Link building is nowadays perceived as the backbone of SEO work, vital for achieving top positions in that highly competitive and ever changing search engine hierarchical listing. However, there has been a lot of debate lately whether relevant back links are better to implement over their “random” counterparts. The opinions are mixed, with one side sticking with logic and suggesting that relevant back links should indeed, be superior, and the rest clinging onto the premise that relevance is a detail that can be overlooked, and that the emphasize should be placed on the number of links alone.

The thing is there is no “right way” when it comes to link building, and in fact both views may be correct to an extent. While we may not hold the exact answers, what we can do is place relevant and “non-relevant” backlinks side by side, analyze them, confront them and draw our own conclusions.

Let’s have a look at relevant links, to begin with. Common sense leads us to think that they should be better, considering they have the major advantage of getting targeted web traffic to online businesses. This should translate into higher chances to transform incoming visitors into customers and consequently, improved sales. By following the premise that someone who accesses the webpage containing your backlink is more likely to click on it and check out your site, as long as the link is similar to whatever topic he/ she was reading, the conclusion jumps in right away – relevant backlinks must be better.

However, by tackling the issue from a different angle, we suddenly realize a major drawback overshadowing this apparent benefit – resources. Think about the huge amount of time needed to filter through thousands of online resources in the effort of nailing the right sites for you. This ongoing, assiduous task would swallow up all your time and yet some, thus scoring next to nothing in terms of viability. In this light, regular backlinks suddenly appear somewhat more desirable. 

Regular backlinks hold the major advantage of being quick and easy to implement, which means considerably less effort and time spent to attract visitors to your business. With similar resources, you get many times the number of regular backlinks as opposed to relevant ones, which should get you similar, if not even larger numbers of visitors. So, should you then choose the latter over relevant backlinks or not? Well, not necessarily. Remember that randomly tossed links are more likely to get you random visitors, which may wander around on your pages for a few seconds or so, and then leave and never return, as they weren’t there for a particular reason in the first place. Conversely, targeted visitors gathered via relevant links will stay on your pages for more, may become interested in your business and actually buy something in the end.

As you can see, both types of links have their own pros and cons and should be used wisely. A good option (if not the best) would be to aim for a combination between regular and relevant links, tackle a larger segment of visitors and build a substantial, though mixed flow to your business. If for some particular reason, you decide to focus on only one of the two, then go with that and see how things work out from there. At this point you should know what to expect from each of the two alternatives, so implement them in your marketing plan according to the needs and particularities of your business.