Private Blog Networks Guide 2024 Are PBN Backlinks Worth It ?

You might have heard about the Private Blog Networks but do you have any idea about what it is and how does it work?

You might also be baffled about if it is legit strategy or just a scam?  Do Private Blog Networks (PBNs) Still Work in 2018?

Well it just can’t be explained in few words. I have answered all your questions about the PBNs and how does it work as White-hat SEO technique with pros and cons.

What Are the Rewards and Risks of PBNs? Are PBN’s Dead ?

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Private Blog Networks: Why to Use PBN’s?

What is a Private Blog Network?

A PBN is a collection of high authority sites that you have complete control over and are all linked to your money site.

Normally, PBNs are formed from expired domains that have excellent backlinks and therefore transfer a high number of links to your money site.

Best CHEAP PBN Hosting

Private blog networks

 

What I realized about PBN?

These are the 2 points I have mentioned:

1. PBNs are expensive to build

One of the major disadvantages is the cost of developing and maintaining a network. If you use auctions, a good domain costs between $ 40 and $ 400. If you use domain providers, the costs are similar.

As you can imagine, this can be added.

Once your new domain is secure, you’ll need to pay for a private Whois, receive hosting, and add content.

Let’s say you’ve secured a domain for $ 100.

  • Domain = 100 US dollars
  • Private Whois = $ 5
  • Accommodation = 12 $
  • Item = $ 5 (a good PBN has more than one item)

= $ 112 for a website.

Do you think that the costs are high?

Let me tell you about the time investment.

2. The process of building PBNs is a waste of time

It was true in 2014, but it’s even more true now. I can not believe some of the discussions that I see in Facebook groups and forums. The length that some people will reach with the PBN is amazing …

With all these efforts, you can buy REAL links from REAL websites and never have to worry about getting punished.

Just think about the process:

First, find Domain that are worth buying. About 95% of the domains are not qualified. And it is generous.

Especially for my agency, we use expired domains if they meet our Topical Trust Flow requirement. This has made our research even more difficult, but often more rewarding.

For example, suppose you are trying to create a network of 10 sites. It takes 6 to 12 hours to find ten qualified areas. A “qualified” domain must have a trust of at least 15 and a domain authority of 15.

A lower metric domain is allowed if you have topics that are relevant to Confidential trust.

Now that you’ve backed up 10 domains, you need to configure them now. It takes 2 to 4 hours to find web hosts and to prepare websites for development.

Then you need to develop the site by creating all the required pages, searching for topics, writing / sharing content, installing add-ons, and giving the site a normal look. If you want to be more secure, you can also create social accounts for each site.

This process can take 1-2 hours per location.

This equates to an investment of about 36 hours in a network of 10 websites.

It also does not take into account any hosting or hacking issues you might encounter. Cheap hosts often go bankrupt without notice and have horrible hours of operation.

Dealing with these issues can be a good time killer.

Of course, you can outsource most of these steps, of course. But if you outsource, you increase your costs. Higher expenses increase the time required to achieve a return on investment.

How and Why does a PBN work?

The ranking factor of the major search engines is the number and quality of backlinks to a website. Over time, all content that has the same quality (at least in the eyes of Google), determines the number and quality of the backlinks of a website, whether they are at the top of the page. Page 1 or below.

The bottom line is that if you really want to position yourself at the top of Google, you need very good backlinks.

PBN is an abbreviated way to get high-quality, high-quality backlinks without having to do the tedious tasks that are usually done to create links.

Why do PBNs work better than white hat links?

After you create good content, you generally need to conduct a publicity campaign to link other authorized sites to your content.

The conversion rate for such campaigns is extremely low, especially now that it can be mass-produced using low-cost outreach programs like GMass and Shake.

People who manage authorized sites are flooded with hundreds of emails every day. Even if your content is excellent, your email will simply be trashed unless you already have a relationship with the webmaster.

The other problem with disclosure is that you can not control the anchor text or the content of the link you are getting. At the bottom of the page, you can find a random anchor text or links that are not surrounded by quality content, and you can do nothing about it.

