All links aren't created equal, but all are important. They contribute to your link popularity score and Page Rank score in Google. Those scores can determine how much traffic you get from searchers because a higher score moves you higher in the search results listings.

Check your incoming links (also called backlinks) to make sure that they're contributing to your page rank score instead of reducing it.

A Page Rank Primer

Generally, pages with high link popularity have higher Page Rank (PR) scores. But not always: link popularity is also factored in with link importance. When larger, more popular sites link to you, your overall PR score rises accordingly.

Here's an extremely simplified example of how the scoring process works. First, imagine you're back in high school (horrors!) and running for the student council. Now, this is an unusual school because every student gets at least one vote, but some students get extra votes depending on what activities they're involved in - and how "popular" they are with other students. The voting structure breaks out something like this:

These roles can be combined to allow an individual student to cast a lot of votes:

So you quickly realize that you need to get the attention and support from the most active and popular students if you're to win the top spot. The support of one individual student (with a single vote) is worth less than the support of a more active student who can have thirty votes - or more!

Transfer this concept to the Web and it's obvious that a link from a large, popular site like CNN, Amazon, NetMechanic, or similar sites is worth more to your PR score than a link from a friend's personal home page.

The Link Address Counts

When you offer to trade links with another site, it's a good idea to include the exact HTML code with link text inside the email message. This gives the webmaster a painless way to quickly cut-and-paste your link into his or her code. It also gives you some control over the link text and the opportunity to include your targeted keywords inside the link text.

Our May 2002 Promotion Tip Make Linking Easy discusses the importance of link popularity and suggests different ways to encourage other sites to link to yours.

Concentrate The Power Of Incoming Links

A warning though about link text: most servers recognize these addresses as being the same, but if you look closely, you'll see the difference.

Note that the second URL uses the "www" extension while the first omits it. Servers can be configured to automatically remove the "www" when it's not there (or add it when the visitor leaves it off). Many webmasters omit it because they think it looks better.

Suppose you omit it when you offer to trade links with another site and give them the HTML code. But what happens if the webmaster adds the "www" to your code or if someone just finds your site, thinks it's cool and adds it themselves?

That means some of your inbound links would include the "www" and some wouldn't. Even though the addresses look the same to humans and servers, search engines and directories may consider them different pages. That means they'll calculate a different PR score for each address. That effectively splits your PR score. It's like making a 50% score on two tests instead of a 100% on one.

Web designer Michael Bluejay of Website Helpers alerted us to this issue when he related a story of how he learned this lesson the hard way:

"Yahoo penalized one of my sites into oblivion until recently, and the most likely reason was that I had the server remove the www. I haven't had a problem removing the www. on most sites, but if you remove the www. and then fall out of favor with an engine, try doing the opposite, and forcing the www. instead."

He concedes that the "www" issue may not have been his entire problem because he did resubmit his site to Yahoo for review. But is it worth taking the chance?

You have no control over how other sites link to yours - you can only make suggestions and make the job as easy as possible for them. So eliminate the danger by configuring your server to automatically add - or remove - the "www."

Here's how Bluejay handles the issue using the HTACCESS file:

To remove the "www" extension:

To force the "www" extension:

So much security with just three lines of code!

Keep this in mind too when you're submitting your site to search engines using Search Engine Power Pack or doing submission by hand.