Importance of Backlink RELEVANCE?

by 118 replies
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In my experience,
Decent PR + relevant + dofollow
backlinks are extremely difficult to find.
This is why I focus on backlinks that are dofollow from high PR sources. I typically ignore relevance, only because it's so much harder to find.

Generally this works well for me, I didn't think the Googlebot could make too many judgements in terms of relevance of interlinked sites.
However, I notice a lot of you argue that relevant backlinks are a MUST.

Why is it that some of you consider relevance more important than dofollow or PR?

Just because real people are more likely to click on these links? Because that doesn't seem to be a good enough reason, IMO.
#search engine optimization #backlink #importance #relevance
  • That is the perfect reason to have them - Google tries to be very user focused (my opinion).

    The argument is really a waste of time because it just becomes a matter of who yells louder.

    My reasoning behind the power of relevant links is from reading articles on some of the patents and alogrithms Google uses or has aquired. The Hilltop Algorithim for example uses a source of relevant hub articles to determine other related authority articles. This is all done using hyperlinks.

    The related:domainname.com in Google also shows that Google can and does determine relationships based via the link profile. There is a visualisation of the related: query somewhere too to see what your competition looks like. They are usually very tightly networked (but not directly).

    Off-topic are easier tp find and do work - but I think you need more of them. It all comes down to efficiency.
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    • First off, thanks for the assertive responses. I try to stay attentive and open-minded when the knowledge of more experienced warriors is tossed in my direction.

      The reason I usually don't consider relevance of critical importance is because 80% of my work is SEO for local businesses and organizations.

      This often makes it impossibly difficult to find good backlinks, because, often-a-time, to be truly relevant, they have to target a local audience as well.

      I think I heard Krishna Bharat speak back in my early days at the University of Toronto, but I didn't form the appropriate mental co-relations then, since I was focusing on a different area of computer science and had just begun.

      I hadn't even considered Google's ability to approximate page similarity and how expert/authoritative sites tie in.

      You guys have both given me something to think about and perhaps the drive to develop a more effective and efficient link building strategy for those trickier endeavors that I take on.

      As a last request: if you could direct to more reading pertaining to information on search algorithms and whatnot, that'd be fantastic.

      Thanks!
  • Hi orvn,

    Relevance is of absolute importance, but probably not in the way you understand it. You can have all the backlinks you want with all the PR you want and it will never help you rank until after you channel that PR through a relevant link.

    Many people seem to think that relevance has something to do with website topics. Website topics are not ever considered by search engines. Search engines are much more granular in their approach to relevance. They not only look at page topics for relevance, they can even look at individual page elements to determine relevance for document sections or even relevance of individual external links.

    Search engine optimization is often broken down into on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Many folks have the mistaken impression that off-page optimization is simply creating backlinks. Technically speaking, creating backlinks is promotional activity that may, or may not include optimization. Just as elements of your own pages can be optimized, or not, elements of the backlinks you place can be optimized, or not. This is what is really meant by off-page optimization.

    Many places where you place your backlinks allow, or even encourage, you to create unique and relevant content on the page where you place your link. This helps their users to understand what they can expect to find when they follow the link. Search engines look for those same signals of relevance and use them to score the landing page's relevancy for specific keywords. PR is simply used to weight the total value of that particular relevancy signal.
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    • So aslong the link is relevant... It is a quality link?? (Ofcourse the quality would rise if it would be a PR4-9, On a already popular page)
  • All great points, I'd like to back them up by saying that in my experience, relevancy does count.

    Something that hasn't been brought up yet is the fact that Google seems to check the clickthrough rates on all of your backlinks. So this clickthrough rate would seem strangly low to Google if all your links are on off-topic pages that people aren't interested in clicking.

    I've found that the more you use white-hat methods, the better the outcomes. Blasting loads of links from unrelated sources as just as useful as spending half your time looking and building relevant links.

