unrelevant links - how bad are they?

[gordi555]

Hi, I've got a few links directly from homepages of caught sites from an unrelevant niche to my money site. These are my strongest links!

Since May 2014 (Panda) I've been really struggling and my traffic to these sites has gone down by 75% at least. This happened on Panda day.

Do you think it's down to these unrelevant links? They used to rank the site very nicely before the latest Panda. I was careful with my anchor text.

 

[jaselc]

Probably, Un-relevant links are not good!

If a link is un-relevant then don't bother building it. I have seen many instances where sites with un-relevant links are knocked off the rankings to sites with just a very small number of highly relevant links!!

 

[gordi555]

Thanks for the feedback! Anyone else care to share their experience too please?

 

[JasonS]

Obviously man relevancy is must in SEO after panda/penguin/hummingbird updates. Suppose that your site is related to online shoe store and you're getting a direct homepage links from payday loan sites, do you believe they can benefit you? Obviously they can do more harm than passing out some link juice benefit.

 

[Final Infinity]

Obviously man relevancy is must in SEO after panda/penguin/hummingbird updates. Suppose that your site is related to online shoe store and you're getting a direct homepage links from payday loan sites, do you believe they can benefit you? Obviously they can do more harm than passing out some link juice benefit.

Honestly, that is not really true. I see many websites and have many websites that are ranking great with just unrelevant links. Problems only seem to occur when there is a manual review as it will be seen as unnatural. Apart from that I believe, that most of that "unrelevant links will only harm your website" comes from all the people who build crappy unrelevant links and then get hit because the links have a very low quality or because the websites that you got the links from were selling the links and got hit for that / found out to be a blo network etc.

 

[SEO Power]

Irrelevant links do work, so your website has probably been penalised. Check your link profile to see if there are any harmful links in your link profile.

By the way, when did unrelevant become a word?

 

[Initial Effort]

Chances are the irrelevant links are fine, it's really about controlling the volume. Obviously thousands probably isn't good, but in most cases it still works.

 

[gordi555]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'm running a few test but I'm still clueless! If the links aren't as bad (because they're aren't many) what would you say is the most common cause for causing a penalty?

unrelevant became a word just now

 

[erminc]

I always try to place some ads on irrelevant sites(including my own) with decent metrics and low obl.

I know contextual links are much stronger but this is the safest way I could think of linking from unrelevant sites to your money site.

Posted via Topify using iPhone/iPad

 

[SEO Power]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'm running a few test but I'm still clueless! If the links aren't as bad (because they're aren't many) what would you say is the most common cause for causing a penalty?

unrelevant became a word just now

Lol. Google penalises many sites everyday, even sites that don't deserve a penalty. So even if the links you have don't justify the penalty, you can still get penalised.

 

[archon10]

lol standard BS "link relevancy" garbage. Has nothing to do with it. PR has nothing to do with it. Unnatural backlinks are links placed by you or your shitty SEO. Irrelevant (notice the spelling) at worst will have a positive effect until Google realizes that your site is not relevant for the search term. Then, they just won't count for anything. Example: idiotic Fiverr people who spam competitor sites with porn phrases. It does nothing.

 

[mickyfu]

Example: idiotic Fiverr people who spam competitor sites with porn phrases. It does nothing.

Keep it quiet
Let the fools keep thinking they are doing NEGSEO.

 

[Wilson Grant Fisk]

OP, why are you building crap links to your money site?
How many links are we talking about?
If you didn't build them, then you can just disavow them and start building some decent links.

There could be numerous reasons why your traffic has taken a nose dive?
Where are you ranking for your keywords?
Did you drop in serrps?

Just had a look at your previous posts and you seem to be buying links from The Marketplace but you don't know why your site has taken a hit. If all those links are for the same site, how are you monitoring each service?

 

[TheNewMiner]

Obviously man relevancy is must in SEO after panda/penguin/hummingbird updates. Suppose that your site is related to online shoe store and you're getting a direct homepage links from payday loan sites, do you believe they can benefit you? Obviously they can do more harm than passing out some link juice benefit.

woah! what is hummingbird? I've heard of Panda and Penguin but never Hummingbird

 

[rankwatch12]

Hi, I've got a few links directly from homepages of caught sites from an unrelevant niche to my money site. These are my strongest links!

Since May 2014 (Panda) I've been really struggling and my traffic to these sites has gone down by 75% at least. This happened on Panda day.

Do you think it's down to these unrelevant links? They used to rank the site very nicely before the latest Panda. I was careful with my anchor text.

Irrelevant incoming links directly from the homepage is a bad idea. I would suggest you to either get the links removed or submit a Google disavow sheet.

 

[SEO Power]

woah! what is hummingbird? I've heard of Panda and Penguin but never Hummingbird

Here you go: http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816

 

[TheNewMiner]

Thank you SEO Power.

It looks like its a relatively new algorithm.

I wasn't aware of it but it's another variable to account for in SEO

 

[gordi555]

OP, why are you building crap links to your money site?
How many links are we talking about?
If you didn't build them, then you can just disavow them and start building some decent links.

There could be numerous reasons why your traffic has taken a nose dive?
Where are you ranking for your keywords?
Did you drop in serrps?

Just had a look at your previous posts and you seem to be buying links from The Marketplace but you don't know why your site has taken a hit. If all those links are for the same site, how are you monitoring each service?

Thanks for the info so far everyone. I'll also work on my spelling etc for next time.

They not crap links, more links that used to work well and no appears they don't.
Regarding amount, 10 to 20. I could remove them quite easily.
I'm ranking mainly page 2 and 3 but before Panda this was middle page 1. Big deal moving to page 2 I know
Yes dropped in the serps.
I'm buying links for a whole range of different sites to test etc - made notes on everything I've done so can see winners.

Maybe I'm overthinking everything that it could be. Probably best to go back to basics.

I know when I get a keyword penalty as my target keyword goes to 250th+ while a very close LSI keeps on page 2.

My industry does get a high bounce rate, do you think this could be a major ranking factor?

Thank you for your time.