Links are a way to “vote” for another web site and therefore increasing that web site’s popularity, often referred to as link popularity. Link popularity is a measure of the quality of a web site.

Links from other web sites to your web site will increase your link popularity. The more links to your web site, the better your link popularity and consequently search engine rankings.

Put simply, the more links to your web site => the more “votes” your web sites has => the more popular your web site => the higher your search engine rankings.

Link popularity is the basis of many search engine algorithms. The search engine Google was the first to use link popularity as a major factor to judge a web site’s quality and worth. It is now used by other major search engines such as Yahoo! and MSN.