Link Popularity Has Nosedived.......

[julianpuje]

My link popularity check showed approx 15000 links for the last few months and increased regularly. It has now suddenly dropped off to around 2500!!!!!! does anybody know why this happens and if i should be worried or not?

I also seem to have dropped a mile off Google as i was on page 1 for most of my items. Although i still have @130 links on there

My site is HERE

 

Thanks in advance for any info or advice.

 

Julian

 

ps: Is there a PR update due on Google?

[wizardsandwars]

PR is dying, or nearly dead. Google thinks it made a mistake by letting people see their PR, because they of focusing more on that, nad less on content.

 

Google is updating PR less and less, and what is show in the toolbar is no longer an acurrate depiction of what your real PR is.

[julianpuje]

Thanks Chris for the info on PR.

But what about the link popularity, dropping like a brick doesn't look good to me :'( as links seem to be the main thing at the moment?

What dy'a think?

 

Cheers

 

Julian

 

My Site

[wizardsandwars]

I think that link popularity is in a constant state of flux between the Google datacenters, and I think that Google is always experimenting with new algorithims for how it weighs inbound links, as it tries to make it's search results more and more relevent. Perhaps Google found that it didn't like a big portion of your inbound links, or it gave lesser weight to inbound links that were reciprical. This is something you're gonig to have to get used to, as these things change constantly.

 

Gone are the days where you could depend on great free search engine listings based on link popularity in order to drive traffic. My best advice is to come up with a good marketing campaign, and spread it accross multiple venues, so that when you do have a drop such as this in link popularity (and you will from time to time, in my experience), you don't feel as much of an impact.

[julianpuje]

Thanks again Chris.

Any advice on the marketing campaign side?

Do you mean like Adsense, adwords, Overture, pay/click stuff etc.

 

:thumbsup:

[wizardsandwars]

I'd recommend a start up combination of the following....

 

PayPerClick Advertising - I find the following with the lowest prices, and the best quality traffic

AsWords

Overture

 

Make sure you have content based (Adsense) affiliates disabled in your campain, to get your conversion rate higher.

 

I'd also go with some price comparison advertising. I find the following usually have the best prices

nextag

shopping.com

 

Then I'd try to find an informational website in your specific niche, and pay for some banner advertising. This will be expensive, and direct conversions for this will be horrible, but the name recognition after a time will be important in establishing marketshare.