How do you deal with backlinks from personal blogs/sites?

[n0tSEO]

Hi fellow Webmasters,

The question is all about links to your site coming from personal blogs and websites and how you deal with them from a SEO viewpoint.

What I've been noting in the 'link removal' trend and generally in every 'bad neighborhood' related articles is that links from personal websites tend to get frowned upon because:

• They're not related to the niche (personal blog/sites are about a bit of everything)
  
• Their content is not considered to be high quality
  
• They don't stand out in the SERPs
  

My viewpoint is that personal blogs/sites are still legit sites that exercise their freedom to link out to resources they consider relevant to themselves and their readers, so I wouldn't discount or frown upon backlinks of this kind.

What's your take?

[netmeg]

If 50,000 of em showed up in GWT one day, I might think something weird was going on. Onesy twosy I'm not worried about. Even sitewides I'm not particularly worried about if the rest of my signals are strong and I don't get too many at once.

[n0tSEO]

It can happen, especially if you run a B2C business and you release coupons and weekend-only discounts at a certain time of the year; the backlink count from personal bloggers and site owners is likely to spike as this is something people love to share on their sites, blogs and social networks.

[netmeg]

Well that's a cost of doing business in that niche, then.