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I've heard that linking to a site from the same server is bad for SEO. If the link is set to rel no-follow, would that be OK?

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3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

It's not bad and it doesn't hurt you. IPs are scarce and IPv6 isn't standard yet. Your search rankings don't go down because of links from the same IP. No-one knows, other than Google, how they calculate the value of a link coming from the same IP. Is it the same domain or just same server with IP? Is it coming from a related page, an authority domain etc? There are so many variables and no-one knows, other than Google, how they affect your rankings, but they surely do not harm your rankings.

Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/

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Do you have any sources/reasoning behind your claims (e.g. a logical explanation why wouldn't links from the same ip address harm rankings)? – Christofian May 26 '12 at 14:43
Matt Cutts said so mattcutts.com/blog/… links are treated the same from virtual hosts and dedicated hosts. Do you want to re consider your down vote now? – Anagio May 27 '12 at 6:24
Yep, though my vote is locked until the answer is edited. I edited your answer and added that link, and once that edit is approved I will revote. – Christofian May 27 '12 at 13:48
up vote 0 down vote

Linking to the website from the same server with same IP address is bad. As per my knowledge if you can have multiple static-ip assigned to your websites that should be okay.

Basically linking internally should not create a negative impact, it should just not be that positive. Because if you see google takes it positive if a blog is having interlinked posts. So same way it should have less positive impact rather than negative impact.

I would suggest you should have it as friend or sister link rather than nofollow so that google knows that these website belongs to same network.

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is friend / sister linking similar to rel="me nofollow" ? – sam May 26 '12 at 16:45
Basically "me" and "nofollow" are different, when we mention "nofollow" it means that we don't want to offer any benefit to the link we are adding on our web-page and for other attribute values miles may vary. For "nofollow" its clear indication that you won't be offering any juice from your page-rank. Please refer below links which I found during googling which might help you: cybersprocket.com/2011/tips-tricks/seo-the-rel-attribute pitstopmedia.com/sem/link-tag-rel-attribute-seo – Dharmavir May 26 '12 at 18:21
up vote 0 down vote

My experience is that linking from sites on the same server does get a penalty, I have tried this and my site suffered and as soon as I removed the links my site recovered. If you think about it, it is cheating really. A link is supposed to be a vote of confidence from someone unrelated to you or your site ie a different server usually in a different location. Sticking a domain on your own server then voting for yourself is cheating.

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Except Google says it's not. If what you say is true, firms that can afford to use a multiple VPS system would benefit more than others. – Kenzo Feb 6 at 21:57

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