LINK BUILDING - Does it really matter if the link is not relevant?

[GAZ09]

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

[SL_SEM]

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.

[GAZ09]

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

[EppieVojt]

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.

[SL_SEM]

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.

[GAZ09]

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+ ??

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[PedroM]

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

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[charles1]

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?