Forum

[easyrider]

I have heard that links relevant to the page on your site that you are linking to are valued more highly by the search engines. But what are the criteria for the relevancy of a link - anchor text the same as part of the URL, some common words (eg. words in your URL/anchor text and in the page title or frequently used words on the page, such as Save My Marriage Today Review and Marriage Forum), something else???

 

[mark schaaf]

I never look for links that don't have something to do with my site, example if you have a cooking site you don't want a link coming from a bowling site and if you got the link it wouldn't have any weight. A link coming form the same type of site is way more important then from one that isn't. Anchor text I find is better if it has something to do with the site but doesn't have to match the url just the content. If a page on a marriage site has some specific information on it you can use the wording from part of the article as your anchor text.

 

[chris72]

According to Wiktionary relevant as an adjective;

Directly related, connected, or pertinent to a topic.

As in it has to have something to do with your topic . In the case of article directories, be in a category that is relevant to your topic or for blog posts and commentaries that the blog's main theme is relevant to your topic too.

 

[easyrider]

Yes, but I am wanting to know exactly how Google determines what a page's main theme is. Does it use the title or something like the frequency with which words on the page are used etc. Also, what if it is a page on relationships when my link has marriage in it - is this close enough (ie. do synonyms count)???

 

[kieran]

I would be interested to know how people can answer this question with authority rather than just guessing. How does anybody know how Google values a link? How do you test a backlink or anchor text for its relevancy to Google?

 

[karell_li]

You might want to watch the link posted below. Google’s Matt Cutts gives us some insights into how Google may treat links from different segments of sites, differently

http://searchengineland.com/insight-int ... ypes-17226

I hope this helps and makes sense.

 

[kieran]

Thanks karell_li, I took a look at the video but really didn't get too much from it on the question posed originally by easyrider. Matt Cutts, as usual, makes a short video about not very much but seems to say that Google does not place any special emphasis on links from social media sites - but then adds a caveat that it might!

 

[jmpruitt]

Hey, sorry i some how missed this thread. i just posted on my blog earlier today about this. Basically, when google reads a page, they can tell relevancy based on keywords and phrases that it picks up. This is called latent symantec indexing, and it gets really mathematically complicated to explain. Basically though, its how google can tell if a page is about Tiger Woods Pro Golfer or a Tiger in the Woods Stalking a Lion.

it takes a bit of explaining, but if you want a long read, you can check out the full post on how LSI affects Your SEO here