With PBN you are in control of the link as it is linked from the website. Therefore, you can choose the right anchor text, content, and location of the link. After you’ve created a PBN website and linked it to your Money site, you know you need between $ XX and $ AA to create a single link. You can then upgrade to 100 links by spending $ 100 x xx and 100 x YY.

SEOs using PBN often form a network of 1000 websites that are completely controlled by them. Then they adjust the anchor texts and manually link the speed to increase “natural” in the classifications.

Are PBNs a black hat strategy?

Private blog network detailed definition
Source: Neil Patel

Yes, you will hear many “gurus” saying that it is not a black hat strategy to sell their courses. However, let us be clear: any form of intentional linking violates Google’s policies.

When Google finds out that you have paid a journalist to link to your site from an editorial office, your site will be penalized. If Google finds that you have a network of sites linking your Money site, it will penalize your Money site or de-identify the found PBN sites.

Recently, Google has stated that it does not penalize sites that receive the link, but simply depreciates it. This was done to correct negative SEO attacks on innocent websites. This means that the likelihood that your money site will be penalized for PBN is likely to occur only if you do not pass manual review (more on that later).

The interesting thing is that PBNs are not just used by small websites. A recent publication by Glen Allsop shows how very large sites use the same basic principles of PBN to achieve a very high rank. To do this, they ensure that their PBN sites are parent sites. I hope this guide will allow you to do the same for your online business.

Pros

Although you have heard that PBNs are scams that will not help your SEO, this statement is partially correct. PBNs offer legitimate benefits. Before I go further, however, I would like to mention a brief legal statement:

“I have never used PBN for my own website and I do not recommend it for your website. I’ll explain that later, but I wanted to highlight it so that they know where I am. For the moment, however, we will examine why PBNs attract many advertisers.”

As already mentioned, backlinks increase the success of private blogging networks.

And what is a backlink?

backlink buildinh strategy

A backlink is a hypertext link that leads from an external website to your own website. And these little beauties help a lot with your SEO.

The backlinks tell the search engines that the link site is based enough on your website to link it to your domain. This means that search engines also trust your website.

It’s like playing with cool kids in the playground.

When you’re with big kids, you feel great. Similarly, search engines analyze linked websites to know which websites are trusted. For this reason, building links is the main factor that contributes to the ranking of a website.

Cons

The PBN sounds good. Of course, this is until you recognize the risks associated with its use. Yes, they can enhance your SEO and help generate passive traffic and leads to your website.

However, the entire marketing strategy can quickly become a disaster if Google surprises you.

If you ask yourself, yes: Google hates PBN and purposely tries to punish the people who use it. However, I’m a bit more understanding than a daddy search engine.

I understand SEO takes a long time to influence your rankings. The fast solution proposed by PBN is too attractive for some marketers. You get fast classifications, brand recognition and hopefully also revenue.

At least the PBNs promise it.

But if all this advantage can disappear in a single moment of vulnerability, is it really worth it? PBNs are technically not a black hat strategy.

But it’s not a white hat either.

They are a hack. They are a trick to get rich quick. And like most similar tactics, they are associated with serious risks. If Google detects this, your website will be penalized and you will have difficulty establishing yourself in SEO.

But how? How does Google penalize websites that use PBN to improve their SEO?

How do you know what you are doing?

Well, if all the sites where you got backlinks are not very active sites, with few updates and almost no internal links, then Google suspects that. Unfortunately, the PBN sites generally have all of these specific characteristics.

Private blog network
This facilitates recognition by most search engines. If you decide to use PBN, you should know that you could damage the SEO of your website. There are legitimate benefits, but only under a cloud of potential penalties from search engines.

This could lead to a fast domain authority in PBN. Although traditional strategies take longer, they are not so risky.

9 rules for building your PBN : How to build a safe PBN that will last you for years

1. Different registrars: Test and buy domains through different registrars. WhoIs Guard needs to be activated in most areas. We do not suggest having false information in WhoIs records. However, if you need to do this, you should do so for areas where you did not spend a lot of money (because you might lose the domain). Also, make sure you use each registrar’s DNS and do not use a single name server for all your domains.

