Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. All the major search engines use this system to rank their pages.

The more searched your keyword is, the more difficult it will be to achieve link popularity. But don't be discouraged; there are ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of before going about linking. The 1st thing is that just linking with a large number of websites will not achieve link popularity. As a matter of fact, this method can harm you more than help you out. Ever heard of "Link Farms"? Watch out for them, they can get you banned - they are pages containing line after line of unrelated, off topic links. As I said, you can get banned if search engines find you among link farms.

The next thing to keep in mind is the quality of the web site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have worries about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is low quality and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will lower your link popularity.