LINK BUILDING - Does it really matter if the link is not relevant?
-
Hi guys,
I have just done a lot of link buillding and I thought I am just going to link build and I am not going to go after RELVANT links.
I have property/real esate website and I have been any kind of link builidng and I have noteced some good increases in rankings..
So my questions is; Does it really matter if the link is relvant to property or real estate if I have got ranking increases? Or will it later harm my site??
Thanks
Gareth
-
What about Charities? If I earn a link from a charity clearly it's not a relevant link.
How are directories relevant? Cleary DMOZ, Business etc... don’t have anything to do with your website?
What if an SEO blogger writes a article on a best industry website... say "tractors.com" this isn't a relevant link and is complete natural?
What happens if a supplier links to your website... That does your CRM system? This isn't a relevant link?
Secondly if your selling "Tractors" and get a link from a business blog or finance blog (with high DA) this isn't relevant, but people who read business/finance blog still buy "Trackers"? So doesn't that make them relevant?
How you do determine what’s relevant and what’s not? It's very difficult to get relevant links high DA websites if you’re in a very specific niche.
I've seen business with a net worth of 100 billion... but plenty of links that are high DA, but not complete relevant links? How can a business of this size possibly take these risks?
Isn't it ok to get irrelevant links along as they are not paid links?
-
I should be clear that I'm absolutely in favor of building relevant links - I think they're better for traffic, conversion, etc., and are a future-proofing quality signal. I just don't want to tell you that relevance is critical to SEO/ranking, as it just seems that's not as true as I'd like it to be.
There are no hard limits, but it really depends on quality. For example, if you attract links through content marketing or social media, you could get 100s of links in a day and have no problems. There's no limit on "natural" links. If you're pushing the quality boundary or manually link-building, you do have to be more careful, but that depends on the nature of the link-building. The best I can tell you is to diversify. Don't rely too much on any one tactic, especially when you're starting out. A new link profile is a lot more vulnerable than one with a solid base of high-authority links.
-
Dr. Peter,
I have a doubt. I usually make my link building manually and I definitly think is more wise doing like this, because I actually can choose what links are interesting to my objective and also I can document all those links and control the situacion.
My main doubt is, how many links should I do everyday? I mean, is there any limit? Any thing that I should now?
Tks in advance!
Pedro M Pereira
-
I'm going to come somewhere in the middle. I think the data supports Eppie in that relevance doesn't matter nearly as much as we think it should (except for anchor text). Relevant pages typically don't pass more link-juice than irrelevant pages, and Google probably doesn't have the capacity to test relevance on every single link (that's a huge computational task).
On the other hand, chasing only low-relevance links can bite you. Too often, low-relevance means low-quality in other dimensions, and it can be a negative signal or even lead to a penalty. Diversity is very important. I wouldn't worry about relevance in terms of any given link - if you could get a link from CNN.com and it wasn't very relevant, for example - do it. No question. If you only have low-relevance links, though, you're probably doing something wrong.
Keep in mind, too, that links have other value, including traffic and lead-generation. Low-relevance links probably have no value beyond SEO. If Google devalues them, you're left with nothing. If Google ignores a high-relevance link, but it's driving traffic, you're still making money.
-
Great thanks Charles -
So basically if I find high domain authooruty releated sites would this help do you think??
Should I be looking for domain authority of about 75+ ??
-
Keeping it topical is usually best if, as Eppie noted, it is a site you genuinely care about.
Since you have a site I am going to assume you spent some time before building the site thinking about who your audience is.
The litmus test you should use is this.
If you had a link on the site you are looking at, and your audience came across the link would they think it was out of place? Or would the context of the link be a natural fit with the overall theme of your site?
If it is a natural fit, then go for it. If it isn't then it is probably going to be viewed as spammy.
-
No, you don't need relevant links to improve the rankings of your website. You need links from sites with authority using anchor text variations that include your target keyword.
I could give you hundreds of examples of competitive search results where the sites ranking #1 pull all (or a vast majority) of their links from unrelated sites. For the sake of brevity, I'll give you a single example that illustrates the point very well.
Do a Google search for pitching machines and you're likely to see pitchingmachines.net as the first result. This site has an advantage in that it's an exact match domain, but if you explore its link profile you'll see that a huge chunk of their links come from a blog network and almost none of their links come from relevant sites. Most of the websites they get links from include content covering a wide range of topics.
