Do Links Have To Be Relevant?

14 years ago

All links help. The more relevant they are, the more juice they may get but that doesn't negate the value of the non-relevant links.

People can say that Google won't count them in the future all they want but they don't know that for a fact. I highly doubt that they wouldn't count them at all because too many people do link out to sites that are not necessarily related to their own site but they really do like them.

Tina

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Sparhawke

14 years ago

I guess they will help for the short term aspect of getting link values, but if you have a domain in the same arena as the one you are linked from you will have the benefit of traffic too.

Google can see how long people spend on your site from other sources (shown in analytics) so if you are back linking in the sports niche and you are raving about cheesy hamburgers they are not going to spend much time there, telling Google that your site is not worth anyones time.

It is always preferable to get backlinks from other sites in your niche for this reason, people will be more likely looking for what you are saying and if your site can hold peoples attention it will get placed higher.

This is why sites that have no Page Rank sometimes rank higher than them.

At least I think so

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Kael41

14 years ago

I remember a report I read from a google conference where one of the speakers did reveal that they give a rating of the inbound link to your site AND include the contextual category of the linking site. Common sense would indicate that it would be better to be included in that contextual category..however, my experience is also that you could brute force 1k links from all over the place and still place well too.

The only question then becomes is staying power. How well will those links stay up in the long run...

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~kev~

14 years ago

Originally Posted by terryrayburn

I'm getting conflicting views.

The 2 examples you provided are exact opposites of each other, with no middle ground.

My personal opinion - the answer falls somewhere in the middle of the road.

Relevant links are the best kind to get, but any link will work - as long as your not exchanging links with spam sites. This falls under links schemes and is a different topic.

Did facebook get to pagerank 10 by only having other social networking sites link to it?

Did google get to pagerank 10 by having other search engines link to it? And someone tell me how yahoo, bing, msn, ask,,,, can link to another site? They just provide search results.

How did wikipedia become an authority site? Was it by other wikis linking to it? Or was it from a massive amount of links from un-related sites?

How did whitehouse.gov become such a high ranking site? By only having other government related sites linking to it? Or was it from all different types of sites linking to it?

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terryrayburn

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ~kev~

The 2 examples you provided are exact opposites of each other, with no middle ground.

My personal opinion - the answer falls somewhere in the middle of the road.

Relevant links are the best kind to get, but any link will work - as long as your not exchanging links with spam sites. This falls under links schemes and is a different topic.

Did facebook get to pagerank 10 by only having other social networking sites link to it?

Did google get to pagerank 10 by having other search engines link to it? And someone tell me how yahoo, bing, msn, ask,,,, can link to another site? They just provide search results.

How did wikipedia become an authority site? Was it by other wikis linking to it? Or was it from a massive amount of links from un-related sites?

How did whitehouse.gov become such a high ranking site? By only having other government related sites linking to it? Or was it from all different types of sites linking to it?

Your examples of those huge sites are great examples of showing that you can be an authority site without relevant links, but...

...might it be that they really are "authorities" based on their content, or do you think the links to them give them their power (or, as your comments above might hint at, BOTH)?

Thanks.

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~kev~

14 years ago

Originally Posted by terryrayburn

Your examples of those huge sites are great examples of showing that you can be an authority site without relevant links, but...

I think we have answered your question about relevant links.

Wikipedia does not rank at the top of google searches by "only" having other wikis link to it.

Originally Posted by terryrayburn

...might it be that they really are "authorities" based on their content, or do you think the links to them give them their power (or, as your comments above might hint at, BOTH)?

Once again, and this is only my opinion - I think sites reach authority site status by a combination of good content and the number of backlinks they have.

Some people may say that backlinks do not count that much. But when you see a site that comes up all the time in generic searches, what does that site have that others do not?

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Sparhawke 14 years ago

Originally Posted by ~kev~

Once again, and this is only my opinion - I think sites reach authority site status by a combination of good content and the number of backlinks they have.

I read somewhere that sometimes Google chooses sites to have a PR10 such as whitehouse.gov or Facebook.com and Nasa.gov

They basically are telling the world that they consider those to be the absolute dogs bollocks that nothing else can beat, and on the NASA front I agree with them.
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- alanbray 14 years ago
  
  google cant know what exactly goes on at every site so it wont judge a link badly if it doesnt appear relevant because there are too many factors in a website. therefore google actually judges the page rank one of the first factors and relevance only secondary.
  
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thebitbotdotcom

14 years ago

My personal experience has taught me that relevancy trumps absolutely everything...including everyone's beloved PR (GASP!!!)

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mattjay

14 years ago

about 5 months ago i bought a bunch of links that were generally not relevant, and i did okay with the site. the comp. was only about 1 million, so no big deal. i have not done any other link building since then and it fell to number 16 for my keyword now.

i have two recent sites that are linked with relevant links. one ranks #1 and one ranks #7 for the chosen keyword. even that said, i can't say for sure the answer to this question. but i will say the relevant linked sites ranked much faster than the non relevant ones.

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Black Hat Cat

Banned 14 years ago

Originally Posted by terryrayburn

I'm getting conflicting views.

1. Some say even high-PR links will not help (in the future when Google gets "smarter") if they're not relevant to the site. Therefore artificially getting links from non-relevant sources is not a good long-term strategy.

They say the purpose of Google giving credit for links is because of a real interest by the linkers in the site, giving it authority.

2. Others say Google will NEVER care if links are relevant, else many authority sites would not be helped by the thousands of non-relevant links they get from all over the place.

Is gaining good high-PR links from non-relevant sites a good long-term strategy?

My strategy is to focus on what works today and has worked for years, and not what others dream up that may work in the future. I live in the here and now.

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cashcow

14 years ago

All links help. The more relevant they are, the more juice they may get but that doesn't negate the value of the non-relevant links.

People can say that Google won't count them in the future all they want but they don't know that for a fact. I highly doubt that they wouldn't count them at all because too many people do link out to sites that are not necessarily related to their own site but they really do like them.

I agree with Tina. What about all those people that have journal blogs where they just blog about what they are doing and might link out to a site they really like but it's not necessarily relevant to their blog? Seems like those links would have some great value.

I think of links like this:

good = any link
better = high PR link
best = high pr link on relevant site

Lee

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Do Links Have To Be Relevant?

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