2012 has made significant changes to how link popularity is tracked and measured by Google. As link popularity has become important, more firms than ever want to know how to search link popularity. In this guide, we'll look at some of the reasons that law firms find it in their best interest to perform a link popularity search. We'll also find out how to search link popularity effectively, and why it isn't always your website that you should be searching for.
Why Should We Perform a Link Popularity Search?
No matter what you've done to build your links, it's a good thing to know how to search link popularity. Understanding searching techniques will make it much easier for you to monitor and track your reputation online. By doing a link popularity search, you'll learn what kind of websites are linking to you and where you might be able to create profitable advertisements. You'll also find out what kind of linking is most effective in bringing clients to your website.
When you thoroughly understand what kind of links you're getting, you can begin to develop a comprehensive plan for expanding your link presence. Identifying existing strengths and weaknesses can make it easier to develop a more well rounded approach to link building. This versatile approach is often neglected by online marketers desperate to cut corners instead of providing the very best advice and service.
How to Search Link Popularity: Getting Started
Before you actually start to learn how to search link popularity, it's a good idea to have your goals in mind first. What kind of results do you want from your link popularity search? Are you learning how to search link popularity so that you can compete more easily with a rival firm? Will a link popularity search be used by your firm to figure out where to post your links next? Understanding what you want will help you make better decisions about what tools to download and how to use them.
How to Search Link Popularity: Free Web Tools
The most common way for people to search link popularity today is by using websites that have free online tools. These free online tools are a good way to keep people coming to websites, so nearly every search engine optimization guru has his or her own link popularity calculator for people who want to know how to search link popularity.
These tools change locations online constantly, and you may want to check more than one of these tools before you decide that you have a hard and fast number for your law firm's link popularity. Doing a double or triple check with multiple tools is always a good idea, because disagreement among the results may be an indicator that the websites you're using for your link popularity search aren't working as well as you had hoped.
How to Search Link Popularity: Your Website
The first website that you should do a link popularity search on is, of course, your own. Start by running a link popularity search that gives you your results for Google popularity. Different tools will give you different information. For example, if you learn how to search link popularity using seoprofiler.com, you'll find out how many of the pages of your website are in Google's Top 50 search results, as well as seeing a list of websites in direct competition with yours.
Other tools can just list a large number of backlinks in whatever search engine you prefer. Don't hesitate to do a link popularity search that involves several different search engines—you may find that you have much better search rankings on one than another, and exploring why can help you create your next strategy for improving your link presence.
How to Search Link Popularity: Competitor Websites
Once you've looked at some link popularity search reports for your website, it's time to turn your attention elsewhere. Where are your competitors building their links? Are they getting inbound links by getting directory entries, or by having social media link to their site regularly? Analyzing where your competitors' links come from can give you fantastic ideas for helping out your own website.
After you learn how to search link popularity, you can do it for any website at all. If there's a legal website that you're in awe of when it comes to search engine optimization, a link popularity search can take away the mystery and make it easier to imitate that site.
Tracking Your Link Popularity Search Results
It's great to know how to search link popularity and run a search, but just one search is of limited use. You'll want to use consistent tracking of link popularity in order to make sure that you're seeing whenever a new inbound link appears for your website.
At least once every week or so, you should be looking at a link popularity search. Tracking changes over time to these results can be helpful in identifying patterns of behavior.
What an Ideal Link Popularity Search Will Show
Google monitors link popularity because some patterns indicate that the popularity has been built artificially. If your link popularity search reveals that almost all of your links come from the same few IP addresses, you are probably skating on very thin ice with Google and should watch out—your website could be sandboxed at any second.
What you want to do when you learn how to search link popularity is to generate a real variety of links. You should make sure that you're cultivating links of several different types on many different websites. Your link popularity search should indicate that you're using varied anchor text and that you don't use the same content over and over for all of your inbound links.
Maintaining link variety is the only way to ensure that Google doesn't identify your website as being too optimized. What's more, when you have a wide variety of links, you'll be substantially more invulnerable to new spam detection techniques.
