While searching for links in my niche (marketing, advertising), I come across tons of high PR pages with good site authority. But a lot of those have nothing to do with my niche, such as political blogs. Should I place my links? Or will that have a detrimental effect on my SERP?
Value of irrelevant links would be lower than relevant links but if you can get these links easily, you should go for them.
relevancy and authority both matters. if you can get a link from authority sire or other high PR site, then i would go for it. besides, few irelevant backlinks can be a good mix as you want backlinks coming from all different sources. i would keep irelevant backlinks to minimum btw
one should try to get relevant links, and concentrated on getting links from related sites, however, irrelevant links do help to a certain extent, especially if they are anchored, i'd say, relevant o rnot, when you can get a link get it, if it won't help, it won't hurt.
Although there is no harm towards having extra links, I would keep the numbers to minimum, maybe a ratio of 7 to 3 (ratio of relevant against irrelevant links)
Irrelevant links will not harm you but better to keep a tab on them. If they are high authority sites and of very good quality then you can think of the link from the visitor point of view. Then its better
I agree with this. If you can get strong links, get them regardless of relevancy. However, the emphasis should always be on relevancy if you can help it.
links are required, by anymeans. Your niche might be a micro one so getting a broad niche won't hurt. Even if they are irrelevant still it will help. For example there was atime when google loved social book marking and other web 2.0 sites, but now they say it is down. So my point is do it. you never know when google is going to change its tactics. So go for carpet bombing, leave no stone unturned.
This is not true as my sites have A LOT of irrelevant 1 way links going to them and they are still indexed in Google and ranking well for the term they target. IMO, if you don't have much time you should concentrate on getting relevant links. However if you have a lot of time or if you can get irrelevant links easily then you should go for it as well as they help to rank your sites.
Irrelevant links help, but not as much as relevant ones. It's still a good idea to submit your site to them, but always strive for relevancy.
Keep in mind though that relevant links come under a wide net. If you sell rings then relevant links could be jewelry, wedding rings, wedding gifts, wedding traditions, diamonds, silver, gold, turquoise, necklaces, loose stones, precious metals, retail, shopping, fashion................................. Relevance does not mean the same niche but something that relates to your niche in a natural way.
I got tons of PR 5 to PR 6+ links (literally hundreds)+, many are from .edu or .org that are PR 7+ that isn't related to my niche while I was searching for links related to my niche. I found some lowbie links that are related to my niche, but vast majority of those are spammed to death. But for me, it's so much easier just to put my links up to high authority sites. As for irrelivant links hurting ratings, I am not so sure about it. If that is the case, why bother doing link building? Just place your competitor's links onto those spammy irrevalant sites and you'd be beating them up in Google rating. I'd think Google's algorithm is smarter than that.
Yeah all links should benefit you. It just depends to what degree. You can't control who puts links to your website on theirs.