Do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases?

[Ron10]

do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases?  i've always heard don't get links from unrelated sites but if that mattered, then how would sites with totally diverse pages such as newspaper sites, sears, and other catalogue sites rank for these diverse subjects on their site?  How does Facebook rank when it gets 100,000 links a day from sites that have nothing to do with a social media site?  I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this.  Also,  Do links from unrelated sites give less push than related links?

Take care,
Ron

[SanketPatel]

Its not about related or unrelated sites but its about Is it natural ? For example, Suppose I have seo case study of my website and I write blogpost in seomoz in which I mention out URL my website which is natural.

[MoosaHemani]

Interesting question but got some easy answer for this!

Yes, links from unrelated sites are going to impact negatively on your website and possibility you will witness a dip in rankings from your desired key phrases. The reason why websites like newspapers and social media platforms like facebook are ranking when they are getting links from all Tom, Dick and harry websites is because news papers and social media platforms are talking various different topics… news paper in a day talks about international news, business news, talibans, and Hollywood movie reviews… similar is the case with social media so it’s possible for them to link from every different website.

Plus, Links when build have patterns that Google can track, there is a huge difference in pattern between building links and getting links naturally… Google possibility can track this and then analyze things accordingly.

Also, Google have 200+ signals that Google keep in mind when ranking websites against keyphrases so you never know if links are the real problems why you are witnessing a dip in rankings from your desired key phrases.

[lbi-tr]

Hey Ron,

Hope you are doing well. I put together a video answering you question for you

http://youtu.be/e3oORYUDKe0

Hope you find it helpful.

Thanks,

Ross

[Ron10]

Hi Ross!  I'm honored that you made a video response for my questions,  thanks so much for the extra effort!  You said i really needed to be more specific, so here's what actually coined my questions.  I have a rock band site that i'm promoting and to get some high authority links, i was planning on creating a page that had lots of employment resources for music students and then email the music colleges in my state this information to get them to link to this employment resource page from their employment resources page and then funnel the page rank to my bands promo pages.  Is this a good idea or will Google now think that my band site is an employment site?  Thanks in advance for your input!

Take care,

Ron

[Ron10]

One more question on relevance, is guest blogging for links worth the effort if it's an irrelevant blog but your post is very relevant to your site?

Will  the promised "do follow" link you can earn from SEOMOZ hurt your rankings for your key phrases if your site is not an SEO site?

[KeriMorgret]

For a good laugh, take a look at what Google's captioning system thinks Ross is saying. I don't think it handles non-American accents as well.

Ross, for the people who cannot view YouTube videos or have audio at their workplace, could you include at least a brief summary in your answer in this forum? Thanks so much!

[lbi-tr]

Hey Ron,

That's a great idea. Google won't think you site is an employment site but it will think the page is related to employment in some way.

If you have a link that directs back to your brand promo page this will help it rank for the terms you want.

To make sure the promo page is coming up for the right terms, link to internally with the keyword (or a variation of) that you want to rank for. Also remember to make sure the keyword is in your meta title.

Another thing you might want to look into is getting a gig at the local student unions and making sure they link out to your band page with the official student union site. These types of links would also be valuable long term.

Hope that helps,

Ross.

[lbi-tr]

IT won't hurt your site and will probably pass back some benefit but just how irrelevant is it? Back in the days of the Google wonder wheel, I was amazed to see how Google deemed certain topics semantically related.

The best thing to do is look at the domain authority in open site explorer. If it is above 30 you are probably on to a winner. If you were to write an article for SEO Moz that detailed how to do SEO as a musician, that would be a great link and a great article. IF you wrote an article for SEO Moz that explained tri tone substitution or chord progressions, that would be a bad article and a poorer quality link.

If the site is more than a year old i wouldn't be scared of throwing some less relevant links at it, as long as you don't nail the same anchor text and don't leave any footprints.

Hope that helps. .

[Ron10]

Thanks so much Ross!