"A link is a link" vs. "relevant links"

[LD]

I have read topics on both sides of the coin - "a link is a link" and "relative links" in terms of SEO value. So, for those who advocate "a link is a link" then if I sell technology product, a link with a travel agency is as good as linking with another technology oriented site? Should PR enter into the decision? I'm leaning towards relevant links and at least a PR higher than "0".

[dburdon]

LD,

I guesss at the simplest level search is about matching a text query to "relevant" text on a website. Relevance is therefore at the core. A link from a relevant site should therefore carry more weight in the matching process than a link from a non-relevant site.

[LD]

Thanks for your comments dburdon.

As a side note, I have also been offered reciprocal links with relevant sites, however, after looking over the site for a link which Google may crawl to find their links page, and checking their page rank, (I guess more out of curiosity than anything) I usually make the decision to link or not to link.

Here is the problem - some sites look good in terms of relevancy, but PR at "0". I don't usually do in-depth discovery looking for improprieties with code to see why they might not be ranked, but at least I check their domains to see if they are (dare I say it) sandboxed - however in most cases the domains have been around for a year or longer. Then I begin to ponder why some of my pages are 3's and 4's, but theirs is "0" and whether linking with them may decrease my PR (as I have read in many of these threads).

Too much time taken in my estimation, so I usually make a decision based on - in order of importance - relevancy, link from landing page to links page and finally PR.

[greeneagle]

Relevance is the game for both IBLs and OBLs these days.

A "link is a link" really wasn't ever very savvy advice. "True" logic never supported that stance.

Ken

[Pascal77]

It's no more as normal that you try to get relevant links. You have to do this for your visitors.

But i think that a link is a link in Google. I'm testing this at the moment and it goes out that way. I'm doing it slowly so i see slowly changes but they indicate that a link is a link.(I don't test with sites i mentione in WPW :-), for those who think they are going to see this on my official sites )

Compared with Msn i think links, relevant or not, are more important with Google.

[greeneagle]

Why would anyone want to place a nonrelevant link on their pages in this day and time?

Ken

[jackson992]

Depends on the site. On my mall site every link is a relevant link in some way since I handle every category imaginable.

By the way when is Google gonna update links again?

[bhartzer]

"a link is a link" and "relative links" in terms of SEO value

It depends on which search engine you're talking about. For Yahoo! and MSN, a link is a link is a link.

For Google, it's all about relevent links: for more information about how Google defines an on-topic link read about Google LocalRank, which is a part of the algorithm.

y the way when is Google gonna update links again?

What do you mean? They're constantly updating links; if you get new links to your site you should see some effects of those links in a few days in the form of better search engine rankings and more traffic.

[greeneagle]

Just curious Bill;

Do you not think that MSN and Yahoo are being pressured to draw down on IBL and OBL relevancy in the onslaught?

Ken

[jackson992]

I have not seen any effects from a fw high PR links I got 2 months ago.