    This also brings me to the 'no-follow' concept. Sure, Google is told not to follow these links, but IMO when people are hitting your website from these nofollow links, they can boost you up because Google sees that you are not spamming links, your links seem to be more natural than your competitor.

    Just some things to keep in mind

    A lot of 'gurus' may tell you otherwise, but in my experience, the above methods work well.
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    • Google has no way of knowing referring pages (which backlinks get clicked) without Google Analytics installed on the domain.

      No-follow refers to passing PageRank (and arguably anchor text) through the link. They are still crawled like normal.
  • Backlinks from relevant websites are important because when Google crawlers visit that particular site they crawl that website for that particular niche and if your website is not related to that niche you might get backlink from them but will not get the benefit of ranking on that keywords.
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    • That is completely untrue. Most of my links come from other pages that are completely off topic of my site and I rank just fine for my keywords.
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  • Well i dont thinks Relevance is more important then Do follow or any kind of formula like that.
    Links are links they are all good. relevancy is important PR is important and do follow is important but any kind of link would do.

    Also about relevancy ... you know you can make landing pages to make you none relevant links . to be relevant.

    What i mean is .
    Example - your website is about coca-cola.. you build another 10-20 websites about coca-cola - you spam these 10-20 1 page website with Crazy about of (none relevant links) these 10-20 website will gain authority with time and are relevant to your niche.
    After some time that you start seen these websites ranking for coca-cola . you then make a link from them to your website. and therefore getting 10-20 relevance links with authority .. you can also continue promoting these website and the more authority they get the more your website benefits from them.

    Hope thats helps
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    Search engine like google always like link from relevant site.
    Thanks
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    • I think it's quite difficult to define which is the most important. A backlink that is relevant but nofollow or with no PR can not give you any benefit.
  • From my experience RELEVANCE does not matter. Also, an algorithm that looks for relevant words is mathametically impossible and inefficient for a search engine.
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    • Yet, this is precisely what a search engine algorithm is designed to achieve. Are you saying that it is just coincidence that search engines algorithms tend to return relevant results? :confused:

      Where do you guys come up with this stuff? Stop and reread what you wrote and ask yourself if it even makes sense!
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  • I absolutely agree with you Orvn, I have seen many sites ranking well in Google by just gaining backlinks from irrelevant themes.So till now it works fine...!
  • Relevance doesn't matter on one way links. On reciprocal links it does because Google wants to know if you're doing a link exchange, it is relevant and not just for seo purposes.

    This is my opinion based on my experiences.
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    • dburk was a hard read, but close to what I believe. Close.

      You never know what relevancy google thinks a page is.
      Certain "content"? Perhaps.

      How important is that sig in the WF? I'd rank that pretty high.

      WF has that trust and authority factor. Many of the threads will
      rank for some terms. Almost in an instant.

      Remember that crazy Matt Cutts story? How he had mentioned one
      word in his blog, and then ranked for that? Exactly.

      I always try for the most authoritative, high PR backlinks. Regardless
      of any perceived "relevancy."

      But good people can disagree. The truth is probably somewhere in the
      middle.

      Paul
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  • I view this with the same point of view, for the most part, building a site up to the authority level - broad results, long tail, and quick rankings - can be done with JUICY unrelated links. Does it mean you shoud? No, Obviously the relevant links are what you should try to obtain but if non-related quality links present themselves, you shouldn't necessarily turn them away. There is always many points to consider when analyzing links & relevancy is one of the many.

    I've seen a lot of link sales sites that build up totally unrelated back links and they really only ranked for their site name.. whereas those links on relevant sites would have undoubtedly brought them rankings for what their content was aboot.

