Search engines look at the link popularity of a website and use that as one of the main ranking factors in their algorithms.

What search engines are looking for with link popularity:

The quantity of links pointing to you
The quality of links pointing to you
The anchor text (link title) used in the link
The alt tag of an image link pointing to you
Whether the links are one way links or reciprocal links

Finally a link popularity software program exists that can show you all of those things and much more.

Backlink Reporter is the most informative back link popularity report software out there.

Here are some key features of "Backlink Reporter":

· Analyzes all links pointing to your website including links to sub pages
· Shows you the anchor text and alt tags of links pointing to your website
· Analyzes and shows you the page rank of websites that link to your website
· Shows your search engine rankings of the anchor text and alt tags that other sites use to link to you
· Tells you whether each link pointing to you is a reciprocal or one way text link
· Shows you every url used to link to you for each seperate anchor text


Limitations:

· 14 days trial