What is Link Popularity  

Link popularity is the number of links that point to a webpage. Link Popularity is a crucial factor, used by almost all of the search engines to rank websites. Link popularity can be increased by link exchange!

Search engines don't just look at the content of a webpage to determine if it is a good match for a search. Thousands and thousands of webpages contain the same keywords (in different combinations) so matching a search term with a page's content is not enough to build an ordered list of results to a search query.

Search engines also count the number of other webpages that "validate", by linking, that a particular webpage is a good match for a search on certain keywords (link popularity). The text contained in the link that point to a webpage is considered as well. If the text in the link that points to a webpage contains the queried keywords, the search engine considers that webpage a better match to the search query on those keywords.

It is not only the number of the links (link popularity) that counts, but also the "quality" of the links. A link from a good-quality webpage (ranked high by the search engines) matters more than many links from low-ranked webpages.

One of the first search engines that used link popularity as a key factor in ranking websites was Google. One can check the number of links pointing to a website (link popularity) by querying Google with the search keywords link:http://whateversite.com Most search engines have similar functions for link popularity check.

There are also many free services that allow one to query several search engines at a time regarding the link popularity of a website. For more information on checking the link popularity.

Since link popularity has become such an important factor in determining search engine positioning, many solutions have been proposed for improving link popularity. A very popular and inexpensive way is link exchange (links swap). Done properly, it can dramatically improve your link popularity!