How important is the relevance of a link compared to its authority?

[casper434]

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

[antonradev]

Let's take one isolated example.

If we start blog or educational website on topic "How to build home-made hand clock", which is very non-popular topic with specialized sphere, this could easy rank our website with the contents only itself. This is the case when there is no other pages in SERP on "home made hand clock".

If there is some other websites, our ranking would be little more slow and hard, but just a few links could do the job.

I have always thought about links, grouped into 2 directions.

Relative links.

Some forum about hand-made clocks or hand made stuff appears on the Net. One link could show up to our website. The forum has low Domain Authority and other metrics. This is very fine with the schema that Google likes, right?

Non relative links

Lets say we find with some tools links to our website about home-made clocks. We will check the link and it appears to be not so relative.

Cases with the non relative links are mostly 2:

1. Where they came from
2. And for what reason

What website can put link to our home made clocks?

Some very popular forum maybe, very popular blog owner, maybe some general web directories. Cases that are fine and real are always OK. We can think about lot of such cases if we are creative.

News magazine website or travel website may put link with no reason and it is not natural.

High authority links are welcome to help with ranking with hard keywords and phrases. But when they are for reason. They are like an chocolate on the cake. Help to rank on the custommer eye in the store ...

Relevant links build the keywords, the site topics and its relevance.

So these are the important cases for me. Relevant cases and authority only with reason

I hope I helped with my ideas

Anton Radev

[AlanMosley]

IMO

Relevancy is much more important. of cause the best is to have both. but think like a search engine, they want to see wujho is recomeneding you for a subject. A relevant link in the content is hard to beat. i non relevant link in the footer is priobably worthless.