    They both have their place and unless you are doing a side-by-side case study, you can never really be sure how much more effective an equal related link and non-related link would have on rankings.

    dburk has a solid point about inner workings of SE's. Throw my vote into relevant back links too!
  • I use to believe in backlink relevance until I got #1 in 55 million results with backlinks that had no relevancy whatsoever. Thought it was an anomaly but then I did it again and have been achieving first page results - again with non relevant backlinks ever since.

    dburk, can you please clarify why this would happen?
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    • You should totally PM me the keyword/url, would love to take a look.

    • First off, the number of search results returned for a query has nothing to do with it's competitiveness.

      Second, nobody is arguing that irrelevant backlinks won't get you ranked. They are arguing that relevant backlinks are more powerful than irrelevant. I'm not sure where I stand because much of my time is spent gaining irrelevant backlinks. And I rank well. However, I am not one to say that relevant links aren't more powerful because I don't know.
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    • Hi sarafina,

      I'm sorry, I must not be making my point clear. My point it that you are using a different definition of relevancy than the search engines are using. What you describe as irrelevant backlinks may in fact be highly relevant backlinks as search engines define relevance.

      I have heard others claim they had ranked well with irrelevant backlinks, yet when they present the specific page they ranked it's always loaded with highly relevant backlinks. I suspect that your are defining relevance differently from the way search engines define relevance and you, like others making such claims, are confusing folks by making statements like "relevancy doesn't matter".

      There is a common misconception, particularly among folks that are new to SEO that search engines define relevancy based on website topics. This has never been true and likely never will be.

      It seems that many folks confuse search engines with a much simpler type of website known as a website directory. The primary difference between a website directory and a search engine website is that directories index websites while search engines index individual web documents. Search engines by their very definition do not recognize website topics only web page topics.

      The #1 rule of SEO is that search engines index and rank web pages, not websites. It is the most fundamental principle necessary to understand how search engines work.

      Once you understand this fundamental concept you will see why website topics are generally not relevant to SEO. Website topics have nothing to do with what makes a backlink relevant from the perspective of the search engines.

      I challenge you to show me just one set of search results on Google that ranks a single page highly without either relevant backlinks or little to no competition. It doesn't have to be your own site, any site for any competitive term will do. I have made this challenge before on this forum and no one was able to present a single example without relevant links.

      Keep in mind that since search engines rank individual pages the inbound links from internal linkage can be just as effective at defining relevancy as links from external websites. That is why you should pay careful attention to your internal link structure.
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    • Holy crap lol, did you just copy/paste that?
  • Hi guys

    IM only a novice to this but i have only used links that are mostly irrelevent and i have gained the same page rank as my competitors in 9 months, which took them 10 years to get.

    How i see it is: if i have a blog and i put some really juicy gossip on it- say pictures of someone famous doing something they shouldnt or something similar and do this often -then people will link to my blog, doesnt matter where they link from as long as they are all backlinks.

    Irrelevancy has not seemed to matter so far IMO. Of ocurser if you can get relevant links all the better, but the more niche you are the less likely you are to get loads of high pr sites linking to you.
  • hi,

    thanks many to share the back link importance..meet again.
  • Backlinks is always a backlinks no matter if it is no follow or do follow but the point is how much quality of your content and how you optimize your site as well.
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  • While relevance may matter, what really matters is if it's worth your time to find that relevance.

    How many relevant links do you think any site currently ranking for "buy viagra" has? I'll give you a hint, the answer is 0

    You'll never rank for a keyword like that going only for relevant links. What that says is that link volume can trump relevance, in every case.
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    • Hi keliix06,

      I sorry, but I must inform you that technically you are wrong. You can have all the irrelevant links you want and not rank well for many keywords that appear on your page.

      If what you said were true then the page with the most links would be able to outrank every page for every keyword they decided to add to their page. One webpage would own the top ranking for every word they decided to put on their page. Search results would be crappy since so many SERPs would be dominated by barely relevant pages. We would need to scroll through hundreds of listings to find one that satisfied our search requirements. Since that is not how the search results actually appear, there must be something going on other than your assertion.

