Do legitimately earned links from unrelated sites help or hurt?
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We have a few charity events coming up that have offered to link back to our homepage. While we do genuinely like the charities we are going to sponsor, I'm not sure how those links will look seo-wise. For example, one is for the local high school basketball team and another is for a Pediatric Care Mud Run.
To a human, these links make perfect sense, but to a robot, I'm not sure if it differentiates these links from spam/some negative link. Granted, I understand that a small percentage of links probably won't do anything either way, but I'd like to ignore that for the purposes of my question. All things being equal, do links such as these help or hurt?
Thanks for your time and insight,
Ruben
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they are totally fine.
The link will be hosted on a page where features other businesses that they also did the same thing as you did. they are relevant from a "local" theme perspective.
don't over think it

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Just get those links. Consider it as a way to diversify your current link portfolio. Wouldn't that actually be natural looking vs everything being within the same niche? Plus those links are one of a kind so just don't worry about it.
If you really can't help but worry, ask for Brand/URL anchor texts with a "long-enough" description. You'll be fine

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Hi Ruben,
If we get all technical you could argue that a quantity of sites pointed towards you could be seen as bad but lets look at this another way.
Lets say you had a coffee shop and several completely unrelated blogs post a link to your site because they like your coffee, the sites them selves have nothing to do with coffee but the link is still good because its telling Google that clearly you are a good coffee shop. Hopefully my bad Analogy will shed some light on it.
You could fret over all links pointed and over optimize your site,Don't look at back links as something that will make or break your site
first thing you always put the user first and if it makes sense for the user the rest will fall in to placeShort answer - No
Best of luck and I hope my answer helps.
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Sounds good! Thanks for the help.