As to potential harm to your site later, I'd exercise some caution. My personal rule of thumb is that if it's a site I can't afford to get banned (a client's site or a real business of mine), I only build links I'd feel comfortable explaining to Google. If you're not afraid of a potential ban and just want to rank and bank as much as you can quickly, then don't worry about it.
-
Hi Charles,
Thank you very much for input! Really useful!
I have been doing work on social and now I am going to try and build property related links.
My website is based around property, homes, houses and real estate so do you think if i build links from websites that is home, houses, property and real esate realated then it should be OK???
Thanks
G
-
Relevancy matters.
The links will count until one of your competitors notices and reports you, or until Google's team notices and penalizes you as it will be perceived as an unnatural gaming of the system.
Overall it is a gamble.
Neither of those things might happen.
If they do happen then Google might just discount the links, and not penalize the site directly. Or they could pull a JC Penny and penalize the site across the board for a set period of time.
Basically you are spending time on getting bad links when you could spend your time building new quality content and getting word out to real people about your products/services via blogs and social media.
Your choice is a valid choice, but can backfire, and should be thought of as a high risk short term choice
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Inbound link is follow link but we put no follow link back - is it beneficial for rankings?
Dear Moz Community, We are operating in a niche market, where there are not so many content marketing options. What we are left with are link exchanging with relevant sites that are on the same topic but to not directly compete with us. Now we know that if we link back to site A and site a links back to us - for google this is not a very good link. But, some of the sites we are exchanging links with, do not know the term follow vs no follow links. My question - if your link is to site A is a no follow link but they give us a follow link - does it mean thats a better option than a follow vs follow. Thanks for help!
Link Building | | advertisingcloud0 -
Link building
hello, my website is www.anavasis.gr and it is in Greek. Which is the best way to build backlinks? Hire a freelancer and let him making links to any site? What should i ask from a freelancer when building links for me? what should i give him like (keywords) ?. what is important to take take of? When you go to freelancer.com there are people offering backlinks for less than 100$ is that a good method? Will this help my seo? Is it a matter that my site is in Greek? thanks
Link Building | | anavasis0 -
Anyone have experience with AdTaxi for link building services?
Recently a client of ours received a proposal from a local newspaper for search related services, including link building. I believe the name of the company the paper is working with for some of these services is AdTaxi, which i had not heard of before. Anyone have experience with these guys from a link building standpoint? I know that here we are more "do it yourselfers" and for the most part, we handle all of the on-page and technical SEO for our client's sites, but link building as a dedicated service isn't something we have the resources to offer so I'm just looking to do some research. Thank you! -William
Link Building | | AudigyGroupDigital0 -
Link building need help
I've been doing link building for the past 2 months for a website. I've put together some blog posts and submitted them to some sites. However, I don't want to repeat the content on other sites or use the same sites again for links. The problem with this company is that nothing is happening. The last press release they issued was in 2010 and in the 4 months I've been working for them nothing has happened. I have found a few good quality websites in our niche which I could approach for links, but I want to have good content to put on them. Does anyone have any ideas as how to create content that would be suitable, bearing in mind this a B2B company.
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
Link Building Speed
Hello everyone, This is my first day at SEOMOZ and I have already searched the forum for an answer to my question with no luck. How do I work out the pace at which I should be building links? Everyone talks about the importance of makling link building seem natural/organic, but how xactly do you go about this? Many thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ups0 -
Two link building proposals, which one is better?
Hi there, Our site has a DA of 73, MozRank 5.40, MozTrust 5.88, and over 45,000 external links. We haven't done any offsite SEO before, we got to where we are today organically. We're thinking about hiring a link building firm to help increase our rankings and we've received two proposals. Firm A offered to build us 30 links from DA 50+ sites over 3 months. The anchor text will most likely just be our domain name. Firm B offered to build us 90 links from PR2+ sites over 3 months. They have control over the anchor text. Given our site's profile, which proposal makes more sense for us? Would either of these initiatives move the needle for us? Thanks.
Link Building | | anonp1 -
How important is the relevance of a link compared to its authority?
Would be interested on some perspectives on link relevancy versus page and domain authority in terms of importance for SERP. How important is the relevance of the site linking back compared to the page and domain authority of that site
Link Building | | casper4340 -
April Fool's for Link Building
Is there a better day for link baiting than April 1st? The time has come for everyone to share their April Fool's Day link building campaigns! This is our second attempt at capitalizing on April Fools with the first attempt (2010) falling flat. http://bigfi.sh/aFd2011
Link Building | | RyanOD0