Will it affect the ranking of my photography and photojournalism web site if I publish articles on it which have nothing to do with these topics?
I don't think it would effect your rankings much. Look at big forums. Forums like DP get ranked for all sorts of things and there is quite a variety of subjects going on here.
If it had good content on all the topics. It will not make much difference. You can always have sections in your blog dealing on various topics just like DP forums has on seo, link building, ppc, google etc.
In all honesty, I think it would depend on a lot of different things. One thing would be the amount of unrelated content you plan on adding to your website. If you have a website with a thousand pages and only 10 of them are about photography, then you may have a problem. Another thing to look at would be the types of links coming in. Think about where those links are coming from and what they are promoting your site to be about. You may want to create a sub domain and link to the articles if you are too worried. However.. I'm not an SEO expert..! Best of luck!
It could, but it's not likely. Your ranking is more heavily affected by what sites link to yours, in regards to subject matter.
I disagree with what's been said. If you have a site on photojournalism, and you are trying to rank well for photo related terms, do not start adding unrelated content unless your just speaking about occasional off-topic blog posts. If you're serious about ranking for your photo terms, I do believe that adding unrelated content (being an amount more that I just stated) will harm your rankings. Why would a search engine think they should send traffic your way for photojournalism words if you've got a lot of random pieces of content? I think most people undervalue the affect content has on rankings. There are many elements to good SEO. Adding the content you're describing might be absolutely fine -- if all your other elements are very good. However, like I said, if you're serious about your terms, stay on topic.
Thanks for your comments, appreciate it. By co-incidence a few minutes after posting I read another thread where someone was saying that the search engines look for closely related content. I'm drawn to this line of thought, but it's always good to hear both sides of the argument. One thing I have done is introduce a new topic but relate it to an existing topic. For example, I've introduced the new topic of `ethics in wedding photography' and have compared it to ethics in politics, which is also a new topic. It seems to me that with a little thought you can relate just about anything to anything. But I guess you have to be reasonable, keep it credible, not push it too far. Be interesting to find out how far others have pushed what they consider to be related topics, maybe we can vote on it!
The way I see it, an older, trusted site can get away with mixing up the topics on a site. For instance, my own site is mainly about spirituality related topics (buddhism, theosophy, spiritual quotes) - but I also branch out into webdesign, SEO and stuff (see my sig). It's taken a while, but now some of the most popular pages on my site are on subjects other then spirituality - and all SE referrals as well. Do make sure you have a clear topical internal link-structure. I mean: put articles on the same subject in the same directory (or subdomain), interlink based on that etc. Branching out into a totally new subject means that you have to build trust on that subject all over. Branching out slowly is less risky.
You would be diluting your keyword density and attracting wrong traffic. If you run Adsense, those pages may not bring you the revenue you want.
Use the non-related content on another site. If you have a lot of it, you can start an article directory. That way you can have lots of unrelated content.
Thanks again everyone. Since posting and reading your replies I've pretty well decided to start an articles directory. This isn't a question, just an observation. It's interesting how the best ranked articles sites rank so well considering all the outgoing links they have. I mean, everyone who submits an article can put up to three links in their articles. Something I'll have to investigate. I'll probably be looking for good articles in future, will probably request them here if that's ok.
The content of your web site is bound to affect your ranking. Though no one can specifically pinpoint what factors are used by search engine to determine rankings, there is general agreement that content plays a big factor on a web site's rankings. _____________________ Search Engine Marketing Company-"Helping Your Business Bear Fruits"