Are backlinks still relevant for PageRank?

[csdude55]

As I'm beginning to transition to a new server... is there still PageRank value in having sites linking back to your site?

If so, do they need to be on a separate IP block? If so, is a separate /24 range sufficient?

I haven't kept up with this in awhile, but I have 30+ hosting clients that link back to my main site in one way or another. I'm trying to determine if I should set up a separate IP range for them to lend more value to my site.

[tangor]

Interesting question ...

I always thought that backlinks were to known domains (which can change IPs over the years) rather than a specific IP that the domain might have moved away from (for whatever reason).

Might be over-thinking this?

Call me noob if IP ranges actually are involved in backlinks!

[csdude55]

I'm almost positive that I read this on here awhile back, but I might have dreamed it, who knows? But it's my understanding that sites on the same server / IP don't count towards your PageRank... which makes sense; otherwise, someone could just create 100+ small websites to link back to their main site with the sole purpose of PageRank. $1,000 /year would be worth it if my PageRank went from 4 to 5, and that led to more traffic.

[JesterMagic]

Backlinks are still the most important thing for ranking.

For 30 backlinks I would not worry about doing much extra work though. You would be fine most likely leaving everything the same.

Separating your own ip from the others may help but in reality you want to have all your client site ips different as well. Google seeing backlinks coming all from one server will probably lower the ranking quality of those backlinks.

It's also the type of link you have. I assume this is a footer type link for "Created By Web Developer". While these are perfectly fine and could get you extra business from visitors looking for a web developer Google will see these for what they are and probably scale the ranking factor lower. I also can't remember but I think they want these type of links to be nofollow (though even nofollow now days may not be needed as Google says they can detect what links should or should not be nofollow).

A few years back widget blocks were a popular thing for websites to use that contained a link back to the website which developed it. Google caught on to these and quickly started to apply manual penalties until the sites cleaned up their act. Obviously this is not your case and thousands of other web developers do what you do (and I would too) but I just wanted to show that Google still takes backlinks seriously.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

If so, do they need to be on a separate IP block? If so, is a separate /24 range sufficient?

All this was true 10 year ago. Today, this is not going to trick Google (or other search engines).

As you can guess, it has been over abused over the time, guys getting IPs here and there, and building link schemes.

Don't try to think you (us) are smarter than Google. If you think of a "trick", you can be sure Google already knows about it, and has counter measures.

So, in "my" opinion, whatever you do (with the IP) won't change anything for your ranking. (nor positively neither negatively).

Google certainly already knows who you are, and the relation between you and these sites, anyhow.

By the way, and indirectly related. If you put all these sites behind Cloudflare, they'll appear to have plenty of different IP (but all on the ASN of CF of-course). Then how, would Google deal with this? This trick is certainly used by some, believing that it will appear that the World is linking back to them ...