OTS Blog

An excerpt from google webmaster guidelines:

When your site is ready, have other relevant sites link to yours.

Google’s importance of links pointing to a website in determining its search ranking position has not only led to one more seo phrase ‘link building’, but has also created some myths. While it is clear from the webmaster guidelines that links to your site from relevant sites are good, it is not clear what exactly are considered relevant sites. So the point is, if you are a cotton cloth manufacturer in Sydney, what sites should you consider as relevant ? Cloth manufacturers in Sydney ? All cotton cloth manufacturers in Sydney ? Cloth manufacturers around the world ? Ready-made garment makers ? Or may be, any business in Sydney ?

When you are considering having other relevant sites to link to you, you should know that there is a section of sites which are considered authoritative by the search engines and you shouldn’t mind if they link to you, no matter what your site content is. Sites like Wikipedia, CNN and other popular news sites, download.com are a few examples of such sites.

The relevant-link-dilemma is hardly a dilemma, as most webmasters feel that they know what a relevant site is. So if you are a restaurant site, you know that the relevance can include restaurant sites, food stores, recipe sites, food suppliers; you might even consider dog food suppliers. This approach can be called product relevance, and is often a trap. You think that because a site offers the same or similar product or service as you do, it is considered relevant and becomes your potential link partner. Another common trap which webmasters fall for is geographical relevance. If you are a business based in New York, you think that the relevance can include all businesses in New York. While each of these may be true in part, they are not the right approach to identifying relevant sites.

Visitor relevance is what you need to consider, and not your product or geography. Think “Will my visitor be interested in visiting this particular site ?” The reason why visitor relevance is relevant is because organically, you would link to a site only if its content are useful to your own visitors. If you answer yes, then you’ve found a relevant site. I am not saying that this amazingly narrows down or broadens the relevance, but this does give a clear picture, and is therefore good. Let us consider the cloth manufacturer example again.

Maybe above only means not relevant for all visitors, and should be considered yes for the sake of identifying a relevant link partner. I hear you saying that Oh – the visitor relevance included amost all options. So let us do the relevance mapping of a continental reataurant in New Delhi, India.

Notice the difference in visitor relevance in the two examples. While a searcher for cloth manufacturer can order cloth from anywhere in the world, somebody who is searching for a restaurant will not order food from anywhere in the world !

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