There is a big misconception going around in PBN circles these days. It is about IP locations and what location(s) should be used for your PBN. A lot of people believe, that they should only use the IP location of the country, that they want their money site to be ranked in.
That, however, is simply wrong. Before we started IP NetworX we did a lot of analyzing, checking different authority websites and how their backlinks „worked“. We did so, to create a hosting that does not create footprints.
One thing that we found, while analyzing these Domains, was that their backlinks (the Domains linking to them) did not only have US IPs. In fact, almost every authority website we’ve analyzed, had a good mix between US IPs and International IPs within their backlinks.
Let’s take a look at 4 examples:
http://www.cnet.com/topics/laptops/ : top 5 for the Keyword “laptops”.
- 83 out of 223 IPs are from non US, International locations. That is 37%
http://pitchfork.com/news/ : top 5 for the keyword “music news”
- 79 out of 259 IPs are from non US, International locations. That is 31%
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/derivative.asp : top 5 for the keyword “financial derivatives”
- 60 out of 212 IPs are from non US, International locations. That is 28%
http://www.cesarsway.com/channel/dog-training : top 5 for the keyword “dog training”
- 38 out of 104 IPs are from non US, International locations. That is 37%
The examples above are out of 4 completely different niches, yet, their percentages are roughly the same. This holds true for almost every authority site that we have analysed. Generally an authority site which has been around for several years, has least 80 referring domain and has survived all the big updates (Penguin, Panda etc.) has between 30 and 40% International IPs. There are some niche that have a somewhat lower spread (between 15 and 30%) but those are generally the minority.
Now, if you are building your money site and all of your PBN Links are only from US IPs, this does not look so natural anymore after all, does it? You should aim to have a diversity in your IP spread to make your site mirror the backlink profile of a real authority website, that has evolved in a natural way.
IP Classes and their spread
After we have just looked at the IP locations, let’s take a look at the IPs themselves. This will demonstrate, why we build our hosting, offering A/B Class IPs, instead of just A Class IPs.
There is a big hype about having A Class IPs but what most people don’t realize is, that having only A Class IPs is just as big a footprint as having very few of them.
Let’s take the previous 4 URLs as an example again
http://www.cnet.com/topics/laptops/ : top 5 for the Keyword “laptops”.
- 71 A Class IPs out of the 223 total => 31,84 %
- 146 B Class IPs out of the 223 total => 65,74 %
http://pitchfork.com/news/ : top 5 for the keyword “music news”
- 69 A Class IPs out of the 259 total => 26,64%
- 158 B Class IPs out of the 259 total => 61,0 %
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/derivative.asp : top 5 for the keyword “financial derivatives”
- 68 A Class IPs out of the 213 total => 32%
- 155 B Class IPs out of the 213 total => 77,8%
http://www.cesarsway.com/channel/dog-training : top 5 for the keyword “dog training”
- 48 A Class IPs out of the 104 total => 46.15%
- 80 B Class IPs out of the 104 total => 76%
As you can see in those 4 examples, the amount of A Class IPs is nowhere close to being 100%. The first 3 Domains have slightly similar values, which are between 26 and 32% A Classes.
The approximate range we have found, after analyzing hundreds of authority domains, depends on the amount of referring Domains. At around 200 to 300 referring Domains, the general amount of A Classes is between 25 and 35%.
The 4th Domain of the examples has a higher percentage of A Classes. With 46% A Class IPs it is clearly above the levels you can see within the first 3 examples. The reason for this is, that there are only 104 referring Domains.
The lower the amount of referring domains, the higher the amount of different A and B Classes. It’s an universal fact we’ve found across several hundreds of domains we’ve analysed over all niches.
Let’s give you another example to demonstrate this fact:
http://www.guinealynx.info/healthycavy.html is ranked in the top 5 for „guinea pig care“
It has a total of 80 referring Domains. The A / B Class spread looks as follows:
- A Classes: 47/80 => 58.75%
- B Classes: 69/80 => 86,25%
As you can see, even a slightly lower amount of referring domains leads to a higher amount of A Classes.
The big misconception most people tend to have about A Classes these days is that they are the holy grail. It most likely stems from people who have analyzed some domains that only had 20-30 referring domains and thus had a very high percentage of different A Classes (probably around 80-85%).
The truth, however, is that a project with more links should always have a smaller amount of different A Classes. Having a too high spread of them does not seem natural.
One other point to mention is that a lower amount of referring domains does not automatically lead to a lower amount of International IP locations. The „guinea pig“ example, that we just examined, had 24 International IPs within the 80 referring domains. That is, again, 30% and within the normal range.
The percentage of International IPs only tends to decrease when the amount of referring Domains falls under 30, though even then, it generally lies between 10 and 20%.
