I've come to the conclusion that there is far more talk about relevant backlinking having to do with "good for you" and "helping your site" and "being good links" than exactly HOW it is directly related to PageRank. Surely relevant links help with the SERPs. I'm not arguing that. But it's so freaking hard to find out how it affects your PR! Is it a dampening factor? Is it a toggle/filter? Does it even matter for PR? The reason I'm asking is because I have a web site Harlem6.com that I'm working on, that is currently just a redirect. I want to know that when I post content, this stuff will hit high in the SERPs no matter the competition. The problem is, unlike internet marketing, relevant links are fricking super hard to find with high PR (for this niche). The guy I got working on the backlinks hardly finds one a week now. However, if I find that irrelevant backlinks still count a little, than we can move the link building department forward. If not, than we have to be looking at driving traffic through external content and paid advertising only. This is a crucial move for the internet department at Entaprise Entertainment. Screw my explanation. I only need quick "how it works" answers. If I don't get answers, I'm just going to run an experiment and keep it secret(because then I know this stuff will take off like wildfire and eventually get to the software engineers at Google...cuz Google hates grey hat SEO). If you have info, it would be great for you to cite your sources. How much do irrelevant links count towards PageRank by default?
I found this forum thread somewhere. Though it is unspecific as to the credibility of the author's conclusions, #4 suggests a dampening factor for being on sites where random links occur: aka link farms, blogs, forums w/ sigs, etc. This is not a filter or toggle, but rather it represents encouragement to spread the word to your website, though it may be seemingly unrelated, at the same time discouraging frequent spamming. Still, if the dampening factor is a constant, than there is hope for the link development department. Anyone got any more research on relevancy affecting PR?
This article about PageRank suggests that relevancy has little to do with keyword relevancy or site relevancy, but rather merely one factor based off link popularity in a larger equation for the SERPs. I'm not going to do an experiment. I'm just going to push the internet department forward to begin link building all over the net. You never know where there is a hip hop fan who might click through, too.