"Hey, A Link Is Still A Link, No Matter Where It Comes From, Right?"
Wrong! This is a misconception that can easily get you in trouble. This approach could bring you short-term benefits 2 or 3 years ago, but major search engines (especially Google) have gotten a lot smarter since then.
If you still think theme relevancy is nice-to-have rather than a must-have, well, think again. Get a hundred unrelated links pointing to your site, and several things will happen, none of which involves high rankings for you:
* Google will simply not count these links when computing your ranking. This is the best thing that could happen since it doesn't involve penalizing your site;
* Google will think (justifiably) that your site belongs to a different theme (say, gambling) and treat it accordingly. This could mean your site will go up in gambling-related search results, and down in the results you seek (such as blue widget results). Now, you don't want this, do you?
* With the last Google algo update (dubbed "Big Daddy"), Google will decide (again, justifiably) you are trying to trick search engines and will simply drop your site from its index. Ouch. That was definitely NOT intended.
So here's a rule of thumb: Always keep your site's visitors in mind when running your link building campaigns. Try to get into your visitors' shoes and think what resources they would be interested in. Would they be interested in casino sites? No? Then don't do it.
Wrong! This is a misconception that can easily get you in trouble. This approach could bring you short-term benefits 2 or 3 years ago, but major search engines (especially Google) have gotten a lot smarter since then.
If you still think theme relevancy is nice-to-have rather than a must-have, well, think again. Get a hundred unrelated links pointing to your site, and several things will happen, none of which involves high rankings for you:
* Google will simply not count these links when computing your ranking. This is the best thing that could happen since it doesn't involve penalizing your site;
* Google will think (justifiably) that your site belongs to a different theme (say, gambling) and treat it accordingly. This could mean your site will go up in gambling-related search results, and down in the results you seek (such as blue widget results). Now, you don't want this, do you?
* With the last Google algo update (dubbed "Big Daddy"), Google will decide (again, justifiably) you are trying to trick search engines and will simply drop your site from its index. Ouch. That was definitely NOT intended.
So here's a rule of thumb: Always keep your site's visitors in mind when running your link building campaigns. Try to get into your visitors' shoes and think what resources they would be interested in. Would they be interested in casino sites? No? Then don't do it.
