It's loose, but it's there. These are separate stories, retold many times or not, and the cyclic nature of the battle for the triforce is established game lore.
I believe it's also misleading to say Nintendo doesn't care about the timeline stuff. They care but also make a conscious decision to keep it light and not overly bound or caught up in it.
AoL was a sequel to LoZ. ALttP was a prequel to LoZ. LA was a sequel to ALttP.
OoT is explicitly a prequel to ALttP.
OoT splits into at least two timelines. MM explicitly follows the child Link who preempted Ganon's ascension. WW explicitly has you fight the Ganon defeated by adult Link. TP explicitly places itself as a sequel to the "child timeline" and so also a sequel to MM.
The only games which lacked an explicit placement to the rest were the Four Swords series and the Oracle games. Not small exceptions, but exceptions none the less, and that's only if you ignore interviews. (And interviews would give you Minish Cap preceding Four Swords preceding Ocarina of Time.)