'Link popularity' represents the number and quality of links pointing to your web site. Search engines attribute growing significance to this parameter since it is more of an objective factor than keywords for instance. Another factor considered by search engines to estimate your link popularity is the traffic on those sites that link to yours. In essence, one or two major sites linking to you will be more beneficial than scores of low-traffic sites.

Reciprocal linking (cross-linking between your site and others) therefore not only will increase referral sources but also serve as ranking your pages higher in search engines. More over, following links on is the most common way to find information besides querying search engines.

To determine online popularity we will look at the following:

Raw number of inbound links
Popularity of the web sites bearing those inbound links
Presence in business partners' web sites
Presence in industry, regional and local directories
Presence in business, governmental and nonprofit resources