links from related sites = totally overrated?

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

I typed in those keywords into Google de yesterday:

"Mauritius" (german word for the beautiful island) and at #5 or so this site ranks: mauritius-brauerei de (Brauerei = brewery in English I think).

It seemed to have about the same link authority as other sites such as mauritius-guide or mauritius-info etc.. However, I highly doubt that a site of a brewery that happens to be called mauritius will have a significant amount of links from sites on travel, let alone on that island.

Later on I typed in Seychellen (German word for "Seychelles") and what ranks in the top 10? seychelles-footwear de or something.

Another example would be "what women want": www whatwomenwantswimwear com has been in those SERPs for over a year.

If sites can compete against other sites with a similar amount of link authority only by having the keyword in the company name and probably not getting a significant amount of links from sites within the niche, does that mean that 'getting links from RELATED sites' is overrated? I've seen this phenomenon of 'site ranks because of keyword = part of company name' quite a few times so far.

What do you thin of this? Does it really matter whether a link is from a related site? or whether enough of your links are from related sites? To me this looks like getting links from anywhere is fine if they got anchor text.

If youre building for the future itd obviously make sense to get links from related sites, but does it really matter, right now?

P.S.: I also think this means Google can't be using CTR too heavily, yet........those are generic high volume search phrases and I bet (except for the whatwomenwantswimwear example )) most people searching for it wont click on that.

[AussieWebmaster]

You are looking at what is related through the eyes of your niche... what says the others are not relevant to others and for that matter just the term?

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

I'm not sure if I get your point. You think that maybe those sites only look (completely) unrelated to me, but maybe there's another relationship I can't see?

I've tried to come up with a relationship, but I think if a search engine did look at this heavily they should expect a site that they rank for 'mauritius' (maurice..the island in the indian ocean) to get at least a certain amount of links from travel sites and such.

But ranking a brewery company's website for that term..I really can't see how they might get links from travel sites or other similar sites?

[AussieWebmaster]

Take for example turkey - it can be a meal or a country... if mauritas is legitimately a beer I think people may have links to it by name but as a beer

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Ive never heard of that beer personally, btw :-)..but yeah, I think that would explain the anchor text.

But I still kind of think it doesnt quite fit in there (as with many other SERPs), but I guess I see your point. As they dont have personalized search, yet, they might have a reason to believe that some of the searchers searching for mauritius might be looking for a beer, so it might make sense for them to place one such site (other than travel) in the top 10 for mauritius..is that it?

[AussieWebmaster]

yes and within the space they could be well linked