2. Different Hosting: Each website must have a different IP address for the subnet. If an IP address is represented by xxx.BBB.yyy.zzz, yyy and zzz must be unique for each of the sites in the network. Many web hosts only receive a small number of IP addresses that they can provide to a customer. Although the IP address may be different, you can get the same “xxx.BBB.yyy”. In this case, the host only one or two domains with this web host.

3. Content: You must have unique and valuable content on every website. There should be no false content whatsoever. Treat the domains of your PBN with the same respect as the one with your money pages and invests in their quality.

4.  Each domain is linked to a money page only once. No matter how tempting it is to link all your monetary sites to a single domain, remember that this only adds to the risks.

5. There should not be a link on the entire site, just links embedded in the contextual text. We are firmly convinced that in the future all non-contextual links will be devalued.

6. Each domain should connect to your Money site only after certain pages have been created. Original links should be directed to other authorized sites in your niche. Do not just connect to Wikipedia, YouTube, and other important websites. Choose authorized sites in your niche.

7. Use the variations of anchor texts when linking to your Money site. This depends on your current link profile. If you have a diverse link profile, it makes sense to use certain anchor texts for the ranking. However, if your site is new, use bare URL anchor texts as well.

8. Each site needs some pages to approve the revision of the manual: info/contact/ privacy policy.

9. Your PBN site must be in the same slot you had before the domain expired. John Mueller of Google made it clear at a Google webmaster meeting place that the link to the previous site does not apply to the new site if Google determines that the new site is not the same as the previous site. If you are not in the same niche, the backlinks lose all their value.

The Ultimate PBN Strategy

private blog network and testing

I see too many ways to rely too much on SEO in private blogs, and they make a big mistake. I am sure you have heard this before, but you should never put all your eggs in one basket.

This is really true for any kind of link building.

Year after year, Google destroyed SEOs that were not diversified and needed a unique link building method.

So I’ll tell you a little secret.

I’m thinking of creating links in the same way I would with my retirement account.

First, I rate the risk of a link building strategy. Then I choose the capital and the time to devote myself to this strategy.

For example, I can invest in “riskier” stocks because the return potential is higher. In general, however, higher risk stocks are only a small part of my overall portfolio.

This is exactly how you should focus on creating links and private blog networks!

If 100% of your incoming links come from PBN, play with fire.

PBN should complement its other efforts to strengthen links. They should not replace other important creative activities, such as: For example, creating and developing relationships in your industry, promoting content (through awareness-raising), and creating content resources.

If you keep your PBN links between 5% and 20% of your overall link profile, you should be pretty sure.

PBNs are always risky but are reduced if they make up only a small percentage of your link profile. The remaining 80 to 90% of your links should come from internal sites, such as: From editorial links, business listings, branding, or comments from blogs/niche forums.

You can also use this White Hat alternative to PBN if you want to completely avoid it.

How to Test Your PNB Domain

Let’s imagine you did all this hard work:

  1. Found a domain with super metrics
  2. Added a link to your money site
  3. Published a bunch of content
  4. Installed WP

And the result is that your ranking has dropped. It would be terrible! All these efforts and the money wasted to the drain.

It may be a great idea to test your network for one domain only. The exam should take about a week and it’s worth it. I did not test the domains when I had a large network, but I would like to do it. This technique comes from Diggity Marketing – Thanks to Matt!

First, even if you look at the Return Link crawlers, you will not know all the links behind a domain. It’s just not possible: Google is more interested in the Web than any other third-party tool. So if you check all the backlinks in Majestic & Ahrefs, you really can not know.

Here is the process: How to build a safe PBN that will last you for years
Find a third-party website in your niche. It must be another site so you do not ruin your own website. We do not want to harm anyone’s income, so …

In step 1, search for a keyword on page 2 of the site. You do not want to influence anyone’s income, it would be a sudden move! Then find a term on page 2.

The anchor text corresponding to the exact keyword was never used. You want to search for a confidential key phrase in a link that contains exactly the appropriate anchor text. Something that works well (ie the top 20) fits perfectly.

