Diminishing Marginal Utility of Links
August 8, 2008 By: Justin | 8 commentsIt is important to understand that search engines note the IP from which a website is hosted when reviewing a link. This is done in large part to detect link manipulation patterns. Too many links from a single IP is an indicator that all those sites have the same owner. To help prevent link farms, search engines have been known to discount links from the same IP address.
I want to cross SEO with a concept from Economics, which is diminishing marginal utility. Which is a complicated way of saying: each new link will count for less and less. (from same ip)
So when you get a link from a particular site (ip), let us pretend it sends you 80 units of link juice. The next link you get from that IP may only send 20, and the next 10, and the next 5, then 2, then 1, then 0.5, and so on. These are estimated numbers, but help explain the concept. For you visual learners, here is a graph that illustrates diminishing utility.
The blue line on the graph represents the amount of link juice / authority that is passed in total with each increase in links from the same ip. It will continue to increase, but the slope decreases until it nearly plateaus off. At a certain point, the value of the link has diminished so much, it is almost useless.
The concept of diminishing returns is a very common math model, which is also very similar to the S curve which you see with carrying capacity. I always try to think of math models that might explain what Google is doing, since they are a math heavy business model. I think this is a solid approach to looking at what Google is doing.
This model may even extend on beyond the graph, when it begins to discount value as the number of links gets too high. This may play as a method of “punishment” for “link spam”. Visually, this concept could be seen in the following graph.
If you get “too many” links from the same source, this may flag your site for link manipulation. And each addition link might result in negative juice.
So Why Does This Matter?
Consider your link building methods. If you are using a method that gets links from the same places over and over again, they will begin to get discounted. For example, the first few articles you publish in a article directory will carry some weight, but those links will get less and less effective with each new article. You might pump out 50 articles to 300 article directories, but you will not be getting 50 solid links from each domain. You will get a few solid links and the rest will be highly discounted.
Now if you are using BMD. You are tagging the hell out of your submissions on scuttles. Each submits may give you 5 to 10 links. And over time you might collect 100’s of links. Your links will become heavily discounted at a point.
Important to stop now and cover my ass a little. No, I am not disagreeing with anything anyone has said. Vic says to throw out 1,000’s of links to scuttles. Yes I’m saying they get discounted. I am not disagreeing with Vic’s methods of mass automated links. Google’s ability to catch and discount links is not perfect. So automated methods like BMD will slowly increase your link juice, but very slowly. Your authority growth will stagnate if you do not diversify your link sources though. This is why you should not simply use the same methods continuously. If you did 3 scuttle runs on a site, and not seeing the SERPS you want, 50 more won’t do the trick. You need to go get different links.
The difference between my posts and Vic’s posts, is that Vic focuses primarily on “make money online”, but my focus is more aimed at conceptual SEO. If you are targeting long tails like Vic suggests, your competition will not be fierce enough worry about concepts like this. If you want to play with the big boys, you have to dig a little deeper.
I am 100% positive Vic understands concepts like this, but it’s of no concern for ultra specific niches with no competition.
The Marginal Utility of your Link Farms
Are you running link farms? Got 35 blogger blogs? Wondering why it is not pushing you over the top? BLOGGER BLOGS ARE ON THE SAME C CLASS IP. Yep, they are suffering from diminishing marginal utility. The first couple of blogs really helped, but each additional blog helps less and less. All of a sudden, they seem to have no impact…? Right?
So what is a farmer to do? Mix it up. Mix it up! Compile a list of free webhost and set up one at each.
** 5 blogs on 5 different hosts is worth more than 5 blogs on the same host! **
Let’s Discuss Hosting
Ok, Hostgator is awesome. But guess what… They are a network of shared servers with very similar IP’s. And all your sites are sitting on the same server. All your sites share an IP (generally). So what is a grayhat to do?
Use another hosting company. Do not drop hostgator, I’m not saying that.
I mean: Get a Hostgator account. Get a Dreamhost account. Get a Bluehost account.
We’re talking $5 to $10 a month here guys, less than a cell phone bill. If you are serious about this stuff, $30 is nothing and it gives you 3 IP’s to play with. All off a sudden, your linking power tripled.
So Now What?
Still a little lost on how to use this knowledge?
No worries. I have a couple of useful posts in mind that will be coming up soon all using the concept.
Disclaimer: As always. Some of the stuff I talk about is shady… use at your own risk. I’m just telling you how it is. Your 35 blogger blogs won’t cut it. What does cut it… 2 to 5 link sources on 30 different IP (hosting services).
Filed Under Link Building, SEO, Sneaky |
Tagged With Diminishing Marginal Utility, Link Building, link farm, link spam, SEO
Related PostsInfuse Your Back Links With Sweet Sweet Juice
So I just put up a post where I talked about diminishing marginal utility of links from the same IP. Basically, there is a limiting factor to how much juice
Should You Submit Articles?
