Who is is likely to rank higher out of these to example sites in the same nieche. Site 1 Backlinks 200 - all very related links Site 2 backlinks 4000 - almost all unrelated I am only talking about SERPS and not any traffic directed from the links. My own feeling is that site 2 will rank higher on the basis that so many more sites are voting for it. This however dispels the theory that Google seeks quality over quantity when it comes to links. What do you guys reckon?
In which search engine? I think Google is the only one with a good theme detection and ranking algorithim. So in G, the 200 links might be better (assuming both groups of links are from the same quality sites). In MSN and Yahoo, I haven't seen any evidence indicating that they can sense theme/relevance well yet.
I would agree, this is demonstrated by a couple of related sites I have, they both have around 100-150 directory links, however the first has a couple of sitewides from unrelated sites and is doing well in msn but is nowhere in google. The second has just a few very well targeted links (about 10) and is starting to show for a few keywords in google now but is nowhere to be seen in MSN. Incidentally the first is only a PR3 with G whilst the second is a PR4.
Very good question and I've asked it in the past and did not get any concrete answer. Until now I have not being picky in which sites link to me including PR. I my case PR is not important to me but traffic patterns from the linking sites. I am currently conducting an experiment, where I will be batching over 3800+ links from related sites, with my keyword in the content, title, url and text link to my site. I suspect this will launch my sites to new SERPs levels hopefully, but will not know for sure until I've completed the deployment.
Well I have seen this happen in a few niches, one site with 10 backlinks, all extremely on niche. Outrank a site with about 200 backlinks. about the same age of site. So yeah it could have been that they were more on topic. The first site was a little better optimized, but not by heaps. Brad
without knowing other factors: Site 1 Backlinks 200 - all very related links (would do better in google) Site 2 backlinks 4000 - almost all unrelated (would do better in MSN/YAHOO)
i agree that Google will rank the site1 better than site2...For me it is better to link with related, quality and trusted sites...