16 replies to this topic

[scotth]

I have been following Stay on Search's 10-week Internet Marketing Course, and have come to week 6 "Link Building." I had a question on something he wrote which is in regards to something that I am currently doing.

"IP Diversity: Having 20 links all coming from a variety of small blogs or hub pages you have created may satisfy the criteria for having links from different sites, but it will not fool the search engines. All these links come from sites with the same IP address and suggest that you are falsely manufacturing links. Get backlinks from a variety of sites with different IP addresses."

We are currently building websites for our dealers and hosting them on our server in-house. I found out that all of these sites are sharing the same IP address. They are also all linking back to our main site and we are linking back to theirs to help users with more information, etc.

Am I doing something wrong? I would hate to be spending this hard-working time on something that is hurting us all.

Thanks

[qwerty]

The fact that the sites are linked together makes sense: it's a single company's network of sites, representing the business itself and its dealers. I don't think that's going to get you in any trouble, but it's also not going to give the search engines the impression that the links between these sites are votes. The links simply don't serve that purpose. Each of the dealer sites is probably going to need to do some link building on its own in order to demonstrate its value, and those links are going to be coming from different IPs.

[scotth]

The fact that the sites are linked together makes sense: it's a single company's network of sites, representing the business itself and its dealers. I don't think that's going to get you in any trouble, but it's also not going to give the search engines the impression that the links between these sites are votes. The links simply don't serve that purpose. Each of the dealer sites is probably going to need to do some link building on its own in order to demonstrate its value, and those links are going to be coming from different IPs.

So would there be any value of linking between these sites?

[qwerty]

There might be, but that value isn't likely to include rankings. If there's information on the company site that would be of use to someone who is reading one of the dealer sites, it makes sense to give that person easy access to the information from the company site simply by linking to it.

[scotth]

There might be, but that value isn't likely to include rankings. If there's information on the company site that would be of use to someone who is reading one of the dealer sites, it makes sense to give that person easy access to the information from the company site simply by linking to it.

Okay, but since these websites are all sharing IP addresses then they really don't give precedence to good strong backlinks? What if they all had different IP addresses? would that be a different story?

[qwerty]

What if they all had different IP addresses? would that be a different story?

Then you'd apparently be trying to fool the search engines into thinking the links were votes of confidence, when in fact they're simply connections between different parts of a single company.

[scotth]

Then you'd apparently be trying to fool the search engines into thinking the links were votes of confidence, when in fact they're simply connections between different parts of a single company.

Okay so what we are doing now is fine but not amazing for great back links for each site, but if those sites started getting their own links with other sites, etc., then those links between them and our main site would start to gain some ground for the fact that those sites are gaining popularity?

[Jill]

Do it because it's the right thing to do and it makes sense to do it.

If you're doing it for search engines, you're going about things all wrong.

[qwerty]

To some extent, yes. Think of it this way: you're organizing the company's web presence into a network of interconnected sites, whereas you could have chosen to organize it into a single site (a network of interconnected pages), or a single domain with a collection of subdomains (which some people would consider a collection of sites, and others might consider a collection of pages). In any case, it's one company's web presence.

Building links from other companies (and from individuals who want to recommend the company) is a way to demonstrate the value of the company and its web presence. Some of those links will point to the main company site, and some will point to the dealer sites, the same way that if you'd chosen to build a single site, some of your links would point to the home page and others would point to internal pages. All of the power from those links will be spread around, depending on how the various parts of your web presence are interlinked. For example, if you've got a dealer in my home town, I might choose to link to their site. That's going to help that site. But that site also links back to the main company site, so some of the juice from my link may help the company site a bit, the same way a link to an internal page on a given site flows some juice back up to the home page of the site. And since your main site links out to your various dealer sites, a tiny bit of the juice from my link to the local site will flow out to the various dealer sites.

As each of the individual sites gains strength, it will have the potential to strengthen the home domain and the others a little. But you're gaining strength because people from outside the company are using links to recommend you, not because the company is recommending itself.

[scotth]

As each of the individual sites gains strength, it will have the potential to strengthen the home domain and the others a little. But you're gaining strength because people from outside the company are using links to recommend you, not because the company is recommending itself.

I understand completely. And the reason we are doing this is to not boost our main site's presence in the search engines (though overtime that may be what happens)...we are doing this so our dealers have their presence on the web and we want their sites to be found easily by people in their area, etc. Nothing shady going on here, we just want more and more people to know about our company (through our main site, through our dealer sites, etc etc.)

Thanks for the information

[Mikl]

May I jump in?

I want to check that I've understood this right. Let's say I have a site to which several other sites have posted links. These other sites are in no way connected to my business. I don't know who operates them, and I have no contact with them. They're just sites who want to recommend me to their visitors.

I assume that those are valuable links in the search engines' eyes, and will tend to improve my own site's ranking.

But, what if my site is hosted by a third-party hosting company. Some of the linking sites are also hosted by the same company, on the same server.

What I understand from this thread is that my site won't, after all, get any SEO benefit from those linking sites, simply because we happen to have the same IP address. I still have no connection with those companies. My relationship with them is exactly the same as it would be if we were hosted by different companies.

Have I got that right? It doesn't seem logical to me.

[qwerty]

What I understand from this thread is that my site won't, after all, get any SEO benefit from those linking sites, simply because we happen to have the same IP address. I still have no connection with those companies. My relationship with them is exactly the same as it would be if we were hosted by different companies.

No, I don't think there's much risk of that. I'm suggesting that a bunch of sites on the same IP that are all owned by the same company and serve content about that company are naturally going to look like they're all the same company, and that links between those sites aren't going to look like natural, editorial votes.

The advice I see all the time is that you should try to make your backlinks "look natural". I figure if they are natural, they're likely to look natural. If they're all on the same IP, it might raise some eyebrows, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're not natural. It's always up to the search engine to determine whether the links pointing to a site are real votes of confidence from a variety of different people or if they're an effort to fool the engines into thinking that's what they are. In my opinion, the situation described at the beginning of this thread is neither: it's not natural editorial linking, but it's also not an attempt to fool anyone into thinking that's what it is.

[Jill]

Have I got that right? It doesn't seem logical to me.

No, it's not as simple as that. Most likely your sites would be fine and the links would count. But if the only links your site had were all from the same IP, they'd likely get put under further scrutiny as it wouldn't look very natural.

[Mikl]

Thanks for the clarification, Jill and Qwerty. As always, your explanations make perfect sense.

[scotth]

Okay, so should we be fine to keep all of their websites on our server on the same IP Address? Or should we purchase more IP Addresses for each of those sites? We don't want you guys to think we are a shady company or anything. We just want our dealers to be known to their areas.