Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans have put together a heck of a list of ideas for building link popularity to your blog or web site. Since links as an essential ranking tool are unlikely to vanish any time soon (well...ever really...) it's a good idea to be constantly coming up with new ways to attract incoming links to your site. That's why Wall and Hagens have put together this list of 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006.

The duo explains that links are most definitely NOT going away...

Their point is an important one and should not be missed. In fact, I spoke about this just last week in San Jose. Keep in mind that if we use the Pinocchio Effect to explain search engine algorithms, it makes sense that search engines will continue to try to just sites the same way that humans do...that theory can fully explain the progression that we've already seen in how links are counted...

Remember, links originally counted no matter what the link type or where it came from.

It wasn't long before search engines realized that this wasn't the best way to judge quality...so, seeking to replicate human decisions, they started READING the text of the link to help determine what it was about....

...not long after that, search engines realized that they could also tell if a link was a reciprocal (traded) link or an incoming link and it made good sense that a one-way link was probably a better endorsement of a site than a link that was traded for.

But the engines kept getting smarter...soon they were looking at the quality of the site that was linking, with sites that were highly respected being given more weight than brand new sites that might not have any incoming links of their own.

These days, it's link age that's starting to come into play. Not only do incoming text links from quality sites count for something, but incoming text links from quality sites that have existed for quite some time REALLY count for something.

It only makes sense that engines will continue to keep tailoring their link judgement over time, which is why building good quality links will NEVER go out of style.

From old fashioned advice like "write good content" to newer ideas like "use PPC to gain exposure and encourage links" Hagans and Wall have put together some interesting concepts that are well worth the time it will take you to read through the list.