Why off-theme links have to be counted by Google.
January 28, 2008
Of all of the myths discussed in my Search Engine Myths Exposed report, the one that leaves people scratching their heads the most seems to be Myth #3, that you must get links from sites related to the same subject as yours in order to rank well in Google. I completely dispel this myth in the report.
People often walk away believing that the need for so-called "themed links" is a myth, since I demonstrate Google's glee in ranking sites with purely off-theme links in the report. Despite that, though, this reality is still confusing to many.
Why? Because from a purely logical point of view it appears to make sense that links from pages related to the same subject should hold more weight in Google. After all, a link counts as an endorsement, and an endorsement from an expert in the same field surely counts for more than one from a nobody in a different field.
How many medical products use the slogan "9 out of 10 doctors agree…" in their advertisements? Do you ever see them say "9 out of 10 plumbers agree…" when advertising the latest pharmaceutical? Of course not. That endorsement simply wouldn't hold much weight. So logically it seems that Google should be doing the same.
I think some people have the mistaken idea that I feel off-theme links count as much as on theme links. I'll be honest: I really don't know if they do. What I do know is that you don't have to get on-theme links to rank well in Google.
Why not? Why can't Google only count the "votes" from on-theme sites, since in theory they should be more valuable?
If you're thinking that it's not technically possible to do so, you're not completely wrong. It is possible, but there are problems. I personally have written code that breaks a page down into the keywords and phrases that are most represented on the page. It wouldn't be difficult to extend that out to discover the primary subjects of an entire site.
Store that information in a database and you can check outgoing links against it to see if the linking site relates to the category of the page it is linking to. If it does, count it as a vote. If not, ignore it.
Sounds simple, right? Wrong.
Let's take a look at a few search queries at Google to demonstrate why this is not so simple:
| keywords | results |
| personal page | 133,000,000 |
| newspaper | 239,000,000 |
| blog | 2,330,000,000 |
The most recent study I've seen that tried to estimate the size of the web was from the University of Iowa in the USA. That study estimated the number of indexable web pages at 11.5 billion.
But that was 3 years ago (February of 2005), so let's "guesstimate" that there are about 20 billion indexable pages on the web now. The three search queries listed above constitute 2.7 billion pages, or about 13.5% of our 20 billion "guesstimate." Each of those queries represents a kind of page that, by its very nature, will very often link out to completely unrelated sites and pages.
After all, how often will one newspaper link out to another newspaper? How often will a personal blog link out to another personal blog, or a personal page to another personal page? It happens, but the percentages are very small. In fact, just about every kind of site will often need to link to sites that are not related (directly or indirectly) to their own subject matter.
If Google was to ignore those links in favor of only links from "on theme" sites or pages, a very large percentage of the natural "votes" would be ignored. That would be diametrically opposed to Google's premise that what other sites are voting for with their links is how the web should be ranked.
If you start ignoring links because the linking site does not appear to be related to the linked-to site, you start descending into the quagmire of determining the keyword relevance of a site, such as a news site, which reports on every kind of subject imaginable. With so many subjects, the list of keywords it relates to would be huge, making such comparisons computationally expensive.
One potential way to deal with this problem would be to only compare outgoing links against the keywords that appear on the page containing the link. But that is not without difficulties, too, since it is very possible that the specific link is not semantically related, but still falls within the same category of the site (or a related category).
For example, the word "fertilizer" is not semantically related to the word "gardening" (semantics deal with the different meanings of a word or phrase, and fertilizer does not mean gardening or vice versa). However, the two words are obviously associated. What garden doesn't need fertilizer?
It's completely natural for a web page about gardening to link to a site or page about fertilizer. That's an easy association for the human brain to make, but those kinds of looser associations are much more difficult for machines to figure out.
It gets even more difficult if a site about being environmentally conscience links out to a page about fertilizer. The web is full of loose connections like that which cannot be ignored if you want an accurate index.
"Although I write primarily about arthritis pain relief, I find myself diverging into various other topics, such as swimming, cycling, weight loss, vitamins, different types of fat , comfortable furniture etc. Some might think that they have nothing to do with arthritis, but I have plenty of links from sites dealing with those topics."
–Donnie, tipsarthritispainrelief.com
So at what point is a link "off theme"? That's a very tough question to answer accurately.
If Google relied on current technology to determine on-page and on-site relevance, and ignored all links that didn't make the grade, it would lose much of what makes it better than its competition: it's democratic approach to ranking the web.
Computers are not people, and the number of associations that the search engine would have to be able to make in order to accurately count and ignore links based on relevance are astronomical. This does not rule out Google giving on-theme links more weight based on whatever associations it is currently capable of making, but I think it makes it pretty clear why Google is not presently capable of ignoring off-theme links.
Besides, just because somebody works at the grocery store doesn't mean that their vote for the best MP3 player has no merit at all. It may not have quite as much merit as a professional reviewer for PC Magazine (though some would say it has more), but it still has merit.
So really, Google simply cannot ignore off-theme links if they want to stick to their guiding principle of letting links work as "votes" for ranking the web. Considering how much easier it is to get off-theme links than on-theme ones, I for one will stick to ranking my sites the easy way.
Please leave your thoughts in a comment below.
Comments
124 Responses to “Why off-theme links have to be counted by Google.”
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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Very interesting thoughts, Jon. However, this is YOUR perspective on themed links. The only way to get Google's perspective is to run tests. Google doesn't always follow what we SEO's think is logical and practical.
I must say, though, that I mostly agree with you - one shouldn't place too much importance on topic-relevance.
Interesting… how about the whole paid links controversy with Text-Link-Ads?
