The importance of unrelated links

I can understand that building related links can help pull in traffic as people looking at page_A will see it linked to related page_B but how do search engines look at this, or rather how much weight do they apply to it?

I’m thinking about doing a few link exchanges with anyone that will exchange, as well as possible blog post exchanges. I’ve yet to find anyone else in my niche here, so I’m thinking that the people I’d exchange with here at Digital Point would only give me PR and maybe Linkback, but likely little to know traffic. Likewise, someone’s links on my pages would likely give little to no traffic. Both sides would be unrelated.

I guess I’m asking…

How important are unrelated links?

 

If you have to put any effort into finding unrelated links, don't do it.

Spend the resources to find even much less related links.

That's if your website is geared towards specific keywords. If you need generic traffic, then that's another story.

Didn't someone say: 'Content is king, relevancy is queen' ?

 

I'm thinking about using a knight, a bishop and maybe a few pawns I'm just wondering if I can win the game with this strategy.

I have done a few reated exchanges with friends, family and strangers, but I'm also thinking of unrelated and/or semi-related links and link exchanges. By exchanging a few blog posts, footer links, blogroll spots, etc with sites that may or may not have the same topics as me. And I'm wondering how those will affect my sites in SERPS, PR, traffic, etc...

 

Actually, I'm roughly in your niche.

But you linking to sites not in your niche would not make me link to your site in a hurry.

Links from unrelated sites do help some, but you need to have pages on your topic linking to you - to get the google trust going.

 

If you are looking at rankings, unrelevant links are usually not worth the effort.
If you are looking at PR, it obviously depends on the PR of the linking webpage.
If instead you are looking for generic traffic, that is just numbers, visitors who may weel be not interested after all and just "happen" to click on the link, they are fine.

Any kind of links always offer benefits as far as spidering is concerned, but this isn't a big issue with well established websites.

And after reminding you that I believe that there is no such thing as a bad link that will badly affect your website, there's another factor to take into the equation: anchor text. If that's spot on, it can help more and justify the effort of gaining an otherwise unrelated link.

I personally don't like big link exchange campaigns because they take up too much of my resources when it comes to check if the link is still in place, if it wasn't moved to a less visible area, if too many links have been added to the same page, if a 'no follow' tag has been implemented, etc.

So basically my opinion for irrelevant links isn't that great...

Good luck!

 

I think as long as the link is one way, it can only help. But recip with an unrelated site? Not good.

 

That's true too.

And also, sitewide links, or links placed amid many other ones, possibly unrelated too, can be of very little help.

 

I would never link to a completely unrelated site. That being said, anyone that wants to link to me is free to do so. And I'm always fine with doing a reciprocal link to a quality site in my niche.

 

I guess it's official then

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What about three way linking? Is that any better...

I have a few blogs I'd not really mind if I linked to random sites, provided those random sites in turn pointed a link to my main site.

 

Well actually unrelated links are good. They canpt be considered bad.
Just take statcounter.com as an example, it has a PR of 10 and i think 99% of it's links are unrelated.

A year ago I linked a PR0 (sitewide!) page only from a PR6 website that was completely unrelated to it (and I linked even back from the PR0 site to the PR6 site) but with the next PR the new website got PR5...

 

Yes, but it works just fo PR. I guess that if yo're after that it works, and it may work to get some generic traffic also, but not very much for rankings.

 

Links from unrelated sites can pass PR the same as any other link, but will not help you with SERPS with google. It can help you with Yahoo rankings, but can also lead to a ban with MSN. I wouldn't do it unless your intent is only to increase PR to sell links.

 

With all the recent discussion about 'paid links' now I'm thinking this idea is getting worse and worse... in fact, I'm now pondering the validity of even valid links & link trades regardless of relevance.

I'll change my focus to actual content so I can linkbait true discussions (which is likely where my mind should have been along)...I just hope those that take the bait don't get flagged as 'paid to post' *mutters*