You must use the Majestic and Ahrefs website browsers to ensure that the anchor text has not been used.
Other related keywords should also appear on page 2. This will ensure that Google likes the site. Your test will not work if you have already selected a site in bad condition.

Search for the keywords with SEMrush. Any other option would be difficult and frustrating.

The theory is that an exact match of a correspondence text link affects the classification of that term and its associated terms.

Only if the PBN domain is clean.

After placing the link with the appropriate anchor text, wait about 7 days and check the SERPs. And you should use a tool like SERP Lab.

As the ranking improves, you have an authoritative and healthy domain. Add it to your network!

If the ranking worsens, you must delete the link. If the rank increases again after one week, the domain is wrong. Keep this away from your network.

It is a simple and effective test. The test ensures that you are not recording with a wrong domain.

PBN 101: Basics to Advanced

ultimate-private-blog-network-infographic what is PBN hosting

 

Final word: Is Private Blog Network Worth in 2024? IS PBN DEAD? or STILL WORK like a Charm after recent Google Update: YES THEY DO WORK

Building an efficient and effective PBN for SEO is a slow game. If you create too many links to a new website, you will experience problems. If you are not sure how fast your link is, choose the slowest option. Invest in the long term in the construction of your PBN. Once your network works well, you can use it as long as you like.

As we know, Getting backlinks from a PBN is a subdivision topic.
There will be people who use PBN to create links, taking all aspects into account. However, as mentioned earlier, it is very risky to use the PBN backlinks to improve the ranking of your website.

Instead, use sustainable SEO link building strategies and White Hat to develop your website.

While these tactics take longer and are harder to achieve, they give you long-term results that allow your site to reach the top of the SERP(search engine result page) and retain it.

Jitendra Vaswani
This author is verified on BloggersIdeas.com

Jitendra Vaswani is a Digital Marketing Practitioner and renowned international keynote speaker who has embraced the digital nomad lifestyle as he travels around the world. He founded two successful websites, BloggersIdeas.com & Digital Marketing Agency DigiExe of which his success stories have expanded to authoring "Inside A Hustler's Brain : In Pursuit of Financial Freedom” (20,000 copies sold worldwide) and contributing to “International Best Selling Author of Growth Hacking Book 2". Jitendra designed workshops for over 10000+ professionals in Digital marketing across continents; with intentions ultimately anchored towards creating an impactable difference by helping people build their dream business online. Jitendra Vaswani is a high-powered investor with an impressive portfolio that includes Imagestation. To learn more about his investments, Find him on Linkedin, Twitter, & Facebook.

Affiliate disclosure: In full transparency – some of the links on our website are affiliate links, if you use them to make a purchase we will earn a commission at no additional cost for you (none whatsoever!).

Comments (11)

  1. Hi Jitendra,

    Amazing post! Before going into the article, I only had a slight about PBN, but your information really made a difference. Some members of my team were wondering if PBN was a good option, but your article gave me all the clarification I needed on the subject. The PBN strategy will be a good starting point if I decide to go this route in the future. Also, due to your blog post, many people will be able to use this method in an effective way. Thanks for taking the time to share this valuable information.

  2. I have a PBN of my won blogs and it works well for my niche sites, thanks for sharing informational writing.

  3. Thank you so much for sharing this! I’ve followed your blog for a long time. PBN has a great power really!

  4. With the latest Google Algo update, there is a hoax that Private blog networks don’t work anymore.. Do you think PBN is still important in 2019? What’re your views?

    • PBN do work if you do it safely. Follow guidelines I mentioned in the article 🙂 I have PBN of 50 blogs and it works well for my niche sites 🙂

  5. great article, thanks for sharing informational article. Yes PBN’s were still working i tried personally, but it must be quality one..

  6. Thank You so much for sharing this with us! Been reading your blog for a while now, and finally couldn’t resist commenting 🙂

  7. Wow really great indepth guide to PBNs. You should add something about blocking ahrefs and pbn hunter so you competitors can’t report you 🙂

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