Inbound Link Relevance
Yet another factor to consider when establishing inbound links is their relevance to your website’s theme. A theme is a semantic topic under which your site can be grouped. If your site is strongly themed, it will presumably rank well for key terms related to that theme. And, as you may have already discovered, gaining high search engine placement is a difficult task for which every competitive edge becomes important.
For example, a website dedicated to dog food may want to optimize itself for various key terms related to pet food and pet supplies. If it gains inbound links from websites about pets, these links will help to solidify its theme, increasing its ranking for pet-related key terms. If instead it gains inbound links from weather sites, these links will dilute its theme. Thus, quality can become more important than quantity when it comes to links, and popularity may have to take a back seat to theme promotion.