      The fact is that acquiring many irrelevant backlinks can boost your PR, but that PR alone does nothing to boost your ranking for your targeted keyword. You must first channel that PR through a relevant link before you will see any ranking benefit. Backlinks without relevance is worthless for SERP. But, as soon as you channel that link juice through a relevant anchortext link you will positively influence your keyword relevancy score and thus your power to rank in SERP.
  • There are two ways to get ranked... The first is by producing tons of Links consistently that may or may not be relevant and varying the types of links created. The other is a more tedious task and that is finding high quality, High PR Links that are relevant to your niche but may not give you massive numbers of links. I think it comes down to the type of goals you have and how much money and time you have. Just my thoughts. I got my website ranked on 35+ Keywords the day my URL was indexed by Google and i didnt have any on-site SEO done. I just had my backlink team build 15K Backlinks... Worked like a charm. I have used the same strategy over and over again with the same results.
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    • Hi Dynamosh,

      Not really!

      It's not until you channel that PR through a relevant link (keywords in or near the anchortext) that you will see any ranking benefit.

      The only thing that experiment proved is that website topics are not important to SEO. Website topics and keyword relevance are two very different things. Search engines don't index websites, they index individual pages and that is why website topics have no importance in SEO. But to make the leap to say relevance doesn't matter is just fundamentally wrong.

      While it was an interesting experiment, the conclusions were all wrong, IMHO, due to a lack of understanding the basic function of a search engine. Website topics are not important, however relevant backlinks are paramount.

      This is not to say that you can't make use of link juice passed from irrelevant backlinks, only to say that the link juice must be passed through yet another "relevant" link before you see any ranking benefit. So the benefit from irrelevant backlinks, if channeled through a second "relevant" link, will be an order of magnitude LESS powerful than it would have been if had it been a relevant backlink.

      To conclude, generally speaking, you will need many more irrelevant backlinks to equal the power of a single relevant backlink. And those irrelevant backlinks provide no direct ranking power, only a potential secondary, less powerful benefit that is only realized after you channel the link juice through a relevant link. No relevance = No ranking benefit.
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  • Submit articles that are relevant to your niche, site or whatever, and put links in the articles. THIS MAKES THE LINKS RELEVANT, AND GOOGLE LIKES IT.

    Short and sweet...lol
  • I agree with you, it will extremely difficult (not to mention time consuming) to find backlinks with relevance to your niche, I suppose emailing those web admins to see if they can include your links is a try
  • I also agree that it's very difficult to get relevant links and can be time consuming. In my experience a blend of links from relevant and non relevant sites will do the job. As long as the links are HIGH PR.
  • Backlink from any site will add value to your site whether its related to your niche or not. So its better to get 50 dofollow non-related backlinks in one day instead of 3 nodofollow niche-related backlinks in one week.
  • Dburk gives a lot of insight in this thread.
    Everyone should read his posts on the matter.
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  • I don't think it is very hard to create relevant links that are dofollow. The PR issue is overblown in my opinion. So many people stress out about PR ratings, but down the road a page that is Low PR today can gain PR later.

    My school of thinking is that if you can get a relevant link then it doesn't really matter if it is nofollow, dofollow, or what PR rating it is. Relevant is going to gain you traffic and that = <3
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    • I agree on the PR. People spend way too much time dwelling on it. I'd much rather get links that have ip spread.

      As far as nofollow goes. If I'm getting the link for SEO purposes then I want a link that can pass link juice and unless I'm mistaken a nofollow link doesn't pass link juice which makes it pointless for ranking.

