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
-
link building problems
Hello everyone
Link Building | | mkeshavarzmozprodt
I am not sure about the way Moz rank websites but sometimes I think it's a bit confusing. As an example, it kept changing in 3 days by going up and down. In addition, It is not compatible with my Ahrefs ranking. Would you please tell me which one is more correct and accurate in terms of my website authority?
It would be my pleasure if you take look at it first. Thank you in advance.
https://www.englishdon.ir/0 -
Link Building
I have a question as competitor made backlinks on longtail keywords and just for one specific post, If I wanna rank in Google SERP, then should I have to do the same strategy as my competitor did. or can I use just my own keywords to get rank?
Link Building | | aamirmurtaza670 -
Do links like this really help for SEO?
I was doing research with Moz's Link Explorer and one of our competitors had almost 50 links coming from sites like this. Mostly nofollow but we all know that today the nofollow can still help. My question is this: Will links like these help in any shape or matter. The reason I am asking is because Link Explorer is finding them, so I am sure Google will find them as well. Examples of sites: http://www.microlinkinc.com, http://www.cmolink.com The sites that I found via analyzing had DA 35-40 I don't want to share all urls but you get the point. Basically these sites are free keyword analyzing sites, once you put in a keyword they will bring up to 20 sites that rank for that keyword. And my research suggests that these pages stay and are crawl-able since Moz has crawled them. For example Moz says: date first seen 09/12/2018 so almost 6 months has passed but that result that was searched I am assuming has stayed. Would it make sense to search on such sites keywords that you know you are ranking for and then your site would be listed below and stay there for Google to crawl and another nofollow link in our link basket. Is my thinking correct or is it waste of time. Frankly it would take 2sec to run a search for each keyword. Any feedback and thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Davit
Link Building | | Davit19850 -
Guidelines for keyword-targeting and link building?
Hello, Every month, I set a goal of targeting 10 - 15 relevant keywords for my website. I then attempt to boost my site's rankings for these terms through a combination of content writing and white hat, non-paid link building. My question is: Are there general guidelines for keyword-targeting and backlinks? Is it healthy to target 10 - 15 different keywords (or more??) like this per month?
Link Building | | BBEXNinja0 -
Link Building
I noticed another SEO builds backlinks (tons) on a social media profile that then has a link to his client's site. Another site he builds backlinks are a bitly account that 301's to the clients account. Why would you do this? Is it that you can build links indiscriminately to build a page up in PR to 3-4-5 PR, then pass that higher PR to your site (safe). Is that PR building method better than placing 100's of smaller PR links on your site? It seems logical that if you passed in a tremendous amount of juice to juice a site up to PR4, you won't make your main site PR4 by JUST that link. You would need to build a lot of PR4 sites to make your site PR4. Why not just put all the backlinks on the main page instead of building up secondary social profiles etc... Please reveal this secret. I know a lot of SEOs are using this method. Help 🙂
Link Building | | JML11790 -
Link Building Methods
Hi, If i hire a SEO company, what kind of links they will build for me. If anyone own a seo company can you let me know.My question is if i create a new website, what kind of link building techniques should i use other than, articles, press releases, social bookmarking, directories. As i am competiting with very tough competition. I have analyzed my competitors and they bought sitewides which are paid ones. Without paid ones i think it is is very hard for me to get into the competition. Can someone discuss more link building methods also. Awaiting for your responce. Regards.
Link Building | | Dex32320 -
External links--Does it matter which page they go to?
I'll be doing some linkbuilding in which I will be asking manufacturers of the products we sell to link back to our site. My thought was to have a single page for our "Valued Suppliers" with a badge that I would give them the embed code for. If the URL goes to a "Valued Supplier" page on our site where there are multiple manufacturers, will this help my entire site or only the page that's being linked to? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | AC_Pro0 -
Link building ideas for dentists?
Some ideas to start this discussion: Guestblogging / articles Answerings Q&A's as dentist Starting a blog Any other good link building ideas for dentists?
Link Building | | EdgySEO0