Many years ago, when I first started in the search marketing industry, several instances of the debate around "themed links" flared up, cooled off and reared their head again. Nowadays, it makes infrequent, though periodic appearances in the thinking, recommendations and forums of the SEO world, and I thought it would be wise to revist the issue, lay out the discussion points and get folks talking about their experiences, tests and intuition.
The basic tenant of the themed links debate revolves around the theory that search engines run calculations to identify "neighborhoods" of topically-related content, and then consider links from sites/pages on these topics to be more important or valuable than those from unrelated neighborhoods. Here's a visual take:
While personally, I've seen little evidence that an algorithm like this exists at Google, Yahoo! or MSN/Live (haven't honestly done enough Bing investigation to feel confident making statements around their practices), I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.
_Let's open this up in the comments - do you think themed links matter? Can you do well without them? Is there reverse-theming (where links from outside your neighborhood or from diverse neighboorhoods provide more benefit)?
p.s. For more on the origins of this theory, see Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment by Jon Kleinberg (warning PDF) and notes on the HITS algorithm lecture from the Math Explorer's Club at Cornell University.
The theory may or may not be right for SEO, but as a reader: a site with unrelated links generally disengages me from the site and my interest in returning to the page, or following an RSS feed is diminished.
There is more to life than algorithms.
People arriving at your site from an unrelated site may result in a high bounce rate, but your average Joe won't run a link: check on your site before they start reading ;)
I have done some experimenting with totally new sites regarding this (not enough to be logged and documented as absolute proof).
With as much equal as possible regarding the sites themselves, structure, amount of content, and the competitiveness of the target verticals... (different subjects).
With a brand new site just posted, you can get noticed and ranked faster in all search engines by linking out to relevant pages (to the vertical you are targeting) and getting as many links pointing in from relevant sources (again related to the target vertical) as possible. For brand new sites I don't see a drop off after a certain number of links as long as they are Relevant.
If you post a new site with outbound links to high ranking sites (assuming you can measure page rank) with no regard to relevance and just gather links as fast as you can (again, with no regard to relevance), even with a bunch of links, it takes longer to rank in your target vertical on any search engine.
My explanation of this (I don't work for any search engine) is that both inbound and outbound links are used to establish your relevance to a given topic, keyword or vertical. So I would say that my theory is that "Themed Links" do make a substantial difference early on.
For the business involved, getting ranked fast for relevant search terms is life. Does it mean I would refuse links from unrelated sources? No. This is just the best place to focus resources in the begining.
Long term, it is easier to defend building links fast in areas of relevance the off topic and it only ends up as a benefit to the human visitor coming or going from your site.
I agree completely. The cases that I have actively participated in Inclusion Linking practices, all have seen increase in rankings for their verticals, especially in local cases when trying to establish a strong geographical footprint.
Also, what happened to the western/gun slinger avatar? I kind of liked it.
Thanks. Since Google was going to profile us like criminals for doing our jobs according to their own rules, I considered going with a Prohibition Gangster image as my avatar. (Tommy guns belching smoke and lead)
But as we get farther away from that particular post, I thought it would be more in my own best interest to let it go and get back to work.
Here maybe you can use it somewhere.
That makes since. Originally, I couldn't figure out if you were representing yourself as someone in the pic or if you were the target of them. You might be more of the Sean Connery type from the Untouchables.
I can live with that. ;)
Now if I could develop his accent...
Maybe this or this will help.
From what I have seen studying rankings I would say creating a relevant link theme is essential.
I have researched many top ranking sites to find that the majority of their links are from similar themed or relevant pages.
I know of a site that ranks number 1 in the UK for a competitive keyword with no 'quality' links (high PageRank, MOZrank, domaintrust) , yet still ranks high based on ultra relevant links.
I wouldn't say all your links have to adhere to a strict theme but it should be something you proactively implement.
Statistically this might not be so relevant. It is logical to start an active linkbuilding campaign for relevant links, because they are easier to get and a more logical place to start.
So though I have the same observations, I don't think you can draw conclusions from them.
I believe Google is all about relevance, the more relevant your on page optimisation the better the ranking, the more relevant your link profile the better the ranking.
