Can you ever rank for content that you publish on your website that doesn't relate to the main niche of the site?
Yes, but do not except a good rank. Of course you can rank that content further with link building. Cheers,
Why not, but it will require much more effort to get well-ranked. PS. trendsa, you've made you day, mister digitalpoint replied to you ;-)
May I ask how Google distinguished whether your content is related or not? What makes it so much harder to rank for if it's unrelated to the main niche?
It seems like in MayDay gets smarter in identifying and assigning websites to specific niches (check the poll on MayDay in the Google DP section). Comparing the page content with the niche assigned is a piece of cake then, I suppose. Finally, if you strive for a keywords in SERP which are not within your main niche, then you will end up in competition with websites that have this niche assigned as a main one. The results you might foresee, I guess.
Yes you can rank for your targeted keywords just by doing link building using keywords as anchor text even content is unrelated. But like GeorgeKuipers it needs a lot of effort.