Independent Back Linking Network

Amye Saunders

The Basics

Link popularity is something all websites need to meet the ranking criteria for most major search engines. While quantity is important, so is the quality and the reputation of the link.

Running a linking campaign is a tedious but important process. There are many back linking pitfalls and with Google's Jagger Update we will certainly see some serious shifts in the SERP's.

What is an Independent Back Linking Network?

An Independent Back Linking Network, or IBLN, is a relatively new term and it does have a bad connotation. Conceptually, it seems, linking sites together is what the World Wide Web is all about. As the information on the Internet amasses, rules needed to put in place to control relevancy. Then people started to break the rules. We call them spammers, or black-hatters; people who exploit the criteria to work in their favour. When this becomes out of control the search engines must react in order to produce quality results.

An Independent Back Linking Network occurs when sites sit within the same IP range, specifically sharing the same C-class, then all back link together excessively. If two websites have the same C-class, it means that the first three parts of the IP address are the same. For example, 211.68.11.76 and 211.68.11.75 have the same C-class. On the other hand, 211.68.22.76 and 211.68.32.75 have different a C-class because the third set of numbers is different.

Most website owners have no control over the IP address or C-class they are allocated for their websites. Search engines may identify and penalise clusters of websites linking to each other from the same IP Block or C-class. This may be because this kind of back linking looks unnatural and also looks like it is done for the sake of increasing link popularity and search engine rank rather than relevancy. This theory, however, has not been proven yet and no major search engine has spoken about this clearly.

How is an Independent Back Linking Network created?

AAA Web Designs develops and hosts websites that happen to be in the same industry - it is their specialty. There are more than 500 sites created that use IP addresses within the same range and all of them share the same C-Class. All of the sites are also back linked together because they are complimentary to each other. These sites also have a link back to the website (again, within a complimentary industry) that is AAA Web Designs biggest client.

AAA Web Design inadvertently created an Independent Back Linking Network and guess what? AAA's biggest client is now banned on Yahoo! The real problem is, while AAA was trying to "do the right thing" many optimisers are not by creating this type of independent back linking network. Taken a step further, what if the site you have hosted is sharing the C-class of an IP block that has a banned site?

About the author:

Amye has spent 15 years in the IT industry and has been working in the Search Engine Optimization field for four years - enjoying every minute! See SEO Fever for full article on Independent Back Linking Network with examples.

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