Linking to off topic stuff

trying to keep up with my competitors

[needsomehelp]

When exchanging links I try to stay on topic. But, lately I have noticed that my competitors are linking to anything and everybody. With this newest epdate, they have risen dramatically in rankings and increased their incoming links two fold. Teir page rank have also increased to 6's and 7's.

When I examine who they are swapping links with I can't believe it, so much off topic unrelated stuff. But here I am watching them rise in rankings. What should I do? Swap with off topic sites or hope that Google's algo improves where it can determine related and unrelated stuff?

[heini]

As long as there's the keywords in anchor you shouldn't have to worry about offtopicness of your linkpartners at this point.
If such links get devalued in the near future is open to speculation.
So, use at your own risk.

[mrguy]

In my opinion,

A link is a link.

I try to stay on topic or as close to it as possible. In my industry there are only so many on topic sites so I have to try and get as close as I can.

I look at the sites, and if they look pretty good, offer some good content, and may be useful to my visitors, I'll link to them.

Before doing so, I check them out and make sure they are not spamming and have not linked to any bad places. Sure it takes a while, but at least I've tried to link to a good resource. I've linked to sites who have not linked back simply because I thought they were a good site.

On the other hand, if a site looks like junk, poor design, usability, etc, has links to bad places, I don't care how high their PR is, I won't link to it. How would linking to junk help my visitors?

As long as you link for visitors instead of engines, you should be OK.