You could buy a text-link for PR juice, but often you'd see an "off topic ads"… for example, a Monetizing Blog would have an ad/link from Champs-de-Lysee hotels?
Of course, Google slapped them with a drop in PR as well as SERPS traffic.
Hi Jon,
Interesting article - but to be honest you had already convinced me with other blog posts and of course your search engines exposed e-book.
There is no doubt in my mind that you can rank well with off-themed links.
I also reckon that themed links might have more weight but this will in no way stop me from getting links from unrelated sites.
Good stuff.
Alex
Adam:
It is my perspective, yes, but it's backed up by what I'm seeing when ranking my own sites.
It's true that Google doesn't always do what's logical and practical from the point of view of those involved in SEO, but I think it's important that people understand why it's not so simple for Google to just apply the "divine knowledge" they are so often credited with across the search results.
Google is still people, and people still face these challenges!
Jimson:
I will be posting my thoughts about paid links in a future article.
Alex:
I'm glad you were already convinced! I just thought it would be helpful to explain some of the logic behind why things are the way they are.
This is a great discussion of an important topic I have thought a lot about but frankly I do not have the coding back ground to do analysis like this. I have often figured that this whole theme links debate had to be flawed much as the duplicate content myth. You have done a nice job of breaking it down into a logical argument and should be thanked for that effort. I would hope this would stimulate the discussion of the matter. I doubt Google will weigh in on it in public but…..
Kevin
Hi Jon, yeah you are right. in fact to be so called "themed sites" are rather time consuming, you have to write so called related materials
and I don't see the points. I mean for example, internet marketing can
be related to web hosting, seo, ppc, web design, graphics design.
grahpics design can be related to advertising, printing and so on.
so the list will go on and on!
Good logic Jonathan - and well presented.
And I know that you know ….
But for the sake of those who don't know …. it's still important to exercise a bit of reserve and good judgment when seeking backlinks.
One can end up being "associated with bad guys" without even realizing it.
Wishing all the best
Dan B. Cauthron
Kevin:
Yeah, I'd love Google to come out and publicly declare their exact algorithm! =)
proson:
Precisely. You hit it right on the head. The associations as so wide and loose that to insist on any kind of direct (or indirect) association in order to count the link would really kill the accuracy of the index.
Hi Jonathon,
I think you're absolutely right with this point, other wise how would a general directory ever score well? I do think however that Google gives more weight to on theme links, and the value of just a few relative links may equate to 1000's of off -theme.
As someone who has been doing SEO for quite a few years, I can say you are absolutely right. As a matter of fact, I can learn a great deal about another "SEO" based on this knowledge. All real SEO's have known this for many years. If Google's algo was so great, why would they pay hundreds of people to "hand review" search results?
Excellent work as usual John!
I'm very impressed with how you explained how off-theme sites can have reason to link to each other.
Keep up the good work!
Good info John. On many of my niche sites I have High PR links from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with my niche but they have boosted my rankings significantly. I think most people just assume they do not make effective links without much proof to back it up.
Jonathan:
Completely agree with your points on off theme links regarding Google recognizing such links. Learning by doing and reading how others achieve success is quite helpful for all.
Jon,
Very good post once again from you….
Search engine myth busted is a very good report
Pankaj
So, playing devil's advocate, are you saying that a link from a page which has an on-topic "Title" and on-topic "link text" to another page about the topic *wouldn't* be given more weight than a plain vanilla link from another website?
Or are you just saying that Google doesn't ignore off-topic links?
In your no-follow blog experiment, did you link to your webpages from blogs that were on-topic, or random topic?
Great article Jon,
I love the Search Engines Exposed book. Gives lots of good information to follow. I agress that you on-theme does play some roll with Google but I have many off-themed links and have great rankings with Google.
Thanks for the post.
Dooda
Jon,
Thanks for putting the pic back.
Now the blog gives a nice feeling. It is always nice to know the person behind the name.
So many big time marketer miss this point in their personal blog.
Pankaj
Affordable SEO Services:
Very true. If Google's algo was as good as people believe, human reviewers and manual PageRank reductions would not be required.
Neil:
I made it pretty clear in the post (I thought) that I'm not certain whether or not on-theme links are given more weight, but I am certain that off-theme links are counted.
Once again you lay the myths to rest. Very well done Jonathan.
Ambrose
This was a very insightful article and it makes a lot of sense.
In terms of off theme links, some link generating programs give you links from link farms. Wouldn't this be damaging to your site?
Yes, this is very logical, and I have a site that is ranking well for keywords with links from other sites that are not related for the most part. Themed links are good, but it seems like google would have to distinguish between niche sites and broad sites to be able to determine a real endorsement from an "expert". This would be extremely difficult to do, as well as devaluing giants like FaceBook and Digg.
Actually there is a simple way to analyze the situation. Look at page 2 and see how it ranks. Most any "internal" page will have the overwhelming number of links coming in from other "internal" pages.
Well "themed" websites rank higher than poorly themed websites. The page title of the "sending" page is known to have a big effect on the "landing" page's reputation. And you don't have to take my word for it. Test it with any site. Link up 3 themed pages in a row and see if the last one ranks the best.
Whatever value a link will have from a links page, has little to do with the theme of the site.
I came to the same conclusion you did a while ago, and expanded the link types that I would accept in my links directories. I still restrict adult and "enhancement" sites and the like, but the typical web site a person would be able to visit during work hours is welcome in my link directories.
The most relevant sites are directly linked on the web pages that have content pertaining to them. So, I would say that segregating off-theme links to a directory and putting the best on-theme links on article pages would produce the effect we're all looking for anyway.