I think you can gain some insights into SEO from how Google likes an adwords campaign set up. Ad text relevant to on page text, I believe this is the same with SEO and link profiles, aim for relevance the whole way through the process.
Welll, a little late, but better than never :)
Straight from the webmaster guidelines:
"The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity."
Link
Sigh, I keep forgetting looking there first...
How do you judge relevancy? Only by meta-tags and surrounding text? This does not always work and I can imagine the search engines struggling with it... let me put forward an example:
Personally I would take any link from any trustworthy site. As long as it provides some value to the readers, I don't care if Google see's it as relevant or not. It's all about the Trust level the linking site has - if Google trusts the site, it will trust who it links out to!
You only have to look at Google's AdWords keyword tool to see, which words and terms they associate. I think they are very good at it.
I am sure Google are far better at it than any of us imagine (my example was a little weak maybe), my point is even if the great Google fails to match a link to some kind of relevancy model does it mean the link is not a good link?
Would you prefer a link from a super trustworthy site with less relevance, or a link from a less trustworthy site with great relevance? - In an ideal world I'll take both please :) but for this example we can only take one and i'll go with the link from the super trustworty site.
I completely agree.
A link from a topically relevant site/page may carry more weight... but if the site is of low quality, the link probably won't carry any more weight than a low quality off topic link.
I would go for links from high quality sites and if they are topically related, that's a plus.
From what I have experienced (admittedly no experiments yet), theming only tends to work in terms of "anchor text pass through". Getting a themed link is not enough. Getting a link from a site that ranks for your primary term is.
I'm kinda stupid so these simple rules help me with these brain liquifying questions.
I agree with you,
that was what guided me in re-doing the link policy of that client's website I was talking about some posts above.
Hm. Another round of speculation.
Well, I'm in and give it a go as well.If I have to speculate about anything about Google, I start with user experience in mind.One of the topics I would be in favour of is themed just because it makes sense. If the surrounding text adds relevance to a link, than surely the complete site or parts of the site ought to add relevance.The opposite is proven: getting links from link farms, completely unrelated lists, is detrimental. Getting links from portals seems to be good. From a user perspective it makes sense: getting the user to click on related links is better for the user. He will sooner find, what he is looking for instead of getting lost.
On the other hand, high value links are said to be the links that are viewed as endorsements from business partners. They typically would be off-topic unless they were part of an editorial or a review, which adds extra relevance and value to the link.Here an algo would be easy to implement to look at the overall value and authority of the site.
Yeah, I believe in themes.For external, but also internal links :)
I'm sorry though not to be able to add any proof to this discussion.
"The opposite is proven: getting links from link farms, completely unrelated lists, is detrimental."
Not detrimental, but those links will pass no value. If it was detrimental, then competitors could use this to harm your rankings.
Yeah, I hope that is true and it makes sense, but I heard/read something else many times.
Thanks for trying to set my mind at ease though.
I HAD a client who was overeager and cheap in his link building. He read an article or two on links and decided that he needed more of them. He ended up purchasing one of those 1000 directory submissions for $80 or something without further consulting. Let’s just say that it did not work out for him and his Google exposure began to shrink.
It seems that almost every site will pick up some lower quality & off-topic links from time to time. That’s normal. The detrimental aspect seems to be in the quantity of low quality links.
It's also a matter of the sheer amount of links in a short period of time which is easy to spot for an algo.
I had to do a reïnclusion request after the paid links were cancelled.But this might be a bit off topic though.
Off topic, but how many is too many in a given amount of time? I've heard 50 a month is a good rate.
Good question. From what I have seen it depends on a couple of main factors:
Are the links Branded or URL related? If they are the official company/site name and/or site URL and not keyword focused then you could get more of them in a month from a variety of sites and be okay. Remember that good publicity will generate many links in a short amount of time, usually from quality sites.
Are they from Higher Quality Sites? Links from hundreds of low quality sites becomes a red flag and I have seen direct evidence that this can hurt your rankings. I have also seen large quantities of high quality links in a short abount of time help greatly.
