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Can You Get High SERPS Using Authoritative but Irrelevant Links?

by The Copy Nazi Banned
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Check this out. From 6 days ago. This guy's done an interesting study on this. He says
Some SEO's argue that irrelevant links have long been detected and discounted by search engines, making related links an important part of your link building strategy. Do you really need large numbers of "relevant" links to get a site to rank for your top keyword?
No. As long you've built links on reasonably trusted, authoritative domains, and you've thrown in some (sometimes over) optimised anchor text for good measure, you can still rank. That's not to say relevance plays an important role, but not as much as one as I had been hoping for.
I've been checking out some high search volume, relevant key phrases to get optimising my new company website for. One of the most consistent things I've found by checking out the back link profile data is that link authority and inbound anchor text optimisation completely outweighs relevance of the links themselves.
From: Get high rankings by building authoritative, irrelevant links?
#authoritative #high #irrelevant #links #serps
  • Profile picture of the author acedalright
    I'm a long believer that the rising tide lifts ALL ships.

    Strong pages can beat out relevance and the sheer weight of numbers can too.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Copy Nazi
    Banned
    This is exactly what Angela has been saying the whole time.
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    • Profile picture of the author Angela V. Edwards
      Originally Posted by Metronicity View Post

      This is exactly what Angela has been saying the whole time.
      What is "relevance", anyway? Who decides? Here is what I tell people about that:

      That is another myth that gets passed around a lot. Sure, it's good to have relevant links and Google recommends it, but links that are not "relevant" also count.

      The Drudge Report was put on the "map" the day he broke the news that
      President Clinton was having an...er, indiscretion with a young intern named Monica Lewinsky. THOUSANDS (maybe even HUNDREDS of thousands) of sites linked to him that day. Many of them were not in his "niche".

      About six months ago I challenged my Physical Therapist (I have an old ankle injury) that I could get him on Page One of Google for his keywords. He was at the bottom of Page 6. I did his links one night and then went to bed. The next day I got up and checked and he was NUMBER ONE in Google for ALL his keywords. Not one of the sites I added his link to was "relevant" for Physical Therapy or even Health and Wellness. Yet they still worked that well that fast. And his site is STILL in the number one position; this many months later.


      You often see "Yellow Page" sites linking to major businesses. Now, you and I, being humans, can understand why a site like that might link to a business' website, but do you really think a Search Engine's algorithm can make that determination? What if there was a "community portal" site that linked to all the businesses in the area? What about directories? What "niche" are they in? Search Engines do not and cannot determine whether all the sites linking to other sites "make sense" (relevant) or not.

      The search engines would have to know what is "relevant" and that will take a LOT of human interaction. A site for parents might link to a veterinarian's website because the site has a warning about a certain flea medication being poisonous to children, Yellow Pages websites might link to businesses in the area, the Fire Department's website might link to the PUD (Electric Company) because of a warning about electrical sparks, the Food Bank might link to the local High School because of a huge food drive the kids did...see what I mean? To determine "relevance" would take CONSTANT human interaction on all the TRILLION webpages on the Internet. Many Web 2.0 sites' only "relevance" to anybody is the 'community factor' that they provide. Theme-wise, many of those sites aren't "relevant" to most niches.


      If you leave out great sites because they are not "relevant" to your niche,
      you are leaving a lot of money on the table. I'd use them all.
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      • Profile picture of the author 4morereferrals
        Ive been round n round on this multiple times here.

        One poster will have a totally different perception of what relevant means than others. To some on site or on page relevance merely means, your keywords as the hyperlinks anchor text. To others relevance is that the site's concept - theme - content ... is the same subject matter as your keywords.

        So as asked by Angela ... What is relevance to you? And/or can you really be sure to know what relevance is to Google?

        Best explanation on relevance [ from which warrior escapes me at the moment ] was kinda like this...

        We know that keyword anchor text in your links is CRITICAL. When you place an html anchor text backlink on a site - you've just placed "relevence" on the page. That works for Google - we know - better than an html anchor text link without your keywords. [ on that I hope we can agree ]

        So, that said ... if just the keywords in your anchor text as relevance helps - imagine the value a whole page of relevant phrases about or of your keywords does? A whole site?
        Made sense in theory ...

        But where the rubber meets the road is ... I havent been able to find enough "relevant" authoritative sites for the keywords I want, that will give me backlinks. Have you?

        Additionally, I havent seen the side by side examples of ... I ranked these two similar keyword phrased domains ... one using only a handful of authoritative sites that are relevant to my keywords. Then I tried ranking the other site with a myriad of other NON relevant sites... and the "relevant" sites did better.

        So until I see that ... Im running with Links is Links - DoFollow... NoFollow ... High PR, No PR [ <---- which is 90% of the links most peeps are "really" using ] - as thats whats putting me on page 1 for a few of the keywords Im after.
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        Rank Ascend Network - High PR Links / Guaranteed Rankings Increase
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