Value of a link from a site in different niche

is it worth?

[carpediem]

Say I have sites A and B.

they are all different niches.... Does it help at all if I link from site A to site B and vice versa?

Different niches.

[cnvi]

Only if site A is of benefit to site B's users and vice versa. Ask youself if this is the case.. if you aren't sure, don't do it.

[wheel]

Currently yes (I'm assuming that's the case, since I see some folks ranking using links from pages on sites that aren't within the industry). But I wouldn't use it as a base method.

IMO there's only three things Google can use to tell what's in your 'niche'. Backlinks/neighbourhood is the first. Second is page content. Third is site content.

Beyond that, I suspect that they do a pretty crappy job right now of defining niches. A boating site might do well with links from fishing sites, but how anyone would define that they're in related niches is beyond me. I suspect they can't really.

Worse, some authority sites can't be placed in a niche. A link from a professor's page on a university's site? A link from wikipedia? Good links (disregarding nofollow) and likely to be solid for SEO purposes, but not exactly from sites in your niche.

In other words, I suspect such links are just fine, and doubt that they'll be getting anywhere with it anytime soon. Nevertheless, if they *could* start defining niches, you're going to get clobbered. Thus why I wouldn't suggest it as a good method. A small amount, sure, more than that, no.