The average site that has been around for years will have gained links slowly over time. High and Low Quality alike. I keep this in mind when developing a linking plan for each client and spread their link acquisition out over months and try and go after links form high quality sites that have a chance to produce traffic in addition to just the link.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
Off topic, but how many is too many in a given amount of time? I've heard 50 a month is a good rate.
I'll answer once :)
My client bought a few hundred. And I noticed the ranking drop so quickly, you wouldn't believe.
Keep in mind, that in one day there were a few hundred more, where there were just a few before, maybe 5 or 10.
@James:
These were links from 1 domain, and hundreds of subdomains.So almost all non-themed link on a socalled startpage, a portal.
a few hundred links in so short a time and from one domain - doesn't google tend to look on that with a rather jaundiced eye? i mean like penalization even well probably not but it might look like a form of spam no? because it looks so odd to the botboi running around
"...his Google exposure began to shrink."
I do not belive having 500 links from low quality directories will harm you, it just will not do much good. You are implying that those directory sumbmissions caused the site to drop in the SERPS, it was probably an entirly different factor.
In the cases that I have seen where some of these larger directory submission packages have been used, these are their similar pattern:
I look at it this way…
If a site is not currently ranking for highly competitive keywords, then it will probably not see the adverse affect that these submissions can have and may see ranking increases in some of the lower hanging keyword fruit.
If a site is currently ranking for more competitive keywords, then those rankings will be at risk. IMO risking a drop from page 1 to 3 not worth it.
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disclaimer: your results may vary. do not use mass directory submissions on children or women who may be pregnant. do not use more than once every 4-8 hours. do not use if your site is not healthy enough for mass directory submissions. if you are unsure if your site is healthy enough for mass submissions consult your doctor or pediatrician. if you do not have a doctor or pediatrician one can be appointed to you.
But countless cases of companies having websites and taking part of link farms it does hurt their ratings, and usually a lot...
As far as theme goes, site and page aren't nearly as important as anchor text and surrounding content, which means the poll probably needs a more granular selection level.
In a round about way you discuss similar findings back in November 08 and link to Bill Slawski's look at the patent application Yahoo filed in January 2007 about "...delineating sections of a document that are not relevant to the main content." (Bill's post) Basically what Yahoo is saying is that they do more granular analysis than "site" and "page" when determining what's important. So if a link is in a context where it either makes sense in and of itself--Authoritative, something like, "I was reading about this new species of transparent frog found in New Guinea while waiting in the checkout line at OfficeMax..."--or it's surrounded by relevant, contextual content and then given the click here treatment, both make sense. Any search engine that wants to perform well should be able to see that the OfficeMax link adds value because the link is concurring with an already known association, and the "click here" link--or [#], images, ^#, and any other non-descriptive link--is relevant as determined by immediately surrounding content and the associations of its destination.
This in turn dovetails into what Matt mentioned recently about so few SEOs noticing the changes brought about when the effect of nofollow was turned off a year ago. By in large the effect wasn't noticed because Google was already algorithmically reaching results similar to those achieved via siloing, by automatically distributing less page rank to sections "irrelevant to the main content," which Matt conceded even more directly when he agreed with Danny that Google distributes Page Rank basically as it sees fit.
Finally, if themed links were that critical, Wikipedia wouldn't have this problem...
We've researched this principal on three of our test sites without being able to come up with a definitive answer...there are just too many variables - PR, anchor text, "authority" etc etc...so, from a purist SEO persepective we have our doubts (hedged my best with a maybe vote)...from a practical/user perspective, seeing or clicking on unrelated links may have some minor effect on visitor confidence.
However, I do know that "we only build links from high quality, on-theme and relevant" web sites makes a good story as part of a sales pitch :)
And it always raises a smile when we get a link request from a plumbing website for a link back from a client's lingerie site...hmmm, is that "on-theme" or not?
Google can pretty accurately determine the topic of a site (most of the time), and since they are eternally on a shady link witch hunt, I would hope that they have "theme neighborhoods" so they can devalue worthless off topic links ..