Although I’ve discussed article submissions multiple times, people still seem to have a concern about the quality of these links. Someone asked in a comment about it, so I thought
Introduction to Google Juice
So let’s get down and dirty with some higher level SEO. This isn’t too complicated, but more theoretical than “go do this”. Let’s talk about link juice and exactly what
Comment Reaction for Article Marketing
A video responding to some questions left after my last video about article marketing and article marketer.
If you have any other questions, or a question I missed, please feel free
Are Low Quality Links Worth It?
A video to address the worth of low quality links and why you should not ignore lower quality links like article marketing. Addresses the concern many new people might have.
Comments
8 Comments »
Trackback responses to this post
Subscribe
Search
Get Started
Learn SEO
Search Engine Optimization Guide
Build A Niche Store
Free BANS Template
BANS Template Modifications
.info BANS
Sneaky SEO
Link Laundering
Link Exchanges
Find Dofollow Blogs
Referer Spam
SEO Footprint
Popular
Categories
- BANS
- Bloggers
- Blogging
- Case Study
- Keywords
- Link Building
- Make Money Online
- Nashville
- Online Success
- Podcasts
- Search Engines
- SEO
- SEO Lessons
- SEO Wordpress Themes
- SEO Zombie
- Sneaky
- Social Marketing
- Tools
- Video
- Wordpress
Justin, I understand what you mean by law of diminishing returns… however, I want to delve into this further.
Let’s take this to the extreme. By this account, all incoming links for people on shared hosts would be “diminished” unless you were the first site on that host. That’s an extreme exaggeration but you get what I mean.
What I’m trying to say is that for commenting/directory/article submission juice, different domains should be taken into account as well - or maybe Google does a whois. If they do, then your whole network wherever you’re hosted would be tracked anyways unless you go free hosting.
Bottom line is I totally agree that variety is key. However, my broader question is would a source for link building “dry up” if it’s pointing to a network of domainS (not domain) with the same IP or same IP class?
Mariam
Long answer incoming, but I’ll try to clarify
I just mean that you cannot simply host 30 sites on your own server and simply use them to generate your own links. You can interlink to a point with sites on the same IP, but it starts to become useless (and at a point, it’ll get Google’s attention).
Or in addition, you simply cannot use 30 blogger blogs etc.
Its not that all links from shared hosts are discounted. They do note the same C class IPs. But different services have different C class addresses.
And different domains do come into play.
Getting links from a few different domains on the same IP, you might not see any effect, especially if they’re all legit. Change that to 10 different sites on 1 IP, it gets a little unrealistic.
Google knows that same IP sites will link to each other time to time, but the chance that you get the vast majority of your links from the same location is very small.
If SEO didn’t exist, the chance of your site getting links from 10 domains on the same IP is very very slim, and is an indicator of interlinking sites.
Even if Google isn’t looking this deep into your profile, your competition might. I can use programs like SEO Elite to check on how many links you have from each IP, then check those sites out. I can find other sites you’re using.
I just wanted to point people to understand that:
Ok, squidoo is a link. And if you make 1 that will help. And a 2nd might help. But 30… if you make 30, you might not see the same boost with each addition squidoo page.
Sorry, really wordy, but I hope I answered =(
I just made the post after seeing some people’s link profiles. And they get 50 to 60% of their links from blogger blogs or squidoo. I don’t want people make squidoo page after squidoo page think each new page is a valid link, because they get discount eventually
This is a great post. I think all people who read Griz, Vick and Court should read this. The three musketeers spoke about this, but never this clear and with so much reasoning.
Good post. Question though: let’s suppose I build a blogger blog to dominate a long tail niche. I use Digg and StumbleUpon to gain backlinks. How is it that those backlinks are counted, since sure enough there are thousands of other people getting Digg and SU links to their blogger blogs? (or any other social bookmarking or article submissions website).
few things.
1. i might have 10 sites in hostgator a/c. But there are say 100 different people each one with 10 sites and we are looking at more than 1000 sites per server ( I don’t know how many each server serves). If I get into blogroll exchange with someone sitting in my server, does Google discount those links.
2. Article marketing: If I have a flagship blog, and make 400 articles submitted, according to you I won’t get any benefit by submitting those articles beyond 30. Court and Mark always recommend using article marketer and your view is opposite to their’s
3. If you want to have different IPs, it is better to have reseller a/c and probably can set up 100 different a/c, instead of running to blue host, dream host etc. Am I wrong?
Justin,
Great post, I was wondering about this concept myself when considering setting up some link farms.
Let me ask a question that goes a step further… Lets say I have 10 sites hosted on a hostgator account and they all share an IP. I do an article run for sites 1-3 using article marketer or something similar. Does the fact that I have article directory backlinks to sites 1-3 diminish the returns of sites 4-10 at some point as well?
If this is the case perhaps it would be wise to only host a few sites per hosting account.