What is Link Popularity?

[icreon.net]

Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing TO your site FROM other sites on the Web.
The Search Engines consider your site more important and rank it higher if several other sites link to your site.

Building Link Popularity helps your Web site gain PageRank.
A higher PageRank enables your site to rank higher in Search Engines with competitive keywords.
More and more major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, etc. rely on off-page factors such as Link Popularity to determine how important your site is in order to rank it in search results.

The idea behind this is that the more links a site has the more valuable it must be.

[temi]

Excellent explanation of what link popularity it, the question now is how do you gain link popularity ethically?

[proson]

A higher PageRank enables your site to rank higher in Search Engines with competitive keywords.
More and more major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, etc. rely on off-page factors such as Link Popularity to determine how important your site is in order to rank it in search results.

Myth! high page rank does not always equal to high ranking! This is simple not true.
More incoming links with your keywords that give your ranking NOT PR!

[BlueBoden]

My understanding so far, tells that internal link structure, with relevant "keywords" used as link test, combined with directory listings, clever usage of forums, as well social bookmarking and even blog and guestbook. Has the most valuable effect.

If possible, try to make full use of each site, and try not to look to much on the pagerank indicator. And again if possible, try to control the anchor text.

Most forums don't mind that you add links to your post, given that they are relevant to the threed, and add some value to the post. Internal links seam to have a really high value, i suspect that incoming links with targeted keywords used as anchor text would be even more valuable.

There are many sites where you can sign up just to add some links, including free hosting providers, blog-sites, and hosted guestbooks.

While using free hosted blogs; websites; and guestbooks, for that purpose could be considered "black-hat" or spamming, posting relevant links on forums is something i would consider fine.

[George1985]

Link popularity is the total number of web sites that link to your site. The higher the number the better your chances are with google page rankings. (PR)