      If I'm getting the link for traffic then I don't care if it's nofollow or other wise.
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    • Why don't you start another thread on your topic so your not thread jacking this one.
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  • You don't need relevant backlinks to rank. It'd be fantastic if you could get related links, but that's not always the case.
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    • If you really believe that, can you give just one example of it? I doubt that you can, and would love to see such an example.
  • Well the only way I can say how things work is by what you see, its irrelevant what you are told and read, for instance I to have read and heard people saying that links have to be relevant, then when I check the biggest competitiors links and they are number 1 for all our keywords, hardly any of their links are relevant!! So I'm just copying what I see working
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    • Hi Dani,

      When you say "hardly any of their links are relevant", you seem to be acknowledging that at least some of their links are relevant.

      All you need is a few powerful backlinks, backlinks from high PR pages, to outrank many web pages that don't have the the same relevant and powerful backlinks.

      Ask yourself, have you ever seen any page rank for a competitive term without relevant inbound links? If so, can you provide a single example?
  • I think that relevance are important.

    But if i colud chose no relevant link from PR4 or relevant link from P3 I will chose link from PR4.
  • Search engines give more wight to relevant backlinks than do-follow backlinks. Do-follow backlinks can be considered as spamming
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    • Thanks for this insightful post. Great addition to the discussion here....
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  • I have tested getting links from relevant pages and non relevant pages.

    My conclusion is - the more links you get the better you rank.

    Relevancy doesn't matter, you still get ranked.

    Although Dburk disagrees with me generally, there is one thing we both agree on.

    Do the test yourself and find out for yourself.
  • I think relevance is the key factor out of all of the statements you have made, if the post isn't relevant to your website then Google will add no points to your overall ranking score, like I mentioned in another post - if you're website is about dogs then post on blogs/forums about dogs (in a non-spammy way).
  • Definitely search engines made for users not for webmasters. So if user likes your link then definitely search engine will likes your links. Relevancy is much important that's why we try to submit our site in relevant category in directory and bookmarking.
  • Suggesting that you have achieved great rankings by using non relevant links does not prove that relevant backinks are not more powerful. The achieved rankings need to be looked at in the context of the competition: The competition may not have many relevant backlinks either! So in this case you would rank well. But if a competing website did have relevant links then it would win.

    So you can do well with non relevant links so long as the competition is weak, but you will lose if up against a site with relevant links.
  • My experience says that relevance does not matter! I have ranked and am ranking with unrelevant backlinks in all kind of different niches. In small niches you just cant find enough relevant links if you tried to and still need to find other ways to beat your competition(if you are not #1 they are probably not concerned about the backlink relevance issue)
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    • Hi Raul991,

      When you say "I have ranked and am ranking with unrelevant backlinks in all kind of different niches" it doesn't mean that any of those irrelevant backlinks helped you one iota to rank for your targeted keyword. I assert that they did not and it may have been a colossal waste of time.

      If you take a closer look at your own web pages you will see that you probably had plenty of backlinks that would be considered relevant, by search engine standards, and it was exclusively those relevant backlinks that are helping you rank for your target keyword.

      I believe that you may simply be defining relevance in a way different from how search engines define relevance. When it comes to SEO it only matters how search engines define relevance.

      If you really believe what you said then why not take me up on the challenge I made earlier in this thread. Can you find a single example of a page that has ranked highly in a competitive niche based exclusively on the use of irrelevant links?

      It is possible to build your page's PR using irrelevant backlinks, however they will do nothing to directly help your page rank for your targeted keyword. You must first channel that PR through a relevant link before you see any benefit. While this secondary effect can be useful, it is a tiny fraction of the value of relevant backlinks.
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  • IMO relevance in the anchor for the backlink (and surrounding text if possible) is important for ranking for that keyword. Even better if the web page is relevant to the subject matter. But high PR, low OBL relevant webpages to your niche are hard to find.
  • Dburk you can continue to be dense about what many have posted in this thread. the idea that anchor text is needed was stated in my very early posts in this thread.