Computer Doc:
At Google groups a Google employee (Wysz) stated that Google does not count links from "bad" sites against you.
Imagine the can of worms that would be opened up if you could rob your competition of their rank by simply spamming their link into bad neighborhoods all over the web.
Google has repeatedly said that this does not happen. What matters is who you link to, not who links to you (in terms of facing the wrath of Google). "Bad" links are devalued or ignored, but they will not hurt your site (for the most part).
Notice this statement in Google's Webmaster Guidelines:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."
Google does not say to avoid getting links FROM web spammers or "bad neighborhoods", but rather says not to link TO such sites. Again, it would be too easy to destroy your competition if all you had to do was make sure they had links to their sites from known "bad neighborhoods" or spam sites.
"So really, Google simply cannot ignore off-theme links if they want to stick to their guiding principle of letting links work as "votes" for ranking the web" yup..I agree with the statement btw Could U tell us how to be hidden or not to be hit by Google which again of paid review.
thanks
Hmm.. interesting. However, I am a bit unsure as to how google manages to pick out keywords and then show relative ads and not oick out keywords in websites and link them?
Gary
Yup, You don't need to have a link on a page that is not related to your page in order to rank. An IP count is a vote, we all know that.
A weight score of relevancy is applied to each link. Some of us know that, some of us don't.
If a link on a non-related page points to any other page with your desired keyword, sure, it will work. But a page that talks about your keyword that has a link on it pointing to your page will be given a higher weight of relevancy. Even google states so in so many words.
One thing they do point out is the constant reminder to help improve user experience. How is a link with your chosen keyword on a non-related page going to help the reader (sure, you can still rank for it, but it will take a lot more of those kind of un-related links to rank for that keyword if the keyword link was on a related page), if a person put themselves into the readers shoes, it would tick you off because it's a non-related page.
By improving the user experience, the higher your link relevancy score goes, thus increases your overall rankings.
All the best
Loz
Gary:
AdSense does a pretty good job of picking out the keywords a page is about, but if you've done much browsing at all you'll also see that it makes many mistakes as well. That's because it's not an easy task to associate on-page keywords with appropriate related content, and again, one solid reason why Google needs to continue to count off-theme links.
Regarding On-Theme:
Perhaps it's true that on-theme links count more (I can't say for certain since I haven't done a case study on it, though it does seem logical), but if it takes 10 times the effort to get links that are only twice as valuable, I simply can't justify going through the trouble. Especially for niche subject areas that don't require heavy link building to begin with.
Thanks Jon;
Another very interesting post. When link exchange was "good" 80% of my link "partners" were off theme sites. I just setup different categories for them.
This is very interesting topic. I never really thought much on the subject. Its good to have experts like you to bring out the details for the rest of us.
I am involved in a network of sites that link to each other. I signed up thinking I was getting related links but I am getting totally unrelated links. But I have seen some sites do well but I expect this to fail as soon as someone outs the network.
I came across some MFA sites that are out ranking WellsFargo.com and other big banks on major keyword terms and I confirmed they are in the unrelated link network. If an SEO from a big bank points out the high ranking site to Google they can easily drop the SERPs on that site and every site in the network.
Unrelated links may be OK but I am concerned about the unrelated link network I am testing as it can easily be spidered and demoted in SERPs. Any thoughts Jon??
Excellent article…I've always had my suspcions what your wrote is true, but I never had any data to prove it. You have just provided us all with this data.
Thanks
Paul Guzman
Hi Jon,
Yet another eye opening post from you. Before this post I've already read your search engines myths exposed and have already believed in what you said. Why? Because it has has helped my sites to rank in Google, thanks to the 3WL network. Keep those posts coming! I have definitely learned a lot from you
Mark
Van:
My thoughts are these: if the sites are beating WellsFargo, and have been for some time now, what makes you think Google will manually adjust their rankings? Is it logical to think that the WF folks haven't noticed that already?
Google very, very rarely makes manual adjustments like that (they prefer to let their algo decide and modify the algo if it's deficient).
Another point: if that site has earned a very large sum for holding those rankings over a period of time, do you really think they'll be sad they got the rankings even if those rankings drop some undetermined time in the future?
Interesting overview of the value of links as Google sees things. It seems quite obvious however that there is reason to find sites that have a natural affinity to your site. That reason would be simply attracting traffic. To expand on Jon's gardening example, it would seem logical to seek a link from a well ranked gardening site if you sold gardening tools.
It might not be necessary to build page rank to have links from themed sites, but it does seem logical. However it might be equally true that when it comes to page rank, any good link is a good link to have!
I agree however the most important reason for gaining links from a site of a similar topic is traffic transfer!
By checking my stats I see that several of my sites actually get as much traffic from links on similar sites as from the search engines. The key to success is getting quality links which are likely to generate traffic.
Wickerman:
I agree with you there. Reciprocal links can be great for traffic purposes. I've got sites that get more traffic from links than Google, too, so I really don't care if Google sees those links as valuable or not.
I do believe in fairies! I do believe in fairies! - Sorry watching Peter Pan again with the kids.
I meant to say I do believe what Jonathan is saying and have seen the proof myself. I don't attempt to track if on theme links are better than off theme links, but it is clear that off theme links do work. I have no idea if long term on theme links will be better (of course many gurus and forum experts say that is the case), so I will still spend some time getting on theme links. However, and this is the big BUT, I don't ignore trying to get off theme links, especially when they are easier to get. Thanks.
Jonathan Leger for President!
P.S. Please don't post you are too young to be president.
