Link popularity is the total number of web sites that link to your site.
Why is it important?
Because good link popularity can dramatically increase traffic to your web site. Well placed links are an excellent source of consistent and targeted traffic. And due to recent developments, they can even generate additional search engine traffic to your site.
Most of the major search engines now factor Link Popularity into their relevancy algorithms. As a result, increasing the number of quality, relevant sites which link to your site can actually improve your search engine rankings. There is still no one “secret trick” to getting good rankings, but boosting your site’s popularity may give it the edge it needs.
Knowing who links to your site and increasing the number of quality links is an important part of any web site promotion effort.