After researching a client's competition for an extremely competitive set of terms, I noticed that Google is terrible when it comes to understanding underlying content characteristics such as a positive review vs. a negative review. Google seems to not factor in words such as "terrible" or "worst" or "unhappy" the same way that "great" or "best" or "wonderful" seem to be irrelevant in terms of the amount of link juice a site receives from these links.
I am a couple months into a rather extensive test/experiment to determine if terms such as "best" or "worst" have any impact on how the linked-to site ranks..
-Once i've compiled enough data to make some solid conclusions, you can expect to see my very first Youmoz post ;)
Man, what's up with all the spam comments? Speaking of the devil!
Theme/topical relevance is always good and something we should strive for in link building. However, I have seen instances where top ranking sites in Google with a link profile consisting of totally off topic/borderline spam links for relatively competitive terms. My guess is that Google gives preference to on-topic links but it isn't necessary to rank well in certain situations.
I was thinking the same thing. It would be helpful if there were a "report spam" link or alternate version of a thumbs down that, hummm, used another hand guesture to report off topic crud;-)
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Also, I believe in pursuing themed links first. These links tend to be of good quality and usually will produce some targeted traffic over time. I recommend the Juicy Link Finder as a good tool for assisting in discovering keyword/themed links.
I'd also check out the Link Acquisition Assistant (which is pretty awesome for this function).
Yep, thats a good one too. I have only used it a few times as it helped me generate some common themes for using in the Juicy Link Finder like "CITY business directory" for local clients.
It seems that the more I use the moz link tools the more I learn how to use the other moz tools better :-)
So if the Link Acquisition Assistant helps you find relevant "themed" links it seems like SEOMoz does give serious credit to this practice.
I guess I'll finally wiegh in on the matter after commenting on everyone else's thoughts:
I believe theming your links is important. Just like if you want to be ranked for New York {your keyword} you better links from local sites or directories in New york.
I always look at it as themed links are my number 1 priority if anyone else wants to link with me great (disclamer: as long as they are also a credible resource on the web and I can stand behind my recomendation or link).
We all know google check's IP addresses, if you have a site on the same block and are linking back and forth probably going to be about as effective as an internal link. I think the same goes for linking. Off topic links are significantly discounted... But even discounted inbound link from an off topic site with a high PR can and often times will pass more link juice than an on topic or themed link from a site with a low or moderate PR.
Newbie. First Post:)
It would make sense from my perspective. I feel links from blogs have done quite well for some improvement I've seen in SERP positions. But I mainly use them for less popular keyword phrases targeting deeper pages within my site. I don't go after links on non topic related sites anymore or links that don't relate to the industry I am in except for some message boards.
kdfisher - welcome to SEOmoz! Thrilled to have you here and hope to see you around more regularly :-)
I do not really know if Google take a linking websites topic into consideration for a ranking calculation at all - but there are other benefits connected with on-topic linkbuilding:
1. There is this google patent (https://su.pr/1OKs4e) and proof (https://su.pr/1WzUWd) that the surrounding text of a link does transport themed relevance. This happens automatically if the linking site is on-topic.
2. If you ask SEOs, everybody will say that it has proven useful to get links from sites, ranking for a specific term, if you want to rank for the same term. I can't remember of a proof at the moment - but everybody knows negative examples where off-topic links harm sites.
3. There are other facts and theories like:
- getting voluntary links is best
- visible placement on the site matters
- good/bad neigbourhood theories
- ranking relevance of clicks and user behaviour
etc.
i.e. if you get links from themed sites they will be automatically more useful than links from off-topic sites, unless you do invest in build some kind of external microsite that will link for itself as a link-source.
"off-topic links harm sites" - not always true!
I'll take a "off-topic" link from an .edu or .gov site over a dozen crappy on-topic blog links any day.
I voted no but I would still choose a themed link over a non-themed one (should I ever be in a situation where such a choice is presented to me), for no other reason that at least I will know that any referral traffic from that link will be relevant.
As a person who has marketed the wrong side of the Internet tracks for more than 14 years, I am happy to say that from my experience theme has meant almost nothing when considering links.
