A themed link is an incoming link to your blog that is on the same topic or "theme" as your own blog.
For example, you write a car blog. If you trade links with another automobile or car related blog, that is a "car themed" link.
There is some thought, in search engine optimization (SEO) circles, that Google in particular is not giving full credit for non-themed links. Some experts go more extreme in their thinking and even say Google penalizes link exchanges and non-themed links.
I disagree with that thinking of Google penalizing links, at least for blogs. After all, Google's algorithm for calculating search engine results is based heavily on links and link anchor text. Google PageRank is link based entirely.
Let's consider the more likely possibility, that Google gives more value to theme related links. That seems much more likely.
How can blogs gain theme benefits from their incoming links?
Theme your blog to include that incoming link.
We'll return to our car blog example. The car blog has a link from a travel company in Florida. It is not especially on topic.
Theme it.
Write a post about taking a car trip to visit Florida. Discuss driving as an alternative to flying on the major airlines or taking the train or bus. Suddenly, your car blog now has an additional travel related theme.
You can do that, with any incoming links, that are not especially closely related to your blog's subject matter.
You can easily include a post on that topic on your blog. Finding a topic to write about, is one of the most commonly heard problems, faced by bloggers. Theming your links solves that major difficulty as well.
Theming your incoming links can also give you a boost, on all of the major search engines, because your blog now includes some brand new searchable keyword phrases.
You get a double bonus.
Links are worth more in the search engines, due to being on topic, and by giving you more search keywords.
You also get some additional topics to write about in your daily blog posts.
There should be no concern, among bloggers, about whether or not your incoming links are themed to your blog topic.
You simply make them so by blogging about them.