I haven't read your report yet but I opened up the page to download it in a seperate browser window, so I'll get to it today.
I just want to thank you for providing the logic that you did in this post. It does seem that computers would have to advance way beyond their current capabilities for google to ignore or even provide much extra weight to themed links.
This post actually motivates me to read your report especially to learn about Myth 2-Google will not rank duplicate content as I've been concerned about sending out the same articles to many places at once because I was concerned about the "duplicate content penalty."
Hi one n all … I checked out this interesting information that sits well with what Jonathan has exposed here … after all said n read this is the best blog to share it … it is the only game in the S.E.O town of understood….
"A link from a trusted, relevant website with the right keywords in the anchor text is like a vote for your website…but some votes are more valuable than others"…
About 50.0% of search engine optimisation (SEO) is about creating pages and content in a way that is particularly receptive to search engines – great original content, formatted in a particular way with meta-tags, heading tags, bold or bulleted items, the inclusion of the keywords you are targeting in the right locations and more…the other 50.0% is about creating an internal and external link strategy that will raise the profile of your website.
All my best to you and yours
Phillip Skinner
Jon,
Interesting theory, I am not a google programmer but it would seem they are able to identify the theme of a website.
WTR:
Google is often able to identify the theme of a web site. The problem comes in identifying the theme of the web sites that link to them AND determining how closely associated those topics are (or are not). That's where problems start to really manifest themselves, as outlined in this article.
To what degree is Google using theme to set link value? I'm not sure, though a new experiment I'm working on should shed some light on this in the coming months. What I do certainly know for a fact, though, is that you can rank for a large variety of keyphrases based only on off-theme links.
This was a very interesting post. Although I write primarily about arthritis pain relief, I find myself diverging into various other topics, such as swimming, cycling, weight loss, vitamins, different types of fat , comfortable furniture etc. Some might think that they have nothing to do with arthritis, but I have plenty of links from sites dealing with those topics.
Donnie:
Excellent example!
I have done as much as I can to get themed links, but when you have a relatively narrow niche you run out of places to go that aren't competition. But with your input Jonathan, I will certainly investigate the alternatives! You put forward a compelling case!
Thanks for some first rate content! Keep it up.
Yes I agree with your basic premiss on this subject…and not to just bring it around to my situation but, one of my sites has over 3000 inbound relevant and non-relevant links and yet Google has not indexed the home page. Certainly puzzles me…and so there is not page rank, but still lots of traffic.
There is a very simple way for anyone to check this for themselves if they wanted to.
an example is this. go to google and type in a search for a really competitive keyword such as diet. then check the backlinks to some of the 1st page results yourself. I have done this a lot of times and guess what….links come from everywhere to these sites. not just themed sites.
if google is going to penalize a site for having links coming to it from all sorts of "off-theme" places then how do you think it is that sites with 100's of thousands of links to them from the most random of sites are able to be page one results?
But…
there is another variable that most people over look here. google is looking to take down paid links so if you find that there is one site linking to another on every single page the chances of it being a site wide paid link are pretty good. my guess is that google finds these kinds of links and takes a shoot first approach and just assumes that these are paid.
it makes sense in most cases for them to think this. how many people link to you from every page of their site? now how many of those sites did this of their own doing without a little cash incentive from you?
To refer back to one of Jonathan's older posts about the seo benefit of an affiliate program i think this is a big problem for smaller sites with few links coming from anywhere but a small group of affiliates that are using a banner add on a blog for example.
I have one site that almost all ( 90% ) of my links come from affiliates that chose to put up an image of some sort to act as a banner and they effectively link to my site on every page of a blog.
im just waiting for google to {snip} slap me for this!
thanks for the post jon
good stuff.
Thanks Jon for your clear analysis,
A part of the problem Google must have is to determine what to focus on as the theme.
In my case is it
a 'directory'
the 'videos' or
the content of these videos.
And this apply to the taget site for the link and the linking site as well, I guess.
We have many similar cases. E.g. I do a lot in stock photography and here we could ask if it is the object of the photos or an agent for stock photography, the stock photo library and so on.
And many of you are familiar with 'articles' as a third example.
If out of theme links didn't count I guess the recommended tip to get a site indexed by social marketing sites (in fact directories) wouldn't count.
Similar, I guess most of the websites with highest PR are directory types , e.g. Google
(not to mention the social sites).
Soren
Denmark
Links on a blog from comments will always be a very diversified bunch. there links will stay and be counted by Google.
Jonathan, I respectfully disagree with your analysis. I think it is very possible that 1) Google can identify certain off-theme links that clearly run afoul of their rules (i.e., text link ads) and punish the associated web sites; 2) Google can reward certain on-theme ads that clearly serve to identify a site as an authority site; and 3) run the links that are not clearly on-theme or off-theme through a completely separate algorithm. I take the position that on-theme links are qualitatively better so I try to get them when I can.
Best regards,
Jonathan G.
Atlanta, GA
What you say makes sense about the links from non related sites. I hope it is correct because many of my links are from non related sites. My next question would be do reciprocal links also count. Can Google actually check to see if the links are reciprocal?
Great insight! Being newer to niche marketing and exploring how Google works is really baffling me.
I think that there are different degrees that Google ranks links back to your site. I feel that G gives higher priority to links that are more topic related. Why?
A couple of my niche sites I have analyzed recently show tons of backlinks in Yahoo and MSN, but only a few in Google. The few that show up in Google are of a higher percentage, topic related links.
It's really strange, and maybe Google hasn't updated their link system yet, but that's how I'm seeing it so far.
Thanks for the great site and info!
