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There is one thing that everyone generally acknowledges to be true and that is, page ranking and link popularity are important to a web master who wishes to increase traffic to a site. The particulars of this very general statement are taken for granted and are supposed to be obvious, when in fact, they shouldn't be and they're not.

--- Link popularity and page rank

Link popularity is different from page rank. Link popularity is the measure of the quantity and quality of links to a site. Page rank, on the other hand, is the position of a site's page in the results of a specific keyword-based search engine query.

Link popularity and page rank are related but they are not the same. Search engines have algorithms for keywords searches that would determine how high up in the results a web site is, and one of the parameters these search engines use is the web site's link popularity. A web master would therefore want to be very popular so that the web site's page rank is also high. On the other hand, a web site's page rank also influences link popularity as the higher the web site's page rank is, the more other sites are willing to link to it. A web master, therefore, would also like to attain a high page rank to increase link popularity.

Link popularity and page rank are goals that web masters aim for. When a web site has many links to it, odds are high that traffic to that web site will increase. Likewise, the higher a web site's page rank is, the higher the chance that an ordinary web surfer will visit the site.

--- Increasing link popularity

Link popularity has two components which are quantity and quality of links from other sites that direct traffic to the web site. Quantity is simply measured by the number of sites that link back to a web site. The more incoming links there are, the higher the link popularity.

Quality is the relevance of the web site where the link is found. For instance there is one web site that sells cars and another that sells plane tickets. If there is a link from the site that sells cars to the site that sells plane tickets, then that is an incoming link for the latter web site and it counts towards link quantity. However, this incoming link is not very relevant because these two web sites are in two distinct industries that are not directly related. Now, if this web site that sells plane tickets has an incoming link from a web site that also sells plane tickets or a web directory that lists sites selling plane tickets, a more relevant incoming link is established. This relevance determines which links are quality or not.

It is logical to suppose, therefore, that a web master should aim for many quality links so as to increase link popularity.

--- Achieving quantity and quality in links

The best way to get many and relevant links lies in the web master's hands. The web master can request tit for tat or reciprocal links to other relevant site. This is when two related web sites link back to each other. The web master can also pay for a listing in industry specific web directories. However, the best and the most cost-effective way of obtaining incoming links is by maintaining a very good web site with highly informative, creative and unique content. When a web site has this, other sites will want to link with it without any effort on the web master's part.