Are links from blog templates powerful?

[tekkie]

I wanted to know if links from blogs, just any blogs to your site hold the most value for Google. The term is very competitive and it seems as though this site <edited> has 15,000 plus links inbound, but they are from blogs that have no relevance whatsoever. They have free wordpress template downloads with links embedded in the template.

I am just trying to understand linking because from what my very minimal experience with Google told me was that it had to be relevant websites.

Thoughts?

[edited by: tedster at 11:23 pm (utc) on Oct. 19, 2007]

[tedster]

What Google says and what works, at least for now, are not always the same thing.

In this case, Matt Cutts mentioned using free "sponsored" Wordpress themes as a potential problem for the blog site itself. However, I have yet to see any fallout, either for the blog site using those themes or the domains that those sponsored themes link to. There may be some fallout by now - but I haven't heard of it.

The problem here is that many people using these sponsored themes are innocent and do not even know what they are doing. This problem became so big that Wordpress stopped offering all sponsored themes this year ( see [webmasterworld.com...] )

On to the rest of your points. Content links from sites on similar topics are still the best. Just one or two quality links like that can work wonders. But sometimes tens of thousands of off-topic links still do the job, too. The quality, on-topic link is the best bet for any site that is looking for long term success.

[mattg3]

Just one or two quality links like that can work wonders. But sometimes tens of thousands of off-topic links still do the job,

There seems to be now an undercover industry of shooting sites down. Several months ago we got masses of IBLS from this weird poetry site that has in the menu left loads of unrelated sites linked, one of them is sadly us.

I can really not see why this english site would link to sites in a different language on completly unrelated topics, but to create negative link power and to expoit Googles rather limited approach to fighting SEO. That someone might want to shoot other people down doesn't seem to get mentioned a lot. :/

How could an algo or a human reviewer possibly know WHO bought or initiated a link, unless they check their bank accounts in West Papua New Guinea?

So you optimise by doing everything you know that Google doesn't want in link building to your competitors.