    Since then you have been pretty much fibbing claiming to know how google calculates relevancy on a page besides the anchor text. Now you are running away to website topics when no one said anything about that. We ARE concentrating on the page relevancy. As I said outside of anchor text you have no point and refuse to post any data or methodology for your claim of anything close to, above, around the corner , at an angle to, one block up and head east or wherever else you want to claim goolge calculates relevancy outside of anchor text.

    and no one was talking about site level. thats just your strawman because you are backed in a corner by evidence you said no one shared. I give terry's study one thing I can't give you - its shared. the methodology is there, the data is there and the results are there. thats what you need to show and refuse to. so whats the point? You present no data, no methodology to your research and point at no results in any specified serps. But its terry that drew the wrong conclusion because you say so.

    Dburk please I mean I have studied so much about search engines that I have probably forgot more than you know. See? two can play at that you don't know nothing game. Proof. stop fudging and put up proof. IF it were jus t my opinion versus yours then fine but many people here have posted their success with profile links that have little relevance on the page


    LOL. no Dburk many of them show a surprising lack of keyword research skills, don't get their links indexed. some even expect to rank without on page SEO and on and on. and you know why? because there is always some guru or wannabe guru that is telling them some secret way of doing SEO that they claim few know about.

    I find thats the greatest challenge in teaching people SEO. They have all these guru concepts that they have filled their heads with. All in title searches, push button Seo, buyspecial tools etc. SEO is easy and basic. when they correct those problems they rank and rank well. And go figure often with the same set of backlinks that you call worthless. So basic SEo isn't the problem with them its some wannabes running around saying that they know how search engines work and have the magic key if people just come to them for it.

    anyway can you stop running around and put up the proof? this is like the 7th request. I'm all ears to - the proof.
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    • Hi Mike

      You keep asking me to prove a negative. Anyone with even a little knowledge knows you don't "prove" a negative. For example "how do you prove you don't beat your wife?" All you can do is point to the lack of evidence. Which is what I've continued to do for my assertion. You are the one that brought up the study Terry did which only supports my assertion that search engines do not recognize website topics. His study did not attempt to classify relevance of backlinks based on the methods Google uses.

      Again, I point you to the nice convenient tool Google has provided and recommend you perform your own experiments using that tool. You don't seem willing to trust anything I say and it's useless for me to play you game of "I gotcha cause you didn't do it exactly as I wanted you to". If you stop trolling long enough and run a few experiments for your self you will quickly see how revealing this tool can be and you can see how relevancy is effected when adding anchortext and how words near the anchortext can sometimes radically change the relevancy for a particular keyword.

      Since I already know that you plan to disparage any test methods I suggest, I won't bother suggesting any. Use what ever methods you find acceptable and run the tests yourself. But please don't pretend that you already know the results of tests that you have never ran, that is just disingenuous.

      By the way it's been more than a week since I challenged folks in this thread to come up with just one SERP example that proves me wrong. Nothing but the sound crickets so far.
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  • I used to focus on backlink relevance...and it took time for my sites to rank .... then I tried experimenting on Non-relevant but high pr sites, created backlinks and my site's rank jumped to page 1 in a week
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    • Yup you've figured out the big secret!
  • The more relevant incoming links to your site to determine the quality of links. If your site is about Internet marketing which link to a site about German shepherds are not relevant and is thus not a quality link.By having quality backlinks, you can able to attract visitors to your site.
  • I've heard different opinions on this but I'd say pay more attention to the page PR where the link is coming from, regardless of relevance.
  • having relavent backlinks is only considered. it has so many advantages.

    coz it is easy to get traffic from search engines. when its relavent. but if it is not relavent it is difficult to get ranked high coz the traffic will ovbsly be low.

    so it is always suggestable to have relavent baclinks.
  • I think it's pretty difficult to define what is most important. A backlink is relevant, but nofollow or without PR can not give you an advantage.
  • A backlink is a backlink.What of if you have a nice content on A niche and someone put a link to your site on his B niche site,wouldn't google not recognize this just because it is not relevant.
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  • I think relevance is of high importance when it comes to ranking high on google.
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