Elliott
Wow! I'm going to do it. I'm gonna link to my brand new shopping site on electric shavers from the home page of my dog eared old pet site that has a pr5. So, there!
Jonathan Ginsberg:
1) If Google can identify paid links, why are they asking for others to report the paid links to them? The logical answer is: they can't detect them, and so need manual reports.
2) I haven't disagreed that Google can identify and reward SOME on-theme links. What I'm seeing is their inability to identify them well enough to not rely heavily on off-theme links in their rankings.
3) Whether this is true or not I don't know. What I do know is that I can rank sites with 100% off-theme links with no problems, and for pretty darn competitive phrases at that.
Jon
Excellent contributions all around.
It's probable that Google gives extra weight to themed links, but no one knows HOW MUCH?!?
In addition Google's algo is capable of latent semantic indexing.
(i.e., it know that "notebook" may be a themed link to a page on laptop computers.
Also, Google may penalize links to IDENTIFIED link farms, etc.
(Also, referred to as bad neighborhoods in this discussion.)
So, SOME off theme links may hurt you.
Lastly, your link building process should show a natural
progression without ALL OR MOST of your links coming
in a narrow window.
Just my opinion.
Robert
I happen to concur with your conclusions based on my one site which has had very little promotion other than being a member of your linking program.
At first I was concerned by the fact that even though I had specified the health industry as my theme I was getting links from all types of websites in totally unrelated categories.
My three linking phrases are all now getting high front page rankings on Google.
Nuff said?
Jon wrote "My thoughts are these: if the sites are beating WellsFargo, and have been for some time now, what makes you think Google will manually adjust their rankings? Is it logical to think that the WF folks haven't noticed that already?"
The site in question came out of no where. Google has slapped down some directories, paid links, link farms, reciprical links, free for all links, keyword stuffing, etc. so schemes of any sort will have a short shelf life. I suppose if you built a bunch of non related links over the years that would be OK but sudden increases of links from a network resulting in a jump in rankings is probably not going to go unnoticed by Google and others.
Hi Jon,
Thanks a lot for your Great Free ebook "Search Engine Myths Exposed".
It really has blown the socks of off what the 'so-called' gurus have been telling us.
I'm not kidding when I tell you how many ebooks and reports that I've read that all say that 'themed-links" is what Google loves.
They also say that the anchor link should contain your most relevant keywords as well.
My website (hope you don't mind me using the title of it here - hopefully to gain a link to my site!) was recently ranked 150 on Google and is currently fluctuating between rank 30 to 40 now - a nice jump up all of a sudden.
(I have been using social bookmarking and submitting it to free directories - using a free directory submitting tool over the past few months.) I expect that when they come out over time, eventually, they must start to take a positive effect.
I tried to add a link from 4 pages of another similar themed website of mine to it a few days ago and my receiving web site disappeared altogether.
I'm not sure, but I think that Google didn't approve. What do think?
I removed them and noticed that about 4 hours later, it was back, but now on page 4 of Google and not page 3. I think there's a lesson there somewhere!
I would really like to join your 3waylink, but to be fair, I am not making a shilling from my site at present. Actually, no one has ever purchased from it since it came out about 4 months ago.
I'm gonna try and get a bundle of assorted links to it over the next month and see if I can get it onto page one - who knows?
Got a lot of learning to do yet. In fact over the last four years since I've been messing about with this IM and SEO stuff, I notice that the more I learn - the more I realise just how much I don't know!
Keep the emails coming, as they are one of the few that are actually worth reading.
Best wishes and thanks.
Anthony Marquis
Van:
The key is "sudden increases of links". Yes, you should not aim large quantities of links at your sites all at once. I've never advocated that.
Nor do I advocate having worthless sites that add no value to the subject matter they are ranking for. That will, of course, lead to a short site-life.
But if your site is a quality site, and if it ranks using primarily off-theme links, there's no reason that Google or any one else should make a fuss about it. From my own experience, Google certainly does NOT make a fuss about it.
If their algo says you deserve to rank, and your site is a quality site, there's no reason it should not be able to stay there for a long time.
Look at blackhat techniques for getting links, some of them can hurt domains and websites. If the links are not ignored totally.
Google must be able to adjust their algo to take into account those blackhat forms of link building.
Is it the linking methods they use to get the links that are penalised or is it the actual content of those websites that are penalised?
Might be an interesting test to do, build a whitehat site and do blackhat linking to it.
Great article by the way.
Ken
On theme links mean absolutely nothing to me. I've been doing seo for quite some time and have achieved some handsome rankings for some very competitive keywords over and over again…by never having on theme links…don't get me wrong some were on topic but to me a link is a link and its better if its a one way link….So get as many one way links as you can….I believe Jon is launching his 1000 one way links shortly…Not sure when…Maybe Jon can answer that…
So Jon when are you launching your 1000 one way links?…and how does one get in it?
Jonathan,
I concur with your logic in general but I am also concerned by at least two unknowns. First, Google's army of reviewers may in fact lower PR after the fact if/when it is discovered that a majority of links are off-theme. Second, I believe Google aspires to valuing on-theme links higher and at some point may introduce more advanced functionality to at least do high level analysis to flag sites with a high percentage of off-theme links for human review especially for hig PR sites. All things being equal, I think it is a much safer path to focus proactive linking efforts to on-theme versus off-theme as much as possible.
Hi Jonathan
A very interesting article as usual.
I do not have a clue as to how Google deals with their links priorities or relevance and really I do not have the time or brainpower to try and fathom out their ever changing algorithms.
I just work on the basis that anybody that wants to link to my site is more than welcome and I don't care who they are, sooner that than no links at all.
