This way you have the popularity and reputation both covered.

This is why sometimes the number one page might have much less inbound links than the number two or number three ranked page. In this case the quality and the reputation of links for the number one page is much higher than the number two or three.

Best,