Backlink Relevancy

[Turkey Property]

In another thread, someone made the statement "Relevancy is everything in terms of link building nowadays".
I am wondering whether that is true, because how is relevancy defined? What are the parameters for one site to be considered relevant to another?
To give examples of why I feel definition is difficult, my site is for real estate in a holiday resort. Prospective buyers are generally either looking for a holiday home, or a retirement home. So for me, sites that are concerned with travel, and those dealing with pensions/retirement are very relevant. But Google does not know how my business operates, so how could it know that sites in these fields are particularly relevant to my site, when they are not apparently related to real estate?
What are your thoughts on this please?

[happy_man]

I agree that 'relevant' is too vague and involves too much subjectivity to measure - some parts of your site may be relevant to some parts of other sites, etc - and don't think Google should have this 'right'.

[James2Dylan]

Originally Posted by Turkey Property

In another thread, someone made the statement "Relevancy is everything in terms of link building nowadays".
I am wondering whether that is true, because how is relevancy defined? What are the parameters for one site to be considered relevant to another?
To give examples of why I feel definition is difficult, my site is for real estate in a holiday resort. Prospective buyers are generally either looking for a holiday home, or a retirement home. So for me, sites that are concerned with travel, and those dealing with pensions/retirement are very relevant. But Google does not know how my business operates, so how could it know that sites in these fields are particularly relevant to my site, when they are not apparently related to real estate?
What are your thoughts on this please?

I will agree with you. "Relevancy" is open to interpretation in my opinion. Unfortunately Google has the power to decide what is relevant for you.

[patco]

I don't think that anything related to your site could be called relevant according to Google. So, if your blog is about SEO, just a website about marketing could be or couldn't be relevant according to google!

[Reliable-seoservices]

I think, in your case you can take links from the websites which are related to either real state or holiday home or retirement home. In this way your ranking will improve for all these keywords. Do not think that whether your site is related to ither real state or holiday home or retirement home.

[rcostica]

Well that someone was me and I was referring to relevancy towards the targeted keyword. When you are doing SEO you're always targeting one or a few keywords, right? Well backlinks should be coming from relevant site for that/those keywords. For example, having a backlink from a travel site with anchor text "retirement home" will not be very relevant, whereas a link with anchor text "holiday home" would be a lot more relevant and thus valuable to your SEO campaign.

[alysonshaw]

Some still goes for niche based backlinks but those that work on high pr sites rather than niches with low pr tend to get higher traffic.

[StevenPayales]

Just pick a good quality backlink, dofollow, and high PR .. a busy website.. I'm sure it will bring you more traffic then.

[bogs]

Site Relevancy is a fact in link building, specially if the site has a high pr, good quality, it will help you to give traffics and backlinks to your site.

[Turkey Property]

Originally Posted by rcostica

For example, having a backlink from a travel site with anchor text "retirement home" will not be very relevant, whereas a link with anchor text "holiday home" would be a lot more relevant and thus valuable to your SEO campaign.

That's an interesting point, and one I hadn't really thought of before. I have been using keywords relevant to my site as anchor text but not geared to take into account the site they are coming from.
This in turn has led me to realize that there is much more I could be doing to target these specific groups, so I am very grateful for your input!

[pool.master60]

according to me HIGH PR always gives u advantage if the backlink is relevant or not .. though if you are getting a relevant backlink then it might have more potential then the non relevant but you must submit your backlinks to high pr websites and if its relevant thats good enough

[adskumar]

Generating back links form relevant is consider as quality back links Now a days google uploading his algorithm very scientific and user friendly for google relevancy is important so go with google.

[Turkey Property]

Originally Posted by pool.master60

according to me HIGH PR always gives u advantage if the backlink is relevant or not .. though if you are getting a relevant backlink then it might have more potential then the non relevant but you must submit your backlinks to high pr websites and if its relevant thats good enough

That has been the approach I have been using.

Originally Posted by adskumar

Generating back links form relevant is consider as quality back links Now a days google uploading his algorithm very scientific and user friendly for google relevancy is important so go with google.

The whole point of this thread is to discuss what relevancy means. If you are saying it is important to Google, please explain how you think they define it.

[GeraldNitram]

You've brought up a pretty interesting point here. It makes me think about how it would look like for the SEO people since they're on a pretty broad playing field. Well, the niches will mostly, if not all, fall under promotion or something along that line. SEOs can help dentists, so they can go for "dental website seo" or "dentist website".

So if I'm going to define it, I guess it would be something that's related -- may it be a tight or a loose relation -- to the stuff that you do. About how Google would see it, hmm... I'd wait for more answers myself.

[Turkey Property]

Originally Posted by GeraldNitram

You've brought up a pretty interesting point here. It makes me think about how it would look like for
the SEO people since they're on a pretty broad playing field. Well, the niches will mostly, if not all, fall under promotion or something
along that line. SEOs can help dentists, so they can go for "dental website seo" or "dentist website".

So if I'm going to define it, I guess it would be something that's related -- may it be a tight or a loose relation -- to the stuff that you
do. About how Google would see it, hmm... I'd wait for more answers myself.

My problem with relevancy is that at the moment it is one of those "buzz" words that people like to use, often without really thinking about what it means. It is thrown in on many threads but usually without the actual meaning (in context) being specified.
Google talks about relevancy in terms of it returning search results relevant to what the searcher has typed in. The only reference to it that I can find in terms of backlinks dates back to 2005 when the "Big Daddy" update was launched. But this was specifically concerning sites who were doing reciprocal link exchanges with non-related sites. However, even that had (to me) inconsistencies.
One example given by Matt Cutts of irrelevant linking concerned a real estate site, and he said:
"This time, I’m seeing links to mortgages sites, credit card sites, and exercise equipment."
Ok, I can see credit cards and exercise equipment as not being relevant, but mortgages?? How can mortgages and real estate not be relevant to each other? In fairness this was 7 years ago and they may have changed their minds since then
Ironically, apart from a couple of forums the only truly relevant backlinks I have are from other real estate sites I have reciprocal link arrangements with, but there only about 35 of them out of a total of more than 4000 links, the remainder which could perhaps be classed as "irrelevant".

[jwmann2]

Get backlinks from relevant websites first, also draws targeted traffic. But relevant niches don't always have high quality and high ranking websites. It's very simple, take the hyperlink to your website and put it where people will see it. Sometimes you just have to forget google and do what's best for your website in order to make sales and convert.

[Turkey Property]

Originally Posted by jwmann2

It's very simple, take the hyperlink to your website and put it where people will see it.

Sorry but I don't understand that part, could you explain further please?

[ket]

Yes, relevancy is important for back links, but this is not applied in all cases, such as when you will participate in a forum you can post comment in irrelevant thread and create signature also. Same thing is happen for blog commenting. But when you submit a article, directory, blog, bookmarking etc it should be relevant. So relevancy for link building is depends on situation.

[Turkey Property]

Originally Posted by ket

Yes, relevancy is important for back links, but this is not applied in all cases, such as when you will participate in a forum you can post comment in rrelevant thread and create signature also. Same thing is happen for blog commenting.

I would agree with that, it was mentioned earlier that relevancy can perhaps be established through anchor text.

Originally Posted by ket

But when you submit a article, directory, blog, bookmarking etc it should be relevant. So relevancy for link building is depends on situation.

If I am submitting an article or blog, then naturally it will be on a subject related to my website so relevancy is no problem there. But what if the site where I posted it wasn't related to mine?
For directories I would submit to a niche or general directory, I wouldn't think that if e.g. I tried to submit my real estate site to a to a directory of animal welfare sites it would be accepted anyway.
Can there be relevancy in bookmarking? I would have thought that someone with a genuine liist of bookmarked sites would have them for many different subjects.

[James2Dylan]

Originally Posted by jwmann2

Get backlinks from relevant websites first, also draws targeted traffic. But relevant niches don't always have high quality and high ranking websites. It's very simple, take the hyperlink to your website and put it where people will see it. Sometimes you just have to forget google and do what's best for your website in order to make sales and convert.

I agree with you jwmann2 You can't just rely on google to be sending you all the traffic, you need to get you establish good anchor text and put it in from of people.