In any case I can only control who I link to and I of course have no control over who links to me.
I must be doing something right because my site went from zero to PR3.
Although I do not to pretend to know why, I just do the mundane jobs on a regular basis like writing articles, press releases and putting comments all over the place where I think I may have a point.
Nevertheless I think it's great that clever people like yourself are able to analyze these facts and myths so that the less technical have some idea of what it all means.
Regards
Chris
After reading the comments to your post, Jon, I realize that I have a lot to learn. My blogs have increased in popularity, but I would like to know also about the one way links. I appreciate your exposing the myths about Google. I certainly believed some of them before reading your articles. Thanks for the thorough job you do!
I must admit that I was a bit sceptical when the original post came out but this one has cleared it up in my eyes now. I've tended to keep relevant links on their own link pages before ie on another site I have, sunglasses on a sunglass link page, watches on a watch link page etc. I may keep up this practise but also add a general link page for everything else
Great Article
Jon,
I think you are right that all links are counted but the nagging question as yourself and others have mentioned is, how much does an on-topic link count versus an off-topic link.
I have concerns about building a bunch of links from off-topic sites and having Google's algorithm catch up to the point that it will rank sites with themed links ahead of sites without them.
I had AdSense sites that in the past that did very well, one generating over $5,000 per month and then one day it dropped to about $150 per month and today it is at about $50 all of its traffic now comes from sites that link to it because it is nowhere in Google even though it has a lot of links and is PR-3.
I am afraid that links that are built simply bump your Google ranking will one day, one way or another become almost worthless.
Quality on-topic links on the other hand will never give Google a reason to devalue them. On-topic links will probably become more and more valuable as Google’s index becomes clogged with off-topic links that are built simply to gain an unfair advantage, .
I think that links should be built to generate quality targeted traffic on their own, independent of Google. Such links will convert very well where off-topic traffic will not convert at all.
Such links will endure and generate traffic beyond Google. I can tell you from experience that you do not want to put all your eggs in Google's basket.
Jim Nech
Google nabbed people using TLA because the plug-in was obvious, leaving a footprint.
TLA is probably out of business.
Discreet paid links would be impossible without manual intervention.
After reading through your report exposing the myths, I ran a small experiment. The page I used went from nothing (not even indexed) to being indexed within about 2 hours and at about 98 on average for my keywords. Within 48 hours I was at number 11 and 24 hours from there I was at number 4.
All the links I used were off topic links, and it didn't really take to much effort to get the results surprisingly.
Jon,
I think you hit the nail on the head, it seems through links I rank for some of the strangest keyword phrases. Relevance to my sites main keywords doesn’t seem to matter.
Hi Jon, I agree with you whole-heartedly. When I first started marketing, I looked only for themed links. It was only when I became less selective that my site gained a higher PR and better Alexa ranking.
Keep up the good work!
Links from "off theme" sites do count. Personally, I own about 50 sites. I have sites that rank well even with backlinks from totally unrelated sites. But sites with links from "associated topic" sites do better in most cases in serps.
Actually, it also relies on what keywords you are targeting. For uncompetitive keywords, the search engines tend to ignore where the links are coming from. Important point is the backlinks are from high PR and authority sites.
Btw, Jon, can you extend a copy of your report SEO Myths Exposed? I subscribed but it did not get through to me.
Very Interesting Post!
I came to this post with a very clear idea of what I believe when it comes to linking. However, halve way thought the post, you caused me to step back a bit, so good on you!
But all said and done.
Relative linking has to be the fastest, safest, less stressful way to building a business online? As for keywords that do not seem related, but are (fertilizer was a great example), surely it is just a case of making sure the content justifies the transition. After all, thats why we use keywords in links…
An example would be a link with; Easier Gardening With Natural Fertilizer. Backed up with a keyword rich article…
Or am I just to old school, where we believe simple is best?
As usual Jonathan, a great post. Thanks again.
Sincerely,
John Adams
Another great post by Jonathan.
Finding relationships between things is intelligence. Computers don't have any intelligence, period. Computers are just calculators on steroids.
If computers could find relationships between things like human do - computers could solve logical problems which they have hard time doing.
Just imagine, my wife would put my name in such a computer and it would spill out all the girls I was related to in the past. Is that possible for a computer (Google) to know? No. It has no idea who I was related too. It can guess things (based on what other pages say about me) but it cannot determine anything.
Hi Jonathan
Thanks for finally settling what I have been wondering about for the past year. I didn't know for sure but I did it anyway.
Now I know for sure…Thanks again
Hi Jon,
Another great sharing from you.
Thanks for confirming my thinking.
I always wonder how a computer program can determine whether the linking site is a themed site. I do agree that if happened that there are similar theme keywords used in both the linking and the linked sites, Google might give extra 'points' but definitely no way they are going to discount or penalize the linked sites.
Unless the links are from bad neighbourhood, the links will not be counted, but still Google would not penalize the linked site, else the top ranking sites can easily be sabotaged.
Thanks Jon and looking forward to your next sharing.
Cheers,
Keith.
Hi ,
Three of my site are one word and the word guide. As in healthfood-guide does that mean that all sites with the word guide would be counted as relevant. After all 50% of the main keyword would be the same.
Really appreciate your post Jonathan, they make you think.
Thanks
Terry
Good information. I agree that themed link identification would not be too difficult to do from a technical standpoint as a programmer, but I did not know that Google thought about it that way. So, now Jon, all we have to do is work on that code you you've already developed to rank our own sites with themed links irregardless of the Google ranking. As you've very clearly discussed, it does make sense to have links from experts and could create stardom and Hollywood on the net for those prone to theme edified backlinks
your is the best, i like this web
Great analysis - I think that your blog comments are accurate and well written (even though there are a number of "experts" out there who are writing otherwise).