Perhaps from a traffic stand point, a click from an off-theme site might not be best in terms of targeted traffic but hey... I don't spam links for traffic.
Sure I may receive a few visits from bored house wives who happen to click one of my porn/poker/pills links out of curiosity, but their visits are meaningless to me. It is the link that matters.
Take into consideration a link in English from a foreign language site; do you really think that any search engine is going to automatically translate a website for the sole purpose of assigning a theme to ensure that the links are thematic and the intentions for linking are pure? I doubt that this would be a good use of resources not to mention the inability of machinery to measure intent.
While the "link hosting" sites themselves are most certainly categorized, I think that the overall focus of a page can be obfuscated by having some relevant keywords to the link in close proximity to said link. I can not offer you any studies to support this other than close to 15 years of SERP success for some of the most competitive markets on the Internet.
That is my two cents worth from the other side of the tracks and while a good many of you may look down your nose at my chosen markets, I know an even greater number of you will be crossing those tracks to say hello from time to time.
See https://www.google.com/support/forum/p/webmasters/thread?tid=412756dbf83b749e&hl=de if you want to see the details - themed links is a well known theory and my collegues buy only themed links, but I know others work perfectly as well.
(first message,noob)
I believe that if Matt Cutts is talking every now and then about paid links and the ways the big G is trying to identify them - means that they can't REALY tell the differences between themed and junk link.
Yeah, they can use PR and domain ip's ,server reputation, hosting and so on, but I believe that given 2 pr6 sites on honorable domains, 2 links will give me the same boost . A themed link in the same language with close K-W may do a bit more, but I think it's somthing like 60-40 ratio and not 90-10 (themed link favor).
I think also that google encourages us to make more theme links, just to make easier for them to know what's your site is about. Once they know that, it's time for seo's to boost position...not page rank :-)
I've always heard the scaremongering about being part of a content community etc. To be honest none of it has ever rang true.
Practically I've never seen any reason to believe it either.
I want to belive that the "theme" related to your links is a major factor, but I continually see examples where this does not seem to be the case. We continue to pursue themed links as our practice - for traffic, conversions and SEO... but I believe that in actuality the "theme" matters a bit less than most might lead us to believe.
Themed links may help you get better page ranks, but just linking around can get you to Google page 1.
We have dome 5 sites with themed linking and 6 sites with general linking (actually because the clients were paying less). Believe it or not we got the ones with general links to page 1 faster than the other group which was paying more.
Talk about paradoxes!
Search engines favor links to your content. They more you are referenced the better you rank. The unknown element is how far beyond the meta-tags do sites go to determine your contents relevance. Probably not far - it is a very difficult technical challenge in POS parsing.
I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not there is a direct benefit from a link or series of links coming from similar themed groups of website as far as the algorithms are concerned.
It would be nice if there was a benefit, but at this point there doesn't seem to be any clear answer.
However, there must be an inherant value due to the theme because of the propensity to have relevant anchor text. Instead of just getting a "click here" or "sitename.com" type anchor text, your link will be more like to be found in actual content, and possibly with a relevant keyowrd as anchor text!
No, this isn't true all the time, but there is some truth to it.
Theme links may seem at first a good idea since it adds more relevant content to your website, thus adding more rich keywords for search engines to crawl through. While this is happening, at the same time, you also have to consider what sites are you linking to? If you're website is selling jewelry and watches, linking to other websites that sells jewelry and watches can add good keywords to your website, and may even improve it's overall rankings, but can also hurt you since you may lose your customers since they might choose to buy from that other website.
For me, I would only consider touse themed links if the websites that I am linking to are informative and not selling or promoting the same product or service my website.
Did someone say 50 links a month? Fifty schmifty! You can get a lot more than that my friend. So, I will address that and the theme issue...all in one, because that's how I roll. I went live approx 6 weeks ago. I acquired approx 100 or so links the first couple of weeks. In the last 4 weeks or so...I managed another 500 approx. I am on the 1st page of G. for all of my most prized k.w.'s. Of course, the only acceptable position for me is #1 and #2. Yes, 1 and 2 is *a* position...in my distorted head anyway. Incidentally, most of my links came from high pr sites, 5+ mostly. Yes, the sites were high pr, not the pages where my links reside. Also, the sites had nothing to do with my niche. Obviously not scientific...just my personal experience.
