Developing a link building campaign and creating link popularity is critical to the success of your Search Engine Optimization Program. Links to your site will increase your website's popularity. For example, if a website with high page rank links to your website, you gain in link popularity. If that site has a lot of high ranking links to it, your site in turn gains even more in link popularity. However, if sites with low page rank are linking to your site, your link popularity will be lower. In short, the better quality your backlines, the higher your website will be ranked. The moral of this story is that a few high ranking, highly relevant links are more valuable than hundreds of poorly ranked, irrelevant links. Search engines know about link farms and link exchange programs and, Google in particular, will discount them. Your best bet is to get the highest quality links possible to your website. As mother said, "It's all about quality, not quantity."

Now that you know you want high quality links to your website, there are a couple of things your need to know first.

One-way links: One-way links are those that link to your site, but you don't link back to them. One of the best ways to get one way links is from Directories. The Open Directory Project and Yahoo's Directory are two of the biggest and most respected. The Keniston & Company Comprehensive Directory Listing will help you find the best directories and how to link to them.

Hyperlinks: Another way to get a one-way links is by developing hyperlinks from other sites to yours. To do this, refer to your keyword list that you've already developed as you will be using these as anchor text to hyperlink from another website to your own. One of the best ways to do this is by writing an article for another website's newsletter and hyper linking (using your anchor text) back to your website.

Reciprocal Links: Finally, there are reciprocal links. These are links between two websites. You will be tempted to sign up for Link Exchange programs or link farms. Don't do it. The major search engines discount these links, and in some cases, penalize you for taking part in it. The best way to get reciprocal links is to contact the website owner directly and politely ask for a reciprocal link to your website.

The key to increasing link popularity is not to simply hyperlink within your own site and list yourself on blogs or social networking sites, but instead to try to obtain quality reciprocal links and use your own well placed links to your advantage. Obtaining quality links is the only way to gain link popularity and contribute your advertising campaign. Keniston & Company regards Link popularity to be one of the most powerful website promotion tools.