It is some kind of paradigm that good links should mostly come from related, topically relevant sites. Sounds OK in theory.
The problem is that the majority of people have at most one or two sites in their possession or editorial control, but they have dozens (or hundreds) of interests, hobbies, affiliations and opinions.
Someone may be a movie buff and have a website dedicated to this. At the same time, he may also have a friend starting a new business, a compassion for abandoned animals, strong political views, or enthusiasm for a useful web service.
Shall he link to his friend’s company site; the local animal shelter; a presidential candidate’s home page; or that particular web service? And all this from a movie site? (Well, he doesn’t have any other…)
Or shall he create content for each and every topic he wants to put up links about? Really? So that search engines accept those as relevant links instead of being some suspect worthless semi-spammy stuff?
It’s his site. He has full editorial control, he is not paid for those links, he actually understands and endorses them.
Still, how the hell would a search engine tell those links apart from non-relevant, paid-for links?
Tags: links, relevancy, site owner