Here is the 64k question, Rand-- How many links does it take to beat a target or nextag page. I Use to get annoyed with Aaron...complaining about the G. favortism toward big brand. Well, now I feel his pain. Nextag has a page with 0 links at #1, and target has 5-pr0 and 1 pr3. Little ol me, has several hundred, virtually all with my desired anchor text (yes, I mixed em up) So 6 links trumps 300? Just give me a # Rand. I just want a godamn number! 500 to 1? Just let me know, and I will go get em!
Sorry, that went a little off topic-- I just can't control myself. LOL
I think themed linking carries a lot more weight for geo related pages/terms only. For instance - national sites that have regional landing pages need regionaly themed links associated with those 2nd Tier Geo Related pages in order to reach higher ranks in a competitive market place.
I've found it very difficult to obtain rankings for your 2nd Tier or Geo Related Pages (for geo targeted terms ) in a competitive environment without some geo-themed links.
The Link Acquisition Assistant is a slam dunk for getting junior link builders up and running immediately. Nice work SEOMoz...
I was convinced this was a done deal until I saw your poll. Now I don't know what to think.
Tough to say... I would venture to believe that themed links may be easier to get than unthemed links, and themed links also help keep your site relevant.
I always shoot for themed links because they're relevant, so I assumed that search engines would value this. Of course, high-quality un-themed links would be valuable as well, but I generally want a higher percentage of my links to be themed.
I agree that you basically want to stay away from low-quality unrelated links and you should be OK. I would have to think that getting a link from an "authority" in your industry or theme, would have to carry a lot of weight in how Google ranks your page for similar keywords. Unfortunately, I can't prove that, but it makes sense from a user perspective, which I believe Google takes a hard look at.
This is echoing what some other people have said, but I personally always opt for relevant/themed links whenever possible because I like creating links that drive good traffic to a site, not just boost its rankings.
J sums it up well, best to go for the themed/relevant links. supposing that google is thinking like a human and wants to find the most relevant pages and hence ups the value of relevant/closely themed links and text to those pages
I think something to mention here is that while themed links may or may not hold more weight than non-themed links, they are better for overall traffic. If you have links from themed/related/relevant sites, they will (in some & many) cases bring you quality traffic/leads. The theory that they hold more weight in the SERPs is just a perk in my opinion.
If we compare single on-topic link vs. single off-topic link it is really worth it to go for the on-topic one.
Not only you need fewer of these to get up (I believe and have seen the power of on-topic links) but also the traffic is more likely to convert.
I think theming, in essence does have some value. But only if it closely matches the natural flow of links in your industry.
For example, a site that features jokes, will have links from all types of sites, 90% of which are not joke related sites.
Sites about astrophysics, may only have inbound links from .edu domains and related sites.
I just try to mimic what is already out there for the type of site I am working on. Just in case Google does categorize the site and compare to all other sites in the category.
But, at the end of the day, the internet is full of to many anomolies for theming to be a reliable algo at any of the SEs.
I would go for YES, and support it with the whole idea of google and how they (Matt) say that they look into websites. The main idea should be, that links should be more or less natural, that means, that the links are put up because someone likes your site. Why would someone like your site and put up a link? well, two options,
#1 is that I have a website on cars, and I like the car sale site, and link to it. Means that people who have websites on a topic are generally more interested into the topic, and talk about other sites that are on the simmilar topic.
#2 is a bit different, because we have the BLOG. Blogging for a regular guy is something where you write about different stuff, I believe that niche blogs are more used by webmasters for SEO. Regular people write about different stuff that they find interesting in life. And they link to all sorts of topical sites. So they naturally give out non-topical links.
So, of what do we have more, #1 or #2? I believe #1, because a lot of websites are company websites, e-commerce etc (topical websites) and topic specific blogs are not so rare.
So if we look through this argument, google would like topical links more, because they believe they are more natural. Of course they should not dislike non-topical links, they just like them less.
