Great Question, Complex Answer. First we have to explain the reasoning behind the question.

It is a fact; search engines view a link to a website as a vote for the site. Now an even better "theory" is that a link from a web site of the same "subject" is a vote that counts more. That’s the Link Quality theory.

If your website is in a specific industry, and another website in the same industry links to you, that is seen as giving better votes for you, compared to a link from a website outside the industry.

Example: A mortgage loan resource site links to a mortgage lender site. This is a better link than an auto parts website. In theory, that is the case, and this is the information we are given by the web gurus.

But in reality this would mean only mortgage sites would link to mortgage sites, and auto parts sites would link to auto parts sites. Then who would search engines link to? Search engines? There is the underlying flaw in the theory, conflicting with what actually happens. The competition does not link to each other! They are trying to defeat each other. But unfortunately the search engines still rate the industry-related vote as better quality; it makes sense to some degree so a non-related site linking to another non-related site is of less value than a so-called "quality link".

It is believed that this industry linking exists in some form when the "Google PageRank ", is being calculated. However that doesn't mean that non-related links are not counted. In fact, quality sites do link to “sites with less page rank” and still achieve search engine ranking.  Even if the factor was 5 to 1; 5 non-related links equals 1 quality link, it would still argue for a strategy involving quantity over quality to achieve Google Rank . My experience clearly indicates that the ratio is much less than this hypothetical 5:1; in fact it’s not even 2 to 1.  So quality does not necessarily trump quantity.

Now let’s say we have a new site in a highly competitive industry such as the mortgage industry, and we need to get links to start ranking in the search engines. The competition is certainly not going to link to us. And the other related sites will not link to us since we don't have any real value proposition for them to do so. What we have to do is manually build links through article directories, and link directories; increasing the overall backlinks to the site, which in return will increase the ranking.   

Facts are facts.  We are getting links from non-related industries. We are getting high ranking without much in the way of related industry links. And Quantity is at least as valuable as Quality in this case.

The quickest way for a site to gain inbound links is through building them on non-related links. Of course the better way would be getting quality links though. The best way would be doing BOTH.

So how would I approach this task? I would get about 5,000 to 15,000 inbound non-related links; maybe even more if necessary. You will start seeing search engine traffic going up at this point, and then when your PageRank is good enough, or Alexa rank is high, ask for links from quality sites. They will see that you have some good SEO numbers such as back links and your page rank. If you have the right tools you will be on your way to becoming an “authority” in the industry.

This approach works. Now some might argue that using non-related links will hurt you, I ask them … how can it hurt you if you are receiving search engine traffic where you weren't before? How can it hurt you if you have no control over who links to you?

My simple advice is don't worry about whether or not a link is a quality link. If it doesn't yield search engine traffic, it can still yield good regular surfing traffic. Not all people arrive on a website from the search engines. If you create an overall campaign to gain links, instead of just getting search engine traffic, your overall traffic will increase, as well as your search engine traffic.

Tags: Backlinks, Link Quality, Link Quantity, links, Search Engine Optimization