Relevance is always discussed when discussing rankings and backlink building. Different people define relevance differently, but in link-building strategies, it means ensuring that the hyperlinked anchor text is surrounded by content that aligns with the theme of the target site.
For example, if you’re building backlinks for a chiropractic website, the PBN link or guest post backlink should be placed within content related to chiropractic services.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sja2Gj8AWAs
While this is the ideal scenario, the real question is…
Is Relevance Necessary?
I have successfully built non-related PBN backlinks to my money sites for a long time, proving that relevance is a bonus, not a strict requirement.
To test this, I experimented:
I took a 7-week-old niche website with zero backlinks.
The site had just exited the Google sandbox and had no previous link-building efforts.
I built three PBN network backlinks to it, ensuring the content surrounding those backlinks was completely unrelated.
This created the perfect testing environment—starting with a blank slate.
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To enhance safety, I always recreate the original theme of the PBN site. This means the content around the PBN link-building efforts remains unrelated to the target niche.
The Experiment
Target Niche: Software Downloads (Video Games)
Website Age: 7 Weeks
Initial SERP Position: 22-28
Previous Link-Building: None
Number of PBN Backlinks: 3
PBN Authority: PR3-4
PBN & Content Themes:
- general health
- muscle building
- music art
Anchor Text Strategy:
- 1x Exact Match Anchor
- 2x Partial Match (Closely Related) Anchors
The only relevance in this SEO-PBN link-building experiment comes from the anchor texts, which were naturally inserted into unrelated content. However, the surrounding text had no connection to the software download niche.
Example: This piece of musical art can be found on iTunes, and you can also download GTA 5 for free here.
Now, after just 10 days, here are the results…
SERPfox usually can’t gather search data properly. That’s actually 3900 searches a month for keyword
As shown above, domain authority, trust, and backlink power outweigh content relevance when it comes to PBN link-building.
Trust Over Relevance
Google prioritizes trust signals more than ever. While this experiment was extreme, you can still optimize your PBN backlinks by aligning the anchor text, target site theme, and PBN content.
Example of Smart Optimization:
Target Site: GTA 5 Download
PBN Blog: Bodybuilding Niche
Anchor Text: Download GTA 5 for Free
Instead of forcing an unrelated mention, you can create a contextually relevant post like:
“How Addictive Gaming Can Destroy Your Muscle-Building Routine” – and naturally insert the PBN backlink within it.
But this is all easy stuff.
But who’s ready to take PBN SEO to the next level?
Foreign SEO
I manage three authority websites in foreign-language niches, targeting audiences who don’t speak English.
One site is in French (France market), while the other two are in Portuguese (Brazil market), covering niches like e-cigarettes, muscle building, and male enhancement. Each site has 15-25 pages ranking for various keywords.
Their homepage SEO includes social signals and profile backlinks, but their real ranking power comes from PBN backlinks, and not just any Private Blog Network backlinks, but completely unrelated, English-language PBN sites.
An English, utterly unrelated PBN that is.
The sites have been on the 1st page for months now ranking for various terms. Here are rank graphs of 2 primary keywords of the male enhancement site:
Again SERPfox got search volumes completely wrong.
These money sites have ranked on page one for months, even though 90% of the backlinks come from English PBNs hosted on US servers.
Even the TLDs (.com) and hosting locations don’t match their target markets, yet they continue to rank.
As for PBN outbound links, they are entirely off-topic and unrelated, to the point where it could look like a PBN got hacked and someone inserted random backlinks.
Example: I woke up this morning and noticed that my suplementos com hormonios masculinos are missing so I had to get out of bed earlier and get some.
Not only is the content unrelated, but the language doesn’t match either—and yet, it works flawlessly!
Conclusion
Some argue in favor of off-topic pbn link-building risks, and PBN backlinks like these could get de-indexed. However, these sites have been active for over a year, and the Private Blog Network backlinks were built at the same time. So far, no de-indexing.
Have you experimented with non-relevant backlinks? Give it a try and share your results below!
