Do Links from Sites in a Different Language Help Rankings?

 

    Sometimes you can get free or cheap links from site in foreign languages. The question is - do they help your site to rank better in your own language? textads

The answer seems not obvious and there are various gossips going around,  as if websites that have backlinks from sites in other languages are sort of “worldwide recognized” and therefore those links boost rankings.

Although the point of the “worldwide recognition” is a complete nonsense to me, I think there is some truth in the above assumption, namely -

links from sites in different language(s) do help your rankings.

What makes me think so? Well, first of all - my own experience, and secondly - logic. Practise shows that Google algorithms are so clever that they can relate translated terms in different languages. The best proof for that is when an English site is being viewed by, e.g., a visitor from France, Google AdSense ads will show up in French! This is a fact, which has been numerously verified.

So, what all that means? This suggests that Google is very likely to apply the same policy to backlinks -  it accounts for relevancy and passes link juice from a “donor” site in one  language to the recipient site in other language, effectively translating the texts and finding similar terms in both languages.

This assumption of mine is strongly supported by other SEOs and webmasters. For instance,  Loren Baker claims that

I also work with a number of  companies who target Hispanics in the United States… I’ve found that attracting links to those clients in foreign language sites, does help with rankings for relevant terms in both English and Spanish

Quite a few commenters to that post have supported the above finding by sharing their own findings which closely match those of Laren. One of them wrote:

In my experience, foreign links with a related topic and with your keyword in the anchor text will boost your SERPs in the local search engine.

Tallying up, I want to say that acquiring backlinks from sites in different languages is definitely worth the effort, provided that

• Donor sites are topically related to yours
• Backlinks come with targeted anchor texts
• The links are easy to get (natural links; sites accepting free or inexpensive submission; link exchange etc.)

Surely, all other requirements (Trust, Authority
etc.) that apply to sites in your own language  apply to the foreign websites as well. But that is quite obvious, isn’t it?