Your book search engine myth exposed is now my bible in optimizing my blog. Using your tips, I got my blog now up and running. Thanks to you!
i do not know how much the value of this knowledge, very good SEO clarification.
Hi,
Excellent examination on linking.
I, too, tend to think that unrelated links are important
and have to be included in Google's ranking system.
However, I do think that we should show some restraint,
and always be looking for like-themed links.
All the best,
Laurie
I enjoy coming to your blog. There's always great information and the discussions on posts are fantastic to find out what other people think about what you say. Thanks for the seo book, I learn more and more each day thanks to the generosity of people like you. Thanks.
Jon,
Excellent post. It does make sense that Google and the other major search engines will count off-theme links to your link popularity and help to improve your page rank.
One thing you mentioned before in your report (and I thought you would repeat it here) looked at the heavy quantity of off theme links that a major website SubmitExpress.com was receiving. And I'm sure it's not the only site like that.
I think what matters more to Google is the PR of the webpage giving the inbound link and if it is considered an "authority" site.
J.J.
Hi there Jonathon
Your Blogspot has a wealth of information. That is why I have bookmarked your blog.
TrudyVan
very good information. as i am new in this field this is very good information. i have weightloss site then can start getting links from others ?
Google's link checking system I agree is far from perfect. As we have seen in the latest PR slap for paid links they actually had to look at sites manually.
Otherwise they would not have asked people to report paid links. So use those nofollo tags or suffer. But on the other hand if you have good content readers will visit your site no matter what.
Hi John, excellent post and I know your right because I link all my sites the 'easy' way.
Kind regards,
Remco
Hi to All and especially you Jonathan!
There is some software all around the web that promises to spread out your link to thousands of directories etc.Does anyone in this board knows if makes any good or it should be avoided ?
Thanks and keep doing the good work Jon!
Off-theme links have to be counted by Google because they are links. But of course the weight of the links are not that important compare to on-theme links.
Moreover, relevant off-theme links (links within article paragraph are more valuable than irrelevant on-theme links (links on the side bar or footer). A recommendation on medicine by a relative might be more valued than by a doctor because of the nature of trusty.
Last but not least, off-theme non-profit links should be more valuable than on-theme affiliated links, because it is not biased by money. For example, some dog bloggers might recommend their readers to some SEO expert (off-theme), and that may be more valuable than some SEO expert try to recommend people to some product he is affiliated with.
If Google don't count of-theme links or reduced its value just because it's off-theme then surely they are not doing a good job.
Keep up the good works, Jon. I like it.
Regards,
Binh Nguyen
Am I the only one that wonders if search engines are building their own index of "related terms" based on what links are actually being given? I mean, if 50,000 links from pages about, say, back pain to pages about a certain type of shoe exist, doesn't that seem to *create* an association?
The point is, that engines over time could be able to look at the landscape so-to-speak, and determine what is relavant at specific points in time.
I may be wrong, but it seems reasonable.
Hi Jonathan,
Some wonderful content and really does make you think about SEO and what really is important.
I'me glad that yopu brought out that report. It's made a huge difference in some of the work I do for off libe companies
Hamant
Web Design:
That certainly seems reasonable. The problem is that if off-theme pages are the ones linking (because they work), then it would create erroneous associations. So that issue would have to be dealt with.
I wonder if google does any manual link review like they do with sites? I would not put it past them.
I think if you look at the patent for topic sensitive Page Rank http://www2002.org/CDROM/refereed/127/ , you find a methodology that favors on topic links without excluding any links that are not off topic. Certainly the case can be made from observing high ranking pages in amazon, youtube, etc that Page Rank by itself, regardless of topic can still drive rankings. However, that doesn't mean that on topic links don't count more all things being equal. So with limited resources available to build links, one must decide where to commit resources to. Building tons of non topic specific links cause they are easier to find, or less links which are much more topic focused. In terms of a long term strategy, I will take the topic focused links. If for no other reason than the traffic has a better chance of converting. Links aren't just for search
Thanks again,
Hey Jonathan. One thing that I love about your is the fact your angle of dong thing online is360 different from popular norms and beliefs. You know Until you came out with your PDF report, I was held down by those those Myths myself.
And as I'd admited in my other comments on this blog, now I am mor eonfidence and BOLD in my approach. Now, on this topic, as for me, I give no {snip} anout the issue of 'off theme; or 'on theme' link building anymore.
I've started building my links and like. I will advice people to test and see the results for themselves befodre arriving at any conclusions.
Thanks man.
It seems to reflect other current thinking about this issue of links.
However there is still a lot of the counter argument going the rounds so it's difficult to know who or what to believe. In the meantime it seems to be a case of "you pays your money and you takes your choice"
It will probably never be resolved, because by the time there is some form of concensus, the search engines will have no doubt changed the rules of the game once again.
But I must say JL seems to speak more sense than most and I for one will keep listening to what he says
Google made us believe that they weighted the theme link more.
I think google pays attention to themes although I have seen websites with links from off-theme sites ranking well. Google keeps secrecy on its algorithms so that we don't know exactly how google rank pages.
You're right Jon. All links have some value. Some have more value more than others. We could add to watch out for links coming from what Google considers "bad neighborhoods". Those links probably carry a negative value for our rankings.
Luc
Jonathan,
I signed up for 3waylinks last week and just today my ranking jumped up nicely. Ranking #2, #3, #4 for my keywords
Thanks!