P.s. I believe that site directories and link farms are treated on a completely other level and should not be discussed in this way.
Edit: Muffin was just a second faster than me, but writes about simmilar things.
Hi,
I do believe that themed links do affect in rankings.
For instance, few months ago I started to work on an italian touristic sites that had tons on links (much of them) from the classical links-exchange-pages of any kind of sites... but simply that wasn't working for many reasons everybody knows:
1) bad links-exchange-pages
2) no traffic (honestly, who does crawl those pages, so many times created not for the 'human' users)
3) not themed... they were links from - literally - any kind of website (even a couple from porn ones!... and the site of my client was about Pilgrims' trip to Roma!)
Therefore, the first thing I did was simply quit the links from my client site in order to see deleted the corrisponding inbound links (it worked)
Secondly explore the website as a user and find what could be the best related websites and started PR with them in order to let them know my client web.
Doing so I started to receive external related theme links, not all from high PR websites but yes related.
After few weeks my client saw how for strategical keywords he was reaching the desidered ranking.
So... yes, I do believe that "themed links" do matter in rankings
Ciao from Italy
Probably not now, but I can't see why the search engines wouldn't start the practice once they figure out how to do it. Like others have said, it's always better to have relevant links than irrelevant ones anyway.
I personal feel on-topic links can help more if not just for the real visitors that they will send to your site. Hasnt Google already said that "themed" links are better?
The problem is I still see plenty of websites achieve rankings with little or no themed linking. Just look at some competitors backlinks in niches you work in. The ones that are not active in SEO you will find mostly themed links. The ones that are active in SEO you will see a mixed bag.
As far as what we have seen in the pharmacy and gambling industries YES. All the top rankings (that aren't spam) have most of their incoming links from "related" sources. I don't know if it is a coincidence but we always try to build links from "relevant/related" websites.
I've found that theming (siloing, whatever...) my INTERNAL links works really well. If you want a fine, simble-but-effective example of this, Google the word "composting" and check out the #1 result.
This is an interesting point to make. In terms of link building, I think Omarpeppy's comment is spot on. Relevance is key to how Google ranks your website. Using inappropriate links will be misinterpreted by the user whereas using key rich links relevant to the subject will allow your user to carry on to a different website with a similar theme. Overall, this is an interesting debate. So many sources have different interpretations of what is the best way to implement links and keywords. I still believe relevance is key and will help maintain the theme of your website.
Great Post!
It does - its hard to create a case study around this. However, several experiments have suggested to us that getting a link that drives traffic as well ends up helping us get a better ranking in search engines.
I know a couple of agencies who use thematic links heavily and I have seen anecdotal evidence of (what appears without further testing) improvements in rankings as a result.
However, the links are not from totally unrelated sites, most of the people I know using this technique will look at established directories such as DMOZ to gather information on the breadth of sites in say the 'Home Improvements' category. They will then replicate that in a natural fashion on a smaller scale and link out from posts, comments on posts or the blog itself...
Very interesting to hear what everyone else has seen above though.
Hi Rand,
Themed links do carry quite a lot of refernce from Google's perspective and I have experinced this for all of my clients. Most of the times I have experienced quick improvmentsin search results.
Themed links from websites which rank higher up in search engines or even have decent search engine exposure carries more relevance as opposed to websites that do not have decent search rankings and exposure.
Themed links for portal sites which rank high in search engines impact one's search rankings greatly.
Thanks.
You say you've had success with themed links - did you try un-themed links and found they were unsuccessful? There's no question that themed link will help your rankings, rather the question is what their effects are relative to unrelated links...would be interested to hear the results if you've tested both against each other
I do believe you missed the point entirely.
Thanks for the post and for sharing the info with us. Software Jobs
Hey... That's not a themed link! And you're evaporating our PageRank!
ha ha ha nice. so are you going to start putting comments in a iFrame? BTW I have some thoughts on that, I've set up my robots.txt to disallow some javascript files that were causing errors when google would index the site and I'm still getting those error... I wonder if they index and have it they'll continue to crawl it but if you hide it from the get go they'll never get to it? I'll add this comment to that discussion... : )