Does the websites content need to be similar to mine to be beneficial? For example, if I owned a swimming pool website, should my backlinks be from mostly swimming pool websites?
It doesn't have to be related you just get more weight if the page is related. It makes your anchor tag more creditable. They figure if this site likes your site enough to link to it then it should rank better in google. If the page isn't the same content though they just figure you bought the link, own the other website or know the person who owns the site. This hasn't been confirmed by anyone but it's just me personal observation.
Content relevancy is the most important thing for search engines. If you owned a websites related to "Swimming Pool", you should get backlinks from your industry related websites like swimming pool supplies, swimming articles, swimming equipment, swimming apparel and bath tubs etc. That will highly effective for your website.
I agree its best to have as many links pointing to your site that's on topic as possible but there can be a limit to how many on topic links you can get. It would be very difficult IMO to get say 1000 decent links from other swimming pool sites if 1000 links is your goal to compete with the top 10 results. Another thing that gets me is how relevant do they really have to be and how does Google really know what is relevant and what isn't? how can you build an algo that is 100% correct? Lets take swimming pools as an example. This swimming pool site gets a link from a web site that is about chlorine, now the chlorine web site has no mention of swimming pools what so ever within its content it also has no links pointing to it from swimming pool sites. However it is a an authority site for chlorine. How relevant is chlorine to swimming pools? very relevant. So how does Google know that? I don't think it can be that accurate.
I suspect that having lots of links, but little or no relevant links might raise flags but I think the relevancy factor is exaggerated. Has anyone actually experienced changing to a focused relevant link building campaign improving the returns on effort?
This is very true. For example the company i worked for ranked page one for the 1 Billion result term "Web Design", and i can assure you 99% of our backlinks came from the branding links on clients websites that were in no way related to Web Design. Related links are good for a visitor and click throughs, but people worry about it far too much.
Consider getting a backlink on the front page of Yahoo, which would be a very, very valuable link indeed. What could one say the Yahoo homepage is 'about'? - news? weather? search? celebrity shenanigans? A lot of webpages simply don't have a single theme but links from them would be very valuable. Consider all the thousands of blogs that talk about different subjects with each post. Ultimately, I would say that, yeah, G could probably know what a page's topic or theme is - they certainly do this with context-matching with Adsense. And there may be a slight boost to any link to similarly on-topic sites. But off-topic sites would have to have a lot of link juice too.
Backlinks from the related sites ? Buxx - shxx ! The related sites are your major competiter ! Would they willing to link to you ? Would you willing to link to same theme of your competiter's site ? In real life,that's most of the webmaster concern about ! In my opinion, link is everything,no matter related or not !!! What you can do is just focus a little bit more on related links,that's all !!! remember: link is everything !!! Get all kinds of links pointing to your site no matter related theme or not !!!
AirsoftGuns: It doesn't mean that not relevant link is not counted at all, but it has much less power of highly related and targetted links. Remember the story with "Google bombing", where people linked from random sites to manipulate with the results with certain purposes? Google has cut those 'practices'. Do you think how? By hand? I doubt...
every backlink will help you to get better results but if the link is related to your site, it will help more
g bombing still works and is quite rampant - submitting to directories with your keywords as titles is basically g bombing.
Well i guess so.... If i may ask why is your site about bingo yet you flash adultfriendfinder ads? Isnt thier a bingo banner site that could get you more return traffic and keep relevance? thx malcolm
Fluke. I detect the refering url and if it contains an adult phrase I match it up with a corresponding dating site link. This is a throwback to when I used to purchase rebated PPC traffic (if no advertisers match the query my ad would show.) Also alot of ppc traffic on some of the 2nd or 3rd tier networks actually comes from adult sites. Most people will never see the adultfriendfinder ads. If you are refering to the seniorfriendfinder etc ads - my site is also a bingo community with over 12 000 members. I have many regulars, so I serve a variety of ads that are suitable for my demographics.
ok that better explains it as i was a bit baffled at first ..lol Reason is my Adult Directory also has ads and they are from same advertiser but are relevant in topic and wasnt sure if you had other advertisng options... thx malcolm
The two biggest factors in the value of a link are authority and trust So a trusted link from a .gov or a major media site like the Washington Post will give you some good link juice.