Justin
Jon,
I have a translation business site and most of the sites that linked to it and helping it to get indexed and ranked by the search engines are not 'translation themed' sites.
At first I was puzzled at this because it contradicts to what I have
been taught by the 'SEO gurus'. After reading this post, now I
understand much better.
Thank you Jon.
Regards,
Deen
Jon,
As always, impeccable logic that cuts through the befuddled mist of half-truths and myths.
And I think the sucess of your 3WayLinks system proves your point very well.
Mark
Why off-theme links have to be counted by Google. : Jonathan Leger
An insightful article from Jonathan Ledger about link popularity myths and Google.
Hi Jonathon,
when I read a few "expert" SEO reports floating around, I said to my self " I can't believe people will actually believe this BS". I found out I was wrong.
I figured that if anyone had a website, they would take the time to figure out how to get search results. I did for a personal site I had up about 3 years ago, just to play with. I had first page #3 and # 7 for two search terms on one of my pages, that was nothing like the "experts" said a page had to be.
I got your report and was kind of shocked that such a report was needed. I actually went to the search engines sites and found out something that apparently the "experts" are not aware of. The search engines tell you how to get listed, how often their bot will return, and if it doesn't find new info, then it will wait longer next time before coming back. Unless you use a tag to tell the bot how often to return.
For google, they actually tell you that their bot will only go to the first ten pages of your site…. unless you use full URL links. Google says the way their bot works, it checks your internal pages, up to ten deep, if you do not use full urls (http://www.yoursite.com/page)
their bot follows ALL links in the full url format from the page it is on. it doesn't know if it is your page, or someone elses.
They also said that if you are using a CMS (like joomla) then you have to use a site map as their bot cannot read inside of a cms.
They also tell you how to do a robot.txt wich is a list of what robots you want to allow or not allow to index your pages, and what pages you do not want indexed.
So Adam, it is not just Jonathons perspective, it is what Google says their bot does. Oh and Jonathon, if you go to google webmasters section and read it, you could have asaved yourself alot of observation time
I'd never really thought about the issue of themed links like that before. Google surely can't penalise you for off-themed links, as you have no control over backlinks that people make to your site without your knowledge.
Once again some great information. I can now say that this site/blog is an integral part of my own online efforts as reading it regularly is a must.
Thanks Jon.
Matt:
Google speaks in vague generalities, only sometimes giving enough information to actually make decisions based on. They are notorious for being anything but transparent.
While sometimes it is true that you can read what Google says and take it at face value, that is unusual. So I'm afraid I would not have saved myself any observation time, but rather caused myself more frustration when what Google said to do to rank in Google didn't work, either…
I don't think there's any question that Google counts off-theme links - your reasoning makes sense.
I do think a themed link from a site whose topic Google can identify (as opposed to a general site like an article directory that covers multiple topics) is more valuable than a completely unrelated link.
I also think that the text surrounding the link is going to have a bearing on how valuable the link is. If somebody links to an "unrelated" site from an article about that site's topic, it's probably going to be given more weight by Google than if it was just a solitary link in the sidebar of their blog or somewhere else that doesn't really have any identifiable topic relevance to the link target.
i am still learning …
Thx
Your analysis is correct. Google does not give any significant advantage to "themed" sites.
Many people buy links from websites not just for juice but as a form of advertising. Aslong as the site is a related field they shouldn't be a problem.
I found this site and article to be very helpful and full of good information. Thank you for taking the time to post this.
Hi Jonathan,
like Robert A. Kearse mentioned in his comment Jan. 28th.:
Google introduced it's Latent Semantic Indexing algorithm (LSI) a few month ago. This is exactly about recognizing semantically related keywords, even if they are not just synonyms.
So in this example given by your reader Donnie LSI should be able to evaluate correctly, that vitamins, swimming etc. are related topics and those are to be counted.
Application of LSI might even demand links from such only related sites and would downgrade sites which have only totally "on-topic" backlinks.
Per that it might be still "dangerous" to have a lot of links from totally off-topic sites, like for example a pet food site with backlinks from a hypnotism site. If they can't find the topic as related in their LSI database they might still penalize you for these kind of links.
What do you think?
If this is correct and I suspect it is, this can make it a heck of a lot easier to generate inbound links. Not everyone wants to post links to themed (competing sites). I will look into this and see how it goes.
I follow this comment provided by Holiday ""If this is correct and I suspect it is, this can make it a heck of a lot easier to generate inbound links. Not everyone wants to post links to themed (competing sites). I will look into this and see how it goes."
Links from almost anywhere count in Google.
Some are more obvious and valuable then others but it should be clear that there is no such thing as a negative value link. Even if Google assigned no-value to it, somebody could still visit your site because of it so it has some value.
I am glad to see that you do not use the no-follow tag.
[…] 5. And finally, Jonathan Leger explains Why off Theme Links Have to be Counted by Google. […]
Hi Jonathan,
First let me thank you for keeping me current through your informative emails and blogs. Being active in several different businesses, I appreciate your methods.
I was particularly interested in this "off-theme links" article because my page discusses "commission sales" and almost any product sold in almost any market place - including the internet - can be sold utilizing a commission or a portion of the proceeds as compensation (which is technically a commission, unless you're a partner), so I was very pleased with the article.
Thanks,
Tony
I think you`re right Jon. I have many off-theme links to me that came from various sites and different topic with me.So, I guess big G can`t run on-theme links method 100%.
Great info. Thanks for all the great things you are doing. Keep up the good work.
This is just what "Stomping the Search Engines" was about. While it is a good idea to get links from like themed sites, it isn't really necessary.
You make an excellent point.