If you’re building high-quality links, then every link you build should have some benefit for your domain authority and ranking for SEO purposes.
Therefore, building multiple links from the same domain can be a worthwhile strategy, if properly executed.
Pro Tip: If you build links continuously from the same external source domain(s), you’ll get far less value than by link building across a variety of diversified link sources to a variety of internal pages on your site.
Building links that point to different internal pages is also important so you can maximize the number of internal pages that rank for various keywords on their own.
In addition, building too many links from a single or small group of sources, can also make you look like a link spammer.
Here we discuss the following:
- What constitutes a quality source, worthy of multiple references and links to your site?
- Root linking vs. deep linking from the same source, frequency and best practices
- Best practices for building multiple links from the same site
- Diminishing returns in using the same source for link building
- Should you have multiple links from the same page (not just the same site)?
While diversifying your links, using multiple sources and links to multiple internal pages, can improve your standing, there are–as always–ways to screw it up. We hope this guide clarifies how beneficial it might be to have multiple backlinks from the same site.
Table of Contents
Anatomy of a Quality Backlink
First, you have to understand the function of a backlink, and what elements of a backlink contribute to its SEO value.
Remember, not all link building services are created equal.
Google looks at a number of factors when it comes to judging your strategy for multiple backlinks, including:
- The root domain of the backlink (this will always be the same if you’re posting links back to your own site).
- The individual page of the backlink (posting too many links to one page can be seen as spam, whereas using a plethora of different internal pages can be beneficial).
- The quality of the source (authoritative sites carry more weight than low-quality sites).
- The appropriateness of the source (in terms of its relevance to your industry).
- Anchor text (while anchoring your links with keywords was once beneficial, but doing so excessively can earn you a Google penalty).
- Context clues (a judge of whether your link is helpful and beneficial to the conversation or just there to promote your rank).
- Frequency (which we’ll cover in more detail shortly).
All of these factors, working together, are what comprise the overall “authoritativeness” of your individual backlinks.
Pro Tip: Use our SEO tool to check your backlinks.
External Links and Root Links
For the purposes of determining the authority and “value” of a given backlink, it’s important to distinguish between individual links and what’s become known as “root links.” Root links refer to the number of referring domains that link to your domain, while traditional external links refer to individual instances of links to your domain. For example, if you have 1,000 links split between four different external websites, you would have 1,000 external links, but only four root links.
Google and other search engines tend to place more value on root links than it does on external links. So, if you have 1,000 different links on four different sources, you’ll get significantly less authority than if you have 1,000 different links on 1,000 different sources.
In a recent study conducted by Neil Patel Digital, they tested the theory as to whether multiple backlinks from the same referring domains would help or hurt SEO rankings. Here is the data from the control group:
They also ran a study that showed the impact of multiple (in this case 3 links) coming from the same site from different linked pages:
While one could state there is cleared a boost, we cannot consider this 100% conclusive due to the following factors:
- The sample size is very small and not random, which could introduce lurking variables into the study and skew the data.
- There was no R-squared regression run to indicate that the change in data had a statistical correlation between the multiple links and the rankings boost.
However, at face value the data is fairly conclusive: there does appear to be a benefit to building multiple links from the same site.
Frequency and Diminishing Returns
When considering the number of your external links, and the frequency with which you post them on an external site, it’s important to understand Google’s law of diminishing returns. Posting a link on a new domain will earn you a new root link, which is greatly beneficial to your authority. Posting another link will not grant you a new root link, and will not pass as much page rank as your first link, but will still pass a significant amount. Your third link will post slightly less authority, and so on. The more links you post on a given source, the less authority you’ll get from each link.
Let’s say you have two cases with an identical number and type of root links and referring domains; in one case, you have 100 external links split amongst those sources, and in the other case, you have 1,000 split amongst those same sources. In the second case, you will have a higher total authority coming from those sources, but the average individual value of your links will be lower.
However, this analysis does not take into account the idea that each of your links can point to a separate internal page. Pointing to multiple internal pages can increase the individual page rank of those pages, in addition to whatever domain authority increases you receive. For example, if you have 1,000 links pointing to your home page, you will receive X amount of increased overall domain authority, but the only page more likely to show up in search results will be your home page. However, if you have 1,000 links pointing to 100 different internal pages, you’ll receive X amount of increased overall domain authority, but you’ll have 100 different pages more likely to show up in search results.
Multiple Links on the Same Page
There’s also a case where you have two links pointing back to your domain on the same page of an external site. For example, if you write a guest blog post that features multiple links back to your domain, you could encounter this problem. In this situation, any links on the same page will be recognized as carrying page rank. Therefore, if two links in the body of your guest post point to the same internal page, you would get roughly twice as much page rank as a result.
Differing anchor text will not affect this, so don’t be afraid to post multiple times, as long as the context of your links is appropriate.
Conclusion
The bottom line here is that even though posting the same link many times on one site is beneficial, it’s more beneficial to diversify your strategy wherever you can; use multiple anchor texts, use links to multiple internal pages, post links on multiple pages and most importantly, post links on different external sources.
This is only one of the reasons our backlink audits are so critical to the on-going success of your online rankings and organic traffic. And, depending on the domain authority of the referring site, you may even pick up some healthy referral traffic.
However, in the words of Matt Cutts, spending too much time worrying about the logistics of individual backlink analysis is akin to “splitting hairs.” There are much more important qualities of your campaign to consider. For example, the structure of your site, the crawlability of your content, the user experience of your site, your social media presence, and your ongoing content management strategy are all far more important elements than individual link analysis. Take the information in this article into consideration when developing your backlink building strategy, but don’t let it overpower your focus on the more significant factors that influence your rank.
If you or your clients are looking for assistance in building links at scale or writing blog posts contact us about our white label SEO services.
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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