Is Google Favoring Themed Links?
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Lately there's been much discussion and speculation about page themeing and link themeing, along with assumptions about Google's penchant for them. That got us wondering...
Has Google shifted toward favoring themed links?
Initially, we thought it was a simple question that could be definitively answered with a statistical study. However, as you will see, our original question led to other questions and answers over the course of our three-month study.
Themeing explained
Let's start with a brief explanation of themeing. The theme of your site refers to your site's primary topic. For example, you might have a site for a business that runs whale watching tours. If you want to rank highly in Google for the keyphrase whale watching, then your site should have a laser-beam focus on the topic of whale watching.
Effective themeing involves excluding as much content as possible that might distract from your site's primary theme. If you were to add a section on dolphin watching, you would be diluting your site's whale watching theme – and this could have a negative effect on your SE positioning for the phrase whale watching.
Granted, it's a rare website that deals with one topic to the exclusion of all others. Ideally, however, if your site offers multiple products they should either be closely related and grouped together or else separated as much as possible whenever that are not closely related.
Using this technique, your site will more easily achieve an identifiable theme, and each page within your site will have its own very specific theme: Whale watching pages are exclusively focused on whale watching; dolphin watching pages are exclusively focused on dolphin watching; and theme dilution is thereby minimized.
Link themes
Link themes are built on the same logic. The theme of a link is defined by the keywords you choose to u...
