Aggressive PBN update for massive gains

[asker1]

Hi,

I have a massive PBN that I am using for many years for my own projects. One project in particular is making me a lot of money, but my approach went from aggressive exact and partial match anchor text to mostly brand/URL anchor text over the years and my SERPs are mostly stabilized and not moving much.

I think there is a lot of bullshit told on BHW that you have to be super careful and use only brand/naked url/generic etc.. I see some of my competitors rising very fast with using nothing more than exact anchor text. I want to replicate that. Essentially I will be using this method https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/5...egies-tips-advice-inside-15-000-words.821874/.

Caution: I think that the anchor text ratio depends on the niche. Some have top ranking sites with 1% others with 35%. You have to check yourself. The link above tells you how.

So here is the risky plan:
1)

• analyze links of TOP 3 competitors in my niche
• there are multiple money keywords, although all are tied to the same product and ranking with the same page mostly. So 95% of the links will be pointed to one page.
• I used absolute numbers instead of % ratios for the links. If my top competitor has for the money keyword A around 10 exact match links, then I will make for example 12. You have to have a lot of PBN though to manage this.
• I have done this for the first 10 money keywords.
• Also I observed every one of those 10 keywords and crawled through the TOP 100 serps just to check if my own PBN sites rank for those keywords. Some of my PBNs do this and some of those particular articles dont have a link in them. I will utilize that, see my next step.

This part is finished. It took me 3 full days, lots of excel spreadsheets and ahrefs usage.

2) Redo my PBN articles to change the anchor text to a more aggressive one

• this one is super risky, but I have done this multiple times in the past
• I will change my anchor text in existing PBNs according to my spreadsheet done in step 1.
• I will try to utilize the PBN articles that are already ranking organically for my money keywords but I dont have links in them
• I will try to do this slowly 1-3 domains every day perhaps.
• You cant just go back and edit only the anchor text. Its more complicated. I will try to update the articles a little bit (change and/or add some text), in many PBNs I will switch the article from which I will be linking etc.
• If I am already at it - I will redo the internal linking on the PBNs, also the URLs, Titles etc. to be optimized for the keywords that I will be linking with. So basically every PBN will have one keyword that it will be optimized around and also that keyword will be the anchor text for the link.
• many of the PBNs have 2-3 links with various anchor text linking to the same page. Like one is my brand and the second link a partial match anchor text. I will delete those additional links and use only 1 per PBN so it doesn't get diluted.

3)

• profit

Currently I am at step 2. This will take probably months. I will try to update it regularly if there is something going on. Could be a very nice case study about PBNs, anchor text and redoing existing links on PBNs .

 

[terrycody]

Good luck to your journey, interesting to see whats your result!

 

[Deleted member 657006]

but there the other side get pbn ban.

 

[kanamon]

how you'll know your competitor's anchor profile if they are also using PBNs ?

 

[Warrenway]

Very interested to see how this goes. It's pretty brave of you to experiment with a PBN that's already making you good money. And most PBNers would say not to change or mess with existing anchors at all, especially on such a large scale, but hopefully it turns out for the best. Good luck! Please do document the progress.

 

[asker1]

Thanks for the feedback.

One thing I am still considering - adding filler words to the exact match anchor texts. Like instead of "dog training" I will use "this dog training" "my dog training" "that dog training" etc. . This should make it unique but I am unsure if it still counts as exact match?

 

[asker1]

how you'll know your competitor's anchor profile if they are also using PBNs ?

I am using ahrefs mainly and with that you can know competitors anchor profile. Yes, you can hide your links, but most of the people dont do that (its a footprint).

 

[abdousakhi]

I'm sorry what's PBN? i'm new to this.

 

[asker1]

You will have a hard time in SEO if you cant use google to search for the basic terms. I dont mean it as an insult, but you really cant expect other people to do the basic homework for you. PBN = Private Blog Network.

 

[Ftr]

Can't you just create new PBN back links and use the new anchor strategy for them.
This way you get all those benefits of the aggressive anchor text improvements but will be easier to dissavow with plausible deniability taking away a lot of the risk and obviousness of it all?

I know it will add to cost but what you pay for in the cost you mitigate from possible loss of earnings if it fucks up. Why would you not take that route? Just to avoid to the extra cost?

 

[asker1]

Yes, basically it all boils down to cost. Be it money or time. Otherwise I would create thousands of PBNs . In fact I will create new PBNs, but at the same time I want to utilize my existing PBN fully. We are talking about a PBN with a triple digit count of domains. I think I can get way more out of it with little time and no money spent.

But yes, this is risky. But also creating new PBNs is risky and can get me banned. We are black hat SEOs here, we have to accept it .

 

[Ftr]

Well you got some balls, good luck with this and dem gainz!!

I think it would be amazing if you could attach some rank tracking screen shots, like before rankings, and during/after each batch of changes or weekly updates like that! That would be pimping'

There's probably going to be some fluctuations with your rankings after you make changes good and bad as the big G works out whats going on, that can last for awhile these days before it evens back out.

I'm worried you are getting too greedy and trying to cut a corner as changing the Anchor text in already indexed backlinks is just well ya know too obvious for me, but articles do get updated, so will be really interesting. I still prefer trying to just add more links to it and using those added new links with anchor text matching, but as you said you think you can get squeeze more juice out of the existing stuff so

 

[drstew]

The PBN pages that are ranking and getting a trickle of traffic, but aren't linking to your money site. You could make sure they're internally linked from the PBN homepage to the internal page (if not already) then internally link these ranking pages using your keywords, to the page that links out to your money site.

I've seen you don't need exact anchors to rank now. Google can pull the relevancy from other aspects on the page you're linking from e.g. Title, H1, images and general content. I've recently seen many sites over optimized for "Best xx" keywords get slapped with a penalty.

Your anchor text ratio should be related to the anchor ratio of the top 4 or 5 sites already ranking.

 

[asker1]

The PBN pages that are ranking and getting a trickle of traffic, but aren't linking to your money site. You could make sure they're internally linked from the PBN homepage to the internal page (if not already) then internally link these ranking pages using your keywords, to the page that links out to your money site.

This is exactly what I am doing. As I stated it in my first post.

Regarding anchor text - yes, but as you wrote yourself - it should be related to the top 4 or 5 sites in my niche. And they have way more exact match than I do. So I want to replicate that. Wish me luck

 

[asker1]

Short update - its harder and more time consuming than i thought. Reading through so much content, editing it etc. is not something I like to do. I noticed some first movements, but thats too early to say anything about it.

I also found out that one of my writers plagiarized his own articles. He copied whole paragraphs across many articles, around 25% of content in his articles werent unique. Luckily, none of my sites has been hit by Google for this