Linking to OFF-TOPIC sites

Potential problems?

[johnser]

Slightly rhetorical Q:

If you have a site thats number one for "widgets" thanks to a recip campaign, won't building lots of links to other sites that are NOT "widget"-related hurt you?

Those sites will still give you a link from their "Widget" page which helps in terms of the inbound link theming but how about the outbound link theming?
J

[Marketing Guy]

I'd guess most discussion forums have a "Foo" type forum, and those who allow URL posting would have a large amount that were unrelated to the forums subject area.

Plus there are a lot of subject specific websites who include DMOZ directories - they must be the ultimate in unrelated outbound linking! ;)

So, nope - don't think linking to random_site_001 will hurt you - lot's of sites do it for legitimate (well, innocent) reasons.

Only concern I'd have was how you were linking to them. I've seen companies list their reciprocal links in one big long list, regardless of subject area. IMHO this looks terrible and probably causes people to leave your site and not come back! :)

Scott

[johnser]

Thats close to what I was thinking. Thx for the feedback :)

[martinibuster]

...avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Who you link to speaks to what your website is relevant for. I put my aff links in JS.

[glengara]

*how about the outbound link theming?*

I suspect links that are completely off-topic to the page subject will eventually be discounted, which is why I ensure there is at least some relevant-to-the-links copy on the page.

Difficult to do with thousands of links though ;-)