Too Many Non-Niche-Specific Links?

[UnderRugSwept]

Something just occurred to me today.

I work in-house for an embroidered patch company, but I respond to a lot of HARO queries about Marketing, SEO, SEM, Web Design, ect. So, we have a lot of links from these types of sites. Additionally, I have done guest blogs on these topics because those are what I'm knowledgeable about.

We also have links from customers' personal blogs or websites stating they got their patches from us and are happy, blah, blah, blah.

On top of that, we hired someone who ended up getting tons of .edu links by spamming blogs. Oy.

I'd estimate only about 10% of our links come from embroidery, sewing, screen printing, promotional products, etc types of sites.

I guess it's not really known or documented how much weight Google places on niche-specific links--we just assume that it matters, and I'm sure it does.

Our rankings are fine now, but I'm looking for some opinions from other SEOs about how much they think this will matter in the future or how much it matters now. Could this hurt us in the future?

.

[MatthewBarby]

If you think about the links to your website as a web of semantic data. If your website was about cats and you have lots of websites that also talk about cats linking to you then Google can identify that your website is, in fact, about cats. However, if your website is about cats and you have a lot of websites that link to you about motor racing, then this can confuse Google and actually maybe believe that your website is, in fact about motor racing.

Semantically similar information is becoming more and more important and is the basic fundamental of search. Having a lot of links pointing to your website can help with building authority to your website, but niche specific links are invaluable.

Hope this helps,

Matt.

[Vizergy]

I don't believe that non-specific YET naturally built links will ever hurt you.  Obviously they will never help quite as much as industry specific links but the fact remains that they are not spam; they are real, honestly built relationships.  I would not spend one second worrying about those links.  I would also, however, not spend lots of energy or time building more if there are more relevant links that you could be spending your time trying to build.

I would probably do my best to dump those spammy .edu links though.  But that's just me

Cheers!

[UnderRugSwept]

Two very good answers, however they're rather contradictory to each other. I'm still not sure what to do about this.

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Marisa,

I think what me and Billy are both saying here is to put most of your focus toward building niche-specific links. The other links will come, and it is actually good to have non-niche related links so that it looks natural to Google.

What I was trying to say was this if, for example, 80% of your links all came from motor racing websites, and your website is about cats, this can be confusing. If only 20% come from there, 20% from dog websites, 10% from directories, etc, then this is good.

Make sure that you don't focus too much on building non-niche specific links though as the most powerful links are the related ones. Also, completely agree with Billy regarding getting rid of those spammy .edu links. They could come back to haunt you.

Hope this has cleared things up,

Matt.

[Vizergy]

Agreed.  I didn't think our answers were contradictory, I agree with you totally.  I just didn't feel she needed to spend time trying to get rid of the naturally built non-niche links and I don't think you thought so either.

Cheers!

[MatthewBarby]

Agreed