Non-Relevant Links

[Alexpte]

Hi,

I'm trying to get my site to the top of the search engines (who isn't), and i've got quite a few reciprocal links but mainly ones that aren't relevant content-wise to the site.

Will this harm my PR? Or do non-relevant links just help my PR less than relevant ones?

Thanks

[johneva]

The later is the case.

You can not be penalised for who links to you cos you have no control over that.

But on the other side of that if you have loads of none relavant links you have loads of none relavant anchor text on your pages too. This is where you will lose out slightly try not to have more none relevant links than you do relevant ones.

Only exchange with a none relevant link if they have a desent PR, the last thing you want is to link to a low PR site with no relevance to your site.

MSN and other smaller search engines dont care about relevant sites anyway as far as I can make out, I think only Google has the relevace filter for there algo's, but the Yahoo care about the none relevat anchor text.

This is what I have found anyways, With SEO there is nothing written in stone, we find out what works and what dont from trail and error. The other thing of course what works one week might not work the next as they are always changing the algo's.

Have you read my other post about SEO?
Link (http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97648)

Hope this helped though.

[Alexpte]

Thanks, that helped a lot.

Also the links on the other thread you linked too are very useful.

[pcthug]

Non-relevant links will not effect your PageRank as they will be seen as just another link and will be counted as such. However, Non-relevant links will usually result in low direct clickthrough rate, as people are only interested in the subject at hand (Hence the technology used by much of the internet advertising world)

[johneva]

You dont get visitors from backinks anyways. Well very very few.

Just cos it has some relevace to your site do mean you will want to visit.

Say a car leasing company is the site your doing the SEO on, having a link on a car parts company means nothing really, cos someone who is buying car parts is not intrested in getting a lease car, but yet the link is relevant.

But yeah you dont gain PR from not relevant sites. Though linking to sites with bad PR is suppossed to damage your own PR.
Also make sure they are indexed with Google and they dont have a grey PR bar, as this could mean they have been caught using Black Hat techniques and this will harm you linking to them.

Though the other problem is, what classes as relevant?

Is it anything that uses a few of the same keywords as your site?

or is it dependant on what catorgry Google has you in there directory?

Is local best?
Local companies recomending you is suppossed to be good.

Or is the same kind of company from another part of the world better?
As it is as relevant as it gets but not going to make you lose business.