Multiple Backlinks, Same Domain: Is it Beneficial For SEO?

Introduction

Backlinks and referring domains are two crucial concepts in search engine optimization (SEO). Understanding the difference between them and how they impact your website’s ranking is essential for any online business. In this article, we will delve into the world of backlinks and referring domains, exploring what they are, why they are important, and how to use them to improve your website’s visibility and credibility.

What Are Backlinks and Referring Domains?

A backlink is a link from one website to another, such as a link from Forbes to a website. Backlinks are like votes of credibility from other sites, indicating to search engines that your content is valuable, credible, and useful. A referring domain, on the other hand, is a unique website that links to your website. For example, if an article on the Wall Street Journal website links to one of your pages, the link itself would be the backlink, and the referring domain would be www.wsj.com.

Why Are Backlinks Important for SEO?

Backlinks are the cornerstones of website authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. They are basically votes from other websites, telling search engines that content is valuable, credible, and useful. The more backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank in Google and other search engines. Backlinks formed the foundation of Google’s original algorithm (PageRank), and even though Google has made thousands of changes to its algorithm, backlinks remain a key ranking signal.

Types of Valuable Backlinks

Not all backlinks are created equal. High-quality backlinks are more powerful than low-quality backlinks. A single high-quality backlink can be more powerful than 1,000 low-quality backlinks. High-quality backlinks tend to share the same key traits, such as being from authoritative websites, relevant to your content, and not being nofollow links. Quality backlinks are essential for ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Referring Domains and SEO

Referring domains are a key factor in SEO, as they represent the websites that link to a particular website. Each website that links to a website counts as a vote of confidence, and multiple backlinks from a single site do not stack this confidence higher. Think of referring domains as a collection of unique websites that find a website useful and credible. A high number of referring domains is more valuable than a lot of backlinks from a small number of referring domains. Google devalues links from a small number of referring domains, as it infers that they are spammy.

It’s a common misconception in SEO that multiple backlinks from the same domain aren’t valuable, or could potentially harm SEO efforts.

However, there are a few reasons we believe that multiple backlinks from the same domain are a good thing for a website. Building a diverse collection of backlinks pointing to a website is crucial for effective SEO, as the quality and quantity of backlinks play a significant role in determining the authority of a domain and improving its rank in search engine results.

Here are a few reasons why multiple backlinks from the same domain is beneficial for SEO:

• It’s the Natural Linking Structure of the Web
• Number of Backlinks Correlate Highly With Ranking
• Supported By Google Surfer Patents

Let’s take a closer look at why multiple backlinks from the same domain are beneficial for SEO.

Google takes link schemes seriously. According to Google, any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

With that said, if you are looking to engage in an SEO campaign, you want to make sure that backlinks to your website are natural. You’ll want to avoid tactics like buying links, excessive link exchanges, or large-scale article marketing with keyword-rich anchor text links because they would be considered a link scheme. Additionally, having too many low-quality referring domains can be perceived as link spam by Google, which may lead to penalties.

What do link schemes have to do with multiple backlinks from the same domain?

Well, according to Ahrefs, 79% of websites that link to another website link twice or more to the same site. About 21% of sites link only once.

In other words, it’s more natural for a site to link multiple times than to build a backlink profile of single linking sites.

Google was founded as a hypertextual search engine at Stanford University. The core difference between Google and other search engines was based on a concept called PageRank.

PageRank makes use of the link structure of the Web to calculate a quality ranking for each web page. In other words, Google initially mapped the link structures of 518 million hyperlinks to instantly prioritize the results of web keyword searches.

But that was 1996. Today, Google has mapped trillions of hyperlinks and indexes billions more each day to help serve up the results for our search queries.

What does this have to do with multiple links from the same domain?

The simple argument is that backlinks – especially from relevant and authoritative referring domains – help increase the authority of a website. In fact, Ahrefs, an SEO tool that crawls the web more often than Bing, found in a study that the number of backlinks is the second highest correlation of ranking than any backlink metric.

The top correlating metric? URL Rating (UR) of a website, which is a metric Ahrefs created to replace PageRank since Google made the metric private in early 2016.

The number of backlinks matters. Whether they are from the same domain or not, quality backlinks from relevant and authoritative sources can help websites improve their rankings. An effective link-building strategy is crucial for acquiring these quality backlinks, as it involves analyzing current backlink profiles and tailoring approaches to source high-quality backlinks from relevant sites.

Google has two patents that describe the value they place on links when they appear on the same page.

Referring domains and backlinks are crucial elements in SEO that influence a website’s ranking on search engine results pages. Having a variety of referring domains and backlinks can enhance a site’s link profile, but it’s important to avoid low-quality links to prevent potential penalties.

These two patents capture two surfing models called the Random Surfer and the Reasonable Surfer.

Let’s take a quick look at both to better understand how multiple backlinks from the same domain is beneficial for SEO.

The random surfer model assumes that if a web crawler were released at random, how likely would the crawler find a particular web page?

To learn more about the random surfer model, let’s take a look at this excerpt from the The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine we referenced earlier:

“PageRank is a model of user behavior. We assume a “random surfer” chooses a web page at random and keeps clicking on links, never hitting “back,” but eventually gets bored and starts on another random page. The probability that the random surfer visits a page is its PageRank.”

The random surfer approach basically says that any link on the same webpage has the same level of importance when pointed to another page.

But, random surfer was around in 1996. In 2004, Google filed a patent with an update on how they would rank documents based on user behavior and/or feature data. In 2010, this patent was granted, and introduced the Reasonable Surfer model.

The reasonable surfer model basically says that all links are not equal, and to determine the value of each link on a page, a number of factors should be considered.

Here’s an excerpt from the reasonable surfer patent that Google was granted in 2010:

“Systems and methods consistent with the principles of the invention may provide a reasonable surfer model that indicates that when a surfer accesses a document with a set of links, the surfer will follow some of the links with higher probability than others. This reasonable surfer model reflects that not all the links associated with a document are equally likely to connect. Examples of unlikely followed links may include “Terms of Service” links, banner advertisements, and links unrelated to the document.”

In the context of SEO and link-building, the reasonable surfer model means that not every link on a page is valued equally. The calculation of how much value links pass to other sites they connect with varies depending on various attributes associated with links, as well as the pages they link to and lead to.

For example, a reasonable surfer may visit a web page with traffic and follow links from that page with a higher value than links from a web page without traffic. Following this thinking, it may be more valuable to have multiple links on a site that receives 10x the organic search traffic than links on a site receiving 0.1x organic traffic.

There have been updates to the reasonable surfer model since the initial patent, and there have been several studies analyzing the impact of links with traffic. But whether you subscribe to the reasonable surfer or random surfer model, you’ll know by the model that links from the same referring domain is a good thing for SEO.

Is it beneficial to have multiple links from the same site?

Yes, since the number of backlinks correlate highly with ranking, Google validates link value through the reasonable and random surfer models, and because it’s more natural, multiple backlinks from the same website are valuable for SEO. Additionally, inbound links from high Domain Rating (DR) sites can significantly enhance a website’s authority and ranking potential in search engine results.

Hopefully this article has given you a few reasons why we believe multiple links from the same domain have value in SEO. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us and we will set up a free initial 15-minute consultation to evaluate your backlinks and SEO performance.