In relation to links/link building-  Ive been trying to get to the bottom of this for years, what is a "relevant" link?  How does Google judge what is relevant and what criteria does it use for relevancy?

to me a relevant link is when A) the anchor text (the actual hyperlinked text) and B) the general content on the webpage is similar to the webpage that it links to

so for example if i have a website and a webpage dedicated to dogs - if i link out to a pet store's page that sells dog collars the 2 things are associated

but if i linked out to a shoe store the 2 would not (unless they were selling dog shoes)

not the greatest explanation but hope it helps somewhat

In my opinion,relevant site is that the content are similar with your site,or relativity with your site,just like that,if your site is about hotel,your link could come from food,airplane,shopping.

I had to create a "relevant tags" system for a comparison site.

At the bottom of each resultset, I had to display some other, related links.

The system searches the previous comparison logs for each word in turn (ignoring stop/common words).

For instance:
result set for "Web Design for Dummies"

tags: Vps Web Hosting, Design Your Own Bag, Creative Live Cam Optia Af Web Camera, 1986-1996 Design Of A Decade, Design Your Own Caps, Indesign Type, Urban Elements Design Wax 200ml, Web Design For Dummies, Porsche Design Strap.

Very easy to do (and abit of a cop out tbh). The relevance is, well, it's not great, but it is "ISH", which got the boss off my back!

I think as far as relevance goes, it would be dumb to sell Blue Widgets and link to other sites selling Blue Widgets.

But, linking to sites with content about How to use your Blue Widgets, or Blue Widget review sites is a good idea. Even linking to Pink Widget sites is pretty damn good.

Not sure how relevant linking to a Blue Elephant site would be (as per my real world example above), but a Pink Elephant site would be pretty irrelevant.

Relevance in anchour text seems to be on the slide. Relevance near the anchour text seems to be the new fad.

I see this alot:

..........blah blah I was talking about the blue widgets I sell to a friend the other day blah blah...........


I think the idea is not to over optimize the page/site, yet still provide a reasonably relevant link.

Not 100% sure though, p'raps someone more SEO qualified could do some thinking on what I thunk

I am also unsure of what a relevent link is.  I thought it was a link that was relevant to something that you were viewing?

I have a swim cap website--In my opinion--relevant links for me would be sites that have to do with swimming products. I believe that swimwear websites & anything to do with swimming are relevant--but I was wondering what other's thoughts are on Scuba Diving websites if you feel they are relevant. I just created a page on my site for Scuba Caps. I just don't want to start linking with non-relevant sites & be penalized by the search engines for it. Unfortnatly, my links page still does not have a PR.

Hi IcePrincess,

in my opnion, if you have a dedicated page for Scube Caps and you link from that page to another scuba page (on another site) that is indeed relevant

to me it's what's on the 2 pages linking that count

imo, relevant links are the sites that are related to you site. it means that your site has the same niche on the site where you're going to leave your link.

relevant links can be looked at in 2 ways like some have said.
The site you link to:
1. Has the same content as your site ie. you sell swimming pools you link with other swimming pool companies.
2. Has information on the products you sell ie. you sell swimming pools so you would link to sites about pools like pool safety, pool chemicals, pool toys and games, pool guides and so on.

It all depends on what your site is about really tho as im sure most business would not link with other business sites that sell what they do (unless they are over priced and your views can clearly see this or maybe you only sell in the UK so you could like to a site that only sells in say the USA.

Thats my view and my link building has been working fine with all our clients sites

Some great explanations of relative links here. Ice princess i dont think google will penalise you for obtaining links from sites that have no relevance to yours. This is something that webmasters can not control. Angela has some great info on the myths of backlinks. She advises to use high page rank backlinks even if they have no relevance. She gos on to give examples of how only backlinks from non relevant sites still got her onto page 1 of google. If you see a high page rank site which will give you a do follow link then dont let it pass you because it has no relevance. You will still be credited for it.

I sell lcd tvs and home appliances. When i look for relevant sites i try looking for sites that give reviews about lcds, camcorders and so on. when exchanging links with webmasters i try not to exchange links with sites that sell the same products but instead exchange links with sites that sell accessories to my products. Sites that sell items such as lcd wall mounts, leads, cables and all the accessories which i do not sell

relevant links are linking one set of material to a similar set of materials.
if i have a travel website, receiving a backlink from other travel websites is considered relevant, perhaps best if both are in the same geograpical area. if i have travel website and people selling vaccuum cleaners want me to link to them and a link back, that's an irrelevant link, it's not related to the overall content of my website. the links may be of minor importance but i believe that search engines rate relevant links higher than non-relevant links and the highest would be authority relevant links coming from established blogs or websites or directories....

A relevant link has content related to the site that it is linking to. Just as Google AdSense contextualizes a site, and determines a "theme" they can do the same to determine how the content of sites are related.

relevant linking means that if a site offers the same services and products as of yours then it is said to be relevant linking

Relevant links are those links that comes with the same niche or with the same category as you site has.. Its somewhat like your competitors..

So as mentioned above relevant links come from anchor text, site category, page content and so on. While know one know for sure what the major search engine choose exactly i personal believe it has to do with matching keywords from these relevant links in either of the forms mentioned above.

There are so many factors which will affect the value of the link which is incoming to your website.  Not just the ones which have been listed.  The difficult part is not distinguishing these factors but giving each one a suitable weight in calculating which links are more valuable.

But at the end of the day Joe Average isn't going to do all of these calculations before submitting their website for a link, so in what you said about keywords appear in the link text I would agree that these are probably the most important.

These are usually the most difficult one-way links to get to your website as many directories have restrictions on what you place in the link title.  Many directories may classify your website as spam if you choose to include keywords which are not part of your website name for instance.

It's actually very simple. You simply do not associate your website with other websites that are totally off topic.

Give your users what they want and build a good site and Google will give you the rank you deserve. If your competitors are thrashing you then its because they have a far better website and trust me. It will be little to do with relevent links it will be to do with a lot more things.

Well, Relevant link with high PR is use to improve your page rank at the same it also improve your backlink some times they call this "quality link".

Irrelevant links from an irrelevant site will pass juice and anchor text as long as Google doesn’t suspect that the intent of the link is search engine manipulation. In short, lack of relevancy might make Google’s detective work a little easier, but there’s no reason for Google to devalue an editorial link just because it points to an off-topic site.

Mostly common sense really. You can't always have 100% relevent links on every page and you have to ask yourself, would Google penalise you for the occasional link?

I think one thing people don't realise is that everything is done on a large scale. A few links won't make a difference but if you put 10 on one page and they are all off topic then that page is not going to get as high a ranking but it's not going to get avoided either. Google looks at your overall website and if it's good its good. Put a few irrelevent links on a great website and it will make no difference.

Also I gave example of Ad Classified site earlier. They have all sorts of links and content but the links are on pages with relevent content and so Google ranks them high. I recommend just focusing on making every page a good experiance for visitors and not taking advantage of them at every opportunity with affiliate links or links to other sites you own.