Hey people! I've got another question for all of ya again today! Basically, how important is a links relation to the same niche, in terms of PR. If I purchase, for example, a PR7 or PR8 link from a poker website, which was directed to my Soccer website, would I receive a large boost? Or not really? Would the effects be drowned down by google? Or would it reap large benefits!?? Let me know your thoughts
Technically that should boost your PR, but not necessarily your rankings. You may not get full benefits for a link that is in such a different niche. Ideally links should somehow related to your website. Google probably isn't smart enough to notice that the link isn't related though. So it may still help rankings too. If the link is a paid link, it would be risky to do this with a gambling website. It may lead the link to count for nothing or it could even harm your rankings.
In a best case scenario, a link from a high pr site in the same niche as you is best. However, if you were getting a link from a pr8 site in an unrelated niche and the price was fair, I would consider it. To be a pr8 site, you have to have a lot of authority and if that site has authority, then google tends to trust the links from it.
Ah ok, well yea it is a paid link, for $70 per month, there arn't any other external links on the site, so I think it might be worth it, maybe If i create a gambling related page on my soccer site (From what I see, this is acceptable as betting is a huge part of football) - and link it to that, rather than the homepage, it would carry more weight?? What do you guys thinK?
Check this Google guideline... http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356&query=quality+links&topic=&type=
I wouldn't affect your website since that is on a different niche. It would be considered a normal back link but that is not going to boost your site's page rank as well.
It all depends on how you acquired those links. If you bought the links and google found out, then it would lower the benefits of those links. If you got the links in a legit or stealth manner, then it doesn't matter what the niche is. People always talk about how you should get links from your niche, but it doesn't make a big difference.