by Alan Rabinowitz
In a recent post, I discussed the topic of “Industry Popularity” as a ranking factor. In this post I will elaborate on it and how it crosses into Search Engine Optimization. Industry popularity is simply what it says, the popularity of a site in relationship to its specific industry as a whole. Part of the industry popularity method includes social network use as a trigger.
This is a popularity type that has a tendency to be blog heavy in the current Web 2.0 world that we blog in today. Many blog networks make themselves popular. Many designers, marketers, and bloggers market each other via blogrolls and social network exposure in what I like to call “Blog Handshaking.” While real white hat SEOs feel blogrolls are spam, other (more realistic) marketers feel they are the appropriate and safe methods of linking and reciprocal linking. In fact, these same marketers start a chain reaction, as new wannabes come out and want to get connected by linking to the same sites as resources. So in effect, this “promote each other” type of marketing (Blog Handshaking) has ranked some of today’s marketers and bloggers to the top of Google and sometimes has created instant fame for blog owners.
So we see that this can cause what I see to be industry popularity, being popular to your niche and blogs are the powering force behind them. We could even theorize that blogs by nature have a higher ability to rank in some Search Engines because they have to change content and interlink to “Friend Networks” of blogs. In fact, blogs by nature are just as commercial as the more static website of a corporation, they try to gain click-troughs to PPC ads and sell text links and banner ads. Blogs are also becoming utilized by spammers as the new wave of scraper sites is coming in under the”blog guise.”
One hard to get factor of Industry Popularity is content on commercial sites in the same industry on non-blog sites or sites not abusing a blog roll to link to whoever will help market them in the industry. Getting cited as a resource for visitors is harder from non-blog sites.
Content Advertising, sometimes called Presell Pages, can help thread a site into the industry in a content-based manner, which since its harder to get, is something that is considered more valuable.
Just being able to gain reach to your industry through your industry is seen by search engines and calculated into the latest ranking algorithm. I mentioned initially in this article that social marketing factors come into play as those tend to be avenues to bring in Industry Popularity links. The term link-baiting would fit here, smart link marketing is always the best approach, getting other webmasters to link to you from targeted articles or marketing strategies can help Industry popularity.
Comments and comment spam, while comments are a great way to get traffic from industry related blogs, they would not count as well as being integrated into content or a post.
Utilizing a well-rounded campaign with original ideas can help Search Engine Optimization campaigns reach a higher level. Industry Popularity and threading your site into its niche will help your visibility in your industry and your search engine rankings.