Domain popularity: what it is and why it is important

Taking care of domain popularity is important. The more popular a domain is, and, therefore, a website, the more chances it will have to rise in the rankings in search engines. Let’s look at what domain popularity means, how to check it, and what to do to protect it.

1. What web domain popularity means

The concise definition of domain popularity refers to the number of links pointing to the domain itself, therefore, to a website, and which are contained in other sites. However, all of the links on a page that point to the same website are counted only once.

It is clear from the definition that the concept of popularity takes on a broader meaning than the literal one. A popular domain is not (only) a domain that is well-known and highly frequented, although the domain popularity is obviously related to its retrievability and, thus, contributes to its popularity in a literal sense. In any case, the concept of popularity goes far beyond the simple ranking of the most visited websites that we periodically read in the news.

As already mentioned, domain popularity is closely related to the number of backlinks to the same domain. What is a backlink? It is simply a reverse link, that is, a link pointing to a certain site placed on any web page, obviously from another site. The backlink concept is the basis of Google’s algorithm. To define the quality of one site relative to another, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, decided in 1998 to introduce a ranking, a numerical categorization, based, precisely, on the backlink.
In other words, for the Stanford-born search engine, a site is of higher quality than another site covering the same topics if it has a higher ranking. This number is a reputation index calculated according to the number of backlinks the site has. The more backlinks there are on the web, the more the site is considered to be of quality, and the higher it rises in the SERP pages, those that are shown as a result of a search by a user.

If, today, domain popularity is taking on less importance in the algorithm behind Google, it is still something to consider carefully; so let’s see why.

2. Why it is important for a domain to be important

In a web where a site’s popularity is closely related to its presence on the first page of Google’s SERP, one might reply by simply stating that if your site is not popular, no one will know of its existence, the site, and, perhaps, your business.

However, being popular for a web domain goes beyond presence in search results. Given that it is still essential to be well-ranked on Google, a popular site is one that builds (also) a good reputation on the web, that is, one that is related to company pages on social networks, for example, or that is featured in newsletters or communications to customers and users.

The concept of reputation is greater than that of popularity on a search engine. A site with a good reputation is one that, among other things, does not host offensive and malicious contents. If it actually did, the site would be at great risk of being placed on so-called blacklists. The consequence would be not only a demotion on Google, but also complete disappearance from the internet because those who wanted to reach it would not be able to do so, precisely because of the fact that the site is considered dangerous by the DNS filters present along the path from the user’s request to the domain.

So, in order to be found easily on the internet and to tower over competing sites, it is important to carefully attend to both the popularity and reputation of your business’s website domain. In addition, it must be built according to a simple and standard tree structure which helps the indexing of pages by Google and other search engines. Paths within the site should be “clean” and free of pages that contain contents, including multimedia, which are at risk of being blocked.

Also, beware, because nowadays Google is not only satisfied with the quantity of backlinks but also considers the quality of the site that includes a link to a certain domain. So, theoretically, domain popularity could actually collapse if backlinks came from certain sites.

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3. How to verify the popularity of one’s web domain

There are several online tools that allow one to measure domain popularity. Out of all of them, Ubersuggest, by the well-known expert Neil Patel, is one of the best-known. However, ahrefs and moz are also web services made to measure the popularity of an internet site.

The problem is that both services, after an initial superficial analysis, require a subscription in order to go into greater depth.

In any case, an audit of one’s own domain is appropriate. For figures that are still affordable, the data provided by the services we have suggested provide objective values for the presence of our site on the Web.

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4. Other things to consider in order to increase the popularity of a site

We have said it before; to sum it up, Google likes simplicity. If a site is well-structured and in a simple fashion, the Google spider will find and index it more easily. Also, in order to take care of domain popularity, it is important to try to have a clear backlink situation. This is why the services we have suggested are useful. Remembering that, today, it is not so much the number of backlinks that matters but the quality of the sites which host them.

It is especially important to publish quality contents on one’s site, in a designated section (blog or news), with special attention to SEO techniques. Also, it is fully better to personally take care of the dissemination of links to the site by searching for the most appropriate containers. We’re talking about sites, blogs, discussion forums, and social service groups and pages that are particularly relevant to the topic at hand.

Also regarding the subject matter, it is important to focus on a so-called niche market that is interested in particular topics, rather than building a site without a clear identity.

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