First let me start by saying I am new to SEO, but not new to webpage programming. I developed e-commerce applications for a fortune 500 company for the last decade (obviously SEO never came up, since the company brand name is so well known). Sorry if this has been asked many times before. I did a search in the forum, but obviously looking for the words "related link" brings back a ton of responses, but none where what I was looking for . I posted something in a post earlier today about this, but it has been nagging me ever since... What is a "related link"? Everybody is saying that building "related backlinks" is the best way to improve your PR and SERP. But as a programmer I can't image how google would determine that. What makes a site related to another. The example I used earlier today goes as follows. Lets say I have a site about how called "I love hummus" (which I do). Now lets say there is a website on tahini (the sesame butter needed to make hummus), linking back to my site. Is that related? Does google have a recipe for Hummus somewhere in its database? If it is related, how about if I had a link from a site on how to grow Sesame, which is what Tahini is made out of. Would google call that related? If so how about a site about fertilizer that can be used to increase Sesame growth.... you can see how this could go on forever. I don't see how you could programmatically determine this. Or maybe it is all much simpler. A site on Hummus linking to another site on Hummus is related, but nothing else is. I don't know. Does anybody (outside of Google engineers) really know? Let me finish by saying, I am not saying that anybody is right or wrong. Honestly, I do not know enough about SEO to even make an educated guess. Does anybody have any "proof" that this "related link" theory is true? Thank you all for your patience and allowing me my little rant.
A related link is a link that has related content. Thats why they are so greatly appreciated. The more related links you have from sites the better off you are compared to having hundreds of unrelated links.
Hey Raymond. It means that the link should be from a site with content related to yours. For example, if you own a car parts e-shop, you could get related links from car review websites, car loans, etc. Or better yet, from other car parts websites, although it's harder to get links straight from the competition.
But how does the search engine recognize the relation? Is it by the specific keywords both sites optimize for?...a general scan picking up the similarities of all words seen in both sites?...what? As the question goes, how does the search engine know whether "caterpillar" is an insect or a heavy piece of machinery?
It's called site "relevancy". Namely your site will be put in a category, or field of activity by the search engines, based on your content. The caterpillar example is great and it's exactly why we need relevant links: to let the SE's know exactly what our site is about. If your site, based on the caterpillar keyword, gets in a lot of links from heavy machinery websites, then it will know this is the meaning of the word and rank it accordingly. I also like to think keyword harmony is important in determining the relevancy of the site. So if you have a cars and motorcycles website, there's really no use placing "cars" in your a page's title, if its content is about motorcycles (and vice versa).
Thank you, Tudi! That explains a lot. Another example of why relevant backlinks are iso mportant in order to be properly recognized by the SEs.
it means that it has a similar theme to your own. I.E if you are a finance site and you link to another finance site this is a realted link and google will rank it more highly as a result
Thanks for all the feedback. This is really interesting to me, a kind of academic exersize if you will. It is interesting to here the views on what different people think are related. The simple relationships, finace to finance, travel to travel, etc... seem to be the simple and common response. But if we examine it more closely, can we always say it is that easy. Lets take finace, for example. Is a finance site that focuses on international investments related to a finance site that focuses on how to balance the budget in your family? How about a travel site that focuses on adventure travel, and another that sells equipment for world travelers (bags, cloths, etc)? Saying something is related because it has a same name can be an over simplification. But lets say, pure conjecture, that google has been able to create and A.I. that is able to make human level relationships. I am related to my sister, but she has a different last name (from marriage). An easy thing to grasp as a human, but image the programming logic needed to make that jump. Amazing. Here is another question to all the SEO engineers and programmers on this forum. If you were google (I wish), how would you determine a link was related? A simple word check (both pages have finace in their titles)? Word density? Analysis of all backlinks? Something else? I look forward to reading more of your great answers. And once again, I would like to stress, I am not trying to argue with people, I simply want to have a informative dicussion among peers to get peoples thoughts on this. Thanks
make it easy. "Related Link" is the backlink on other website do have same niche with your website. By the way, look for quality backlink is much more better
Raymond, it's simple, Google doesn't think in human terms and there's no A.I. that treats each case differently, it's just an algorithm, that we're all trying to figure out Relativity is based on keywords. In my research/experience I noticed there's a page relevance and a site relevance. Sometimes they click, sometimes they don't. The trick is not just getting a relevant link from another site (sure, that helps too), but in getting a link there with the keyword text you're targetting as an anchor. So if you have a finance site and you get a relevant link from another finance site with the anchor "student loans" or "mortgage" or whatever your targetted keywords, it makes a difference. The more relevant Google thinks your site is for a subject, the higher you will rank in the search engine results page (SERP) for keywords related to that subject. This is not the only thing that helps you rank well, but it's a damn good start.
Why would anyone be willing to provide a "one-way" anchor text link back to my site? Other than if I were to start up an affiliate program, is there any other benefit someone might have in giving a one-way anchor text link?
Google uses Hyper-Text Matching Analysis, it doesn't just analyze individual words on a page it analyzes the whole page and factors word locations in relation to others, formatting, fonts, URL's linking in/out and so on to determine what the page is about. A good way to see what's "Related" directly from the horses mouth is to place Adsense on the page in question and see what ads display. This is, at it's core the same algo that determines page and keyword relationship in the organic SERP's. Another way is using the Adwords Tool and use the "Website Content" option and plug in the URL. Also another little known tool is Google Sets. With your question, "Is a finance site that focuses on international investments related to a finance site that focuses on how to balance the budget in your family?" I would say yes, although it's probably not a 100% relevancy score but at least above 60-70%. Typing "International Investments" in Google Sets brings up keywords such as financial planning, retirement planning, for seniors, for students so these are very closely related to family budgeting. Related isn't a Yes/No affair it's a sliding scale. Hope this helps.
Yeah well that's the hard part, getting the link Paid links are one way to do it, although they're not especially loved by Google and they are quite unstable (you have no guarantee that the other webmaster will actually keep the link up for 6 or 12 months, or whatever you agree on). Another way to do it is to exchange links with site in your niche, but not on your exact service (thus not in direct competition). For example, a car tuning website could try to get links from car parts websites, not other competitors in the tuning niche. Offering free content is also a great way to get inbound links. If you're a tech blogger for example, you could offer a free wordpress theme that other bloggers could distribute on their sites, as long as they cred you back with a 1-way link. Three way linking works as well. Site A links to Site B, and gets a link back from Site C (ABC - related content) so that Google doesn't see it as link exchange, but as 2 different one-way links. Natural link building comes with great content. Post a great linkbait article, offer some free stuff, do a marketing gimmik and people will link to your site on their own. Although it's harder to get them to link with the anchor text you need, they're still inbound links that count. Directories (link/article dirs) with a certain amount of quality and trust that have relevant categories for your site will also work.
Thank you, Tudi, I find that gaining extenal links is more suited toward the blog site rather than the e-commerce sites such as mine. I have yet to develope a linkbait page, but feel it imperitive that I do this as quickly as possible. It seems with e-commerce, one of necessity must also develop a blog of sorts within their site as well; a point of communication where the niche can be talked about and informative content can be offered. I appreciate you last post. I like the ABC concept of link trading--a method where everyone comes out benefitting equally (providing all sites rank equally).
Indeed, having a blog "attached" to your website is truly a great way to market your services/products. Not only that you give life to the person(s) behind the site, thus offering clients more trust, you also have the chance to interact with them, promote contests, special offers, sales and so forth. It's also a good way to bring links in but take into consideration that you still need great content that people will link to (link bait).