Link Popularity

Link Popularity is a measurement reflecting the popularity of your website. Your arcade popularity will be measured by the quantity and quality of other websites that link back to yours. Your arcade link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results.

There are many ways to increase your arcade link popularity. A few ways to increase your link popularity include trading links with other online arcade owners, submitting your link to forums, and even joining social networks.

To trade links with other arcade owners we can simply visit other online arcade sites and see if they offer link exchanges (many do). In the same way that other online arcade sites offer link exchanges our site has the same built-in system. Users can visit your arcade and submit their links. In the default ‘yourarcade.org’ template this link is found at the top of the page, as shown in Figure 8-1.

Figure 8-1 yourarcade template trade links buttons.

 When a user clicks on ‘Trade Links’ they will be taken to a screen which contains the following submit form, shown in Figure 8-2.

Figure 8-2 arcade trade links form.

When a user fills out the required fields and submits the form, they have requested a link exchange with you. Now, there are two ways you can accept link exchanges. If you login to the back-end of your arcade control panel, select the ‘Site Configuration’ menu option, and scroll down the page, you will find a dropdown box labeled ‘How To Confirm Trades’ (shown in Figure 8-3).

Figure 8-3 How to confirm trades drop-down.

The two options available are to trade ‘Automatically’ or ‘Manually’. If you choose ‘Automatically’ then as soon as a user submits a link trade to your arcade it will automatically be added to your link page. If the ‘Manually’ option is chosen, then you will have to login to the back-end of your arcade, go to manage links, and change the new link from ‘Inactive’ status to ‘Active’ status. I would recommend setting this to ‘Manually’, this way you will not receive a bunch of spam links that never give you a link back in the first place. Remember the only reason we want other arcade owners links on our site is so that way we can have our arcade link on their site. The more link trades you have, the more links you will have pointing to your arcade. And, the more links you have pointing back to your arcade will obviously increase your link popularity.

Another great way to get more links pointing back to your arcade is to join a lot of forums and start writing. Be cautious not to introduce yourself in the wrong place and be accused of spamming the forum with your link. After you have introduced yourself in the forum with your arcade link, you can also edit your profile signature. In your profile signature you can add your name and your website link. This way every time you add a new post or reply in the forum, you will have added another link back to your arcade.

One great forum, that I feel is well worth mentioning, is talkarcades.com, click on the image link below to visit their site:

At talkarcades.com you can sign-up for a new account, introduce yourself, and browse their daily updated resources and information of everything arcade. Be sure to check out the ‘Site Showcases’ section to view many other arcades. You can go through the list of arcades and request link exchanges at their online arcade. Make sure to bookmark this site, because commonly arcade owners will create new posts asking for link exchanges.

Another resourceful forum is the PHPArcadeScript Forum which is located at http://www.phparcadescript.com/forum/. At the PHP Arcade Script Forum you will find helpful information including modifications, bug reports, and everything PHPAS related. After you sign-up in the PHP Arcade Script forums, make sure to enter your forum name in your PHPArcadeScript member page, previously shown in Hour 2, this will give you access to PHPAS owner specific forum threads.

Okay, now that you know a little about spreading your arcade link out on the web, go out and make yourself known. Increase your popularity by trading links, submitting to forums, and getting as many back-links to your arcade as possible.