When a project owner in an overcrowded niche or a webmaster with the task of bringing a site to the top among competitors rests against the ceiling of standard methods of promotion, they begin to look at gray methods, including PBN.
What is a PBN?
PBNs are networks of sites that are created to receive a controlled and conditionally free mass of external links to promote the main site (its individual pages). PBN stands for “private blog network” — a network of private blogs. Domains with a history or drop domains (the registration of which was not extended or left the site for any other reason) are taken to create a PBN. Most often, they are bought at auctions.
This is a convenient, but dangerous and expensive way to get links to your resource. PBN sites work only in combination with other optimization tools.
Private Blog Network: Pros and Cons
If the site you’re promoting or owning doesn’t need links, you’re already at the top of the high-frequency queries – hooray, keep it up! If you constantly have to balance and stay in the issue for high positions or you want to be in the issue with an extended snippet (a small fragment of text from the found page system of the site, which describes this link in the search results) – without a PBN, most likely, you cannot do. But this:
For a long time: search for a domain with a history , check the history (whether the site changed the topic, how often and how far it is from what you need), search for thematic sites or sites that are as close to the topic as possible, check the profile of the site and search for it in black lists.
Then, if everything is fine, creating and implementing the design (it should be different for all sites on the network), filling it with content (creating TK, searching for writers, agreeing/approving texts, filling in content). And yes, one article will not be enough. We start with 5-10. For one grid site. And you need to create at least 10 such sites.
And a lot of links will not come immediately either. After setting the link and indexing, you should wait about 2-3 weeks to get the donor weight.
Expensive: the work described above is not cheap. And it is better to order such a service from a team of specialists, where all stages and actions are distributed among people and the work is put into a flow. Teams, as a rule, have all the necessary tools: paid programs, services for searching and analyzing resources.
The more competitive the topic, the more difficult and expensive it is to buy a domain.
The team on the customer’s side should have its own SEO experts (necessarily on staff), who will be able to support the network in the future. It is not easy and requires compliance with various safety measures. For example: work with each network site from a different IP address, ideally do not have Google services on your work computer and/or work in incognito mode, etc. Also: costs for gradually filling such sites with content and optimizing old content.
Stress, a lot of stress. Constant fear that someone (competitors or Google itself) will burn the grid and you will lose everything at once: both PBN and links, and will fall under the filter of search engines.
When there are so many arguments against, does it really make sense to build satellites (networks of sites that help promote the main site)?
If the site already works with outreach (building link mass with high efficiency and cost recovery), buy links on exchanges, then with a competently and qualitatively built PBN you get a “fat” mass of links. Especially relevant for overheated niches.
This is an effective promotion method for sites and topics where it is important to show up for high-frequency queries that are in the top 30 of your topic.
When working correctly, PBN sites are a chance to really control the link profile of your project. You will know for sure that no one will delete the link, the site will not be demolished, you yourself will maintain the quality of the resource.
You can change the links to relevant pages of the main site and make crosslinks within each site of the network. By uploading this or that article from the donor site, you can increase the weight of links on the main resource.
As a rule, donor sites either fully correspond to your topic, or are relevant to individual pages that are closely related by topic or niche.
If you fill each site with unique and useful content, take care of the markup, it is not at all important to create a unique design for network sites.
The quality of a link from a PBN can only change due to changes in search engine algorithms.
To find out if your competitor is using drop domains, use the SemRush report . It shows domains pointing only to the site you are analyzing. Domain Rank is displayed for each drop — an indicator of the authority of the site. With information about the redirecting domains, you will more accurately analyze your competitor’s referral traffic and adjust your strategy.
Important: All the benefits of a private blog network are only possible if you have a team and resources capable of supporting and developing it. You can’t just take and forever hide a network connection with one owner. Optimizers will have to regularly fool Google.
See PBN
Social network
Such PBNs are created on popular blogging platforms (LiveJournal WordPress.com, Blog.com, Tumblr and others). They are effective in promoting niches with low competition.
This is a relatively quick and cheap way to create a grid. What is needed:
- create a site or blog on the desired topic on a free resource;
- fill out the profile in detail with credible information;
- collect the semantic core ;
- fill in the content and put a link to the main resource.
Important: all sites on blog platforms differ in style, design, and sometimes even tone of voice. The information in the profiles is different and it is not possible to link each blog site of the grid with one owner. Links lead not only to the owner’s site, but also to other trust resources. In addition, links do not always lead to one page of the main site (for example, not only to the main site), but also to a blog article or a partner page.
Links are organically woven into the content.
Remember, content is king. These should be useful articles, reviews, notes. Those links that lead to live and interested users are valuable.
Cons of this grid: it is difficult to find a domain with a good history – then the weight of the link is also in question.
Restored PBN
These are sites restored from the web archive. But there is also a lottery. Here there is a risk of getting to a site that is not indexed, is under a filter or is on the blacklist of search engines.
Niche network of sites
Sites sold by their owners. Resources are close to or relevant to the main site’s subject matter. They have a good history, several pages of such sites are indexed. These are sites with traffic, so there are no sanctions on them. Such resources have backlinks, and therefore the weight of links established from them will be greater.
All three types of PBN can be used to build external link mass, but the niche network is considered the most effective.
Stages of creating a PBN
Domain search
Domain is the basis of PBN, it is important to find a domain that already has good link mass to transfer to our site.
Expired – domains with expired registration. You can buy such domains at the price of the registrar. Use aggregators to find the lowest price .
Auction – at this stage there is an opportunity to buy the best domains. When the domain registration date ends, all market participants have the opportunity to compete for the domain in the auction mode. If the domain is not renewed by the current owner and your bid is higher than others, you will get the domain. The price range is up to tens of thousands of dollars per domain.
Auctions
Each auction or auction service has its own lists of domains participating in the auction. You need to download them and check if they match your criteria.
Pluses
- a good opportunity to get the “fattest” domains at an adequate price.
Cons
- the approach works only in automated execution;
- high cost of process automation;
- APIs of Serpstat, Ahrefs, Majestic, Similarweb, Moz services are required.
Where to search for domains
Ukraine: ukraine domains expired
World: auctions.godaddy ; namecheap namejet.
Services
In this case, you hand over all domain search processes to services. You pay a subscription and they drop domains with all the necessary parameters. You need to double check the domain for spam yourself and bid.
Pluses
- convenience (you don’t need to think about how to set up the process from search to data aggregation);
- updated dashboards (data visualization);
- each service has its own goodies, for example, domcop.com provides access to a site parser (a program for collecting and systematizing information posted on resources).
Cons
- domains are visible to everyone (both you and your competitors in the niche);
- services do not always provide all domains that can actually be bought;
- sometimes give incorrect domain data.
Examples
- expireddomains.net ;
- domcop.com ;
- bluechipbacklinks.com ;
- spamzilla.io .
Search for expired domains
There are many techniques for finding domains, but in short, it boils down to scouring the entire Internet and finding expired domains with the characteristics you need.
Pluses
- low cost domains.
Cons
- time-consuming method with low emissions;
- you need a tool to determine the availability of purchasing domains;
- require large API limits for Serpstat, aHrefs, Majestic, Similarweb, Moz services.
Services of contractors
Here, all the work will be done for you, but still check what they give you. Be sure to watch the story , don’t take their word for it.
Pluses
- you don’t need to understand how it all works – saving your personal time.
Cons
- you have no control;
- you can be cheated;
- the price is higher through the contractor’s commission.
Domains are sorted out, what’s next?
We find content for the grid of sites
Depending on the goals of the PBN, you can fill the site with the necessary materials. The content can be not only textual: pictures, videos, games, products, restaurant menus, data aggregators (collectors), in general, anything. Therefore, make a PBN under your own theme. If you have a game site, then maybe you should make a fake game store, or a browser game.
You can order the writing of texts based on semantics, make the correct structure of the site and organize thoughtful linking. Spend 200 hours creating 10 sites. And as a result, only the main pages of the sites will be in the index. Yes, there are such risks.
You can generate content through articleforge.com or talktotransformer.com and everything will be fine, you will even get into the top 30.
A basic list of ways to create text content
- Search for thematic text at web.archive.org.
- Translation of texts from related languages (Ukrainian – Russian, German – English).
- Text generation.
- Writing texts.
- Transcription of video subtitles on youtube/decoding of audio and video content.
Create a site and deploy it on hosting
Briefly, what you need to do: get the site up and don’t burn yourself on a dozen footprints (traces by which you can determine the optimizer/webmaster) that the sites are connected to each other. There are a lot of footprints: contacts, domain owner, IP, NS server, site CMS, domain registration date, templates, identical pieces of code.
There are also many approaches to grid hosting:
- If you do not have time for hosting/server management (or is this a small test), then use the services of special services such as PBN.HOSTING or Easy Blog Networks. Such services create accounts on different registrars.
But there is a very big minus: your neighbors may have the same PBN or you will not be able to control your sites, you will depend on services.
- You can throw all sites on one server and configure proxying, for example, through Cloudflare.
- There is a more reliable way to hide footprints: create dozens of accounts on different hosts and host sites there. But agree, keeping records and supporting even 10 hosters requires the efforts of a specially trained person.
Site network management
When building a network, you need to understand who is responsible for what. If you are doing 10 sites, there will be no big problems here. But if you are creating 50, think about what points you need to control:
- Financial Accounting;
- maintaining a register of all projects;
- filling sites and working with them so as not to burn the grid;
- organization of team management;
- KPI setting;
- tracking results;
- storage of all necessary data;
- analytics.
Building a PBN is a complex algorithm of actions. We are preparing an article on how to organize it. But if you don’t have time to wait and learn how to build a PBN and coolly pump links to your site, contact our specialists .
FAQ
What is a PBN?
A PBN is a private network of controlled resources (Private Blog Network) that you create yourself to build links. A Private Blog Network usually consists of a varying number of sites on the same topic to promote the main project with backlinks.
Which sites need a PBN?
Sites that need PBN promotion usually don’t get a lot of traffic from search engines. PBNs are often used in profitable niches, with high competition, where it is difficult to get quality links at a reasonable price.
How can PBNs hurt SEO?
PBN sites can harm if:
- your link profile consists entirely of links in the grid;
- if the private network of sites consists of low-quality sites;
- if the network is created without taking into account the anonymity factor (networks should be closed from analytics systems, and a file with directives at the server level should be used to close access to sites).
