A lot of online marketers and SEO individuals are starting to become rigidly defined in terms of proper ways to perform certain tasks. One such item of discussion is backlinks and the relevance of them. A lot of people are continually reaching for the most authoritative links out there. Now, I’m not saying this is ludicrous, but the fact that many people are only interested in these high level links IS kind of dumb.
As an example, let’s say that you have a site that sells obscure comic books. The site panders to items like parallel spin offs or fan favorites like Lobo. You’ve got tons of these, all in mint condition. People who are fringe comic book collectors really enjoy your site for shining some light on less than popular characters and series. Some traffic enjoys it so much that they actually talk about your site on their blogs. These people may be fan boys, but are their blogs?
Well, they may enjoy comic books, but they have other passions in life so they talk about all sorts of content, such as basket weaving, entertainment watches, photos of cats and dogs, or just about anything else you can think about. The thing is the majority of your backlinks aren’t from people who also sell comic books. Those people don’t want the competition that could occur from linking to you.
So you have all these backlinks from sites that have nothing to do with comic books. Along with the fact that you have some great content on your site, this set up allows you to rank rather well for some nice key phrases in Google. Are these backlinks not relevant? Now it would be beneficial to acquire more relevant backlinks from authoritive sites, but you shouldn’t dismiss some links that at first glance seem irrelevant.
I’m not suggesting spammy links. What I’m stating is that you need to delve in a little more when researching where your links are originating. A lot of people out on the Web keep too much of a laser like focus on research when they should widen their gaze. They may be able to find an untapped resource in what initially looked to be worthless.
With that out of the way, have you ever found an untapped resource that on first glance you thought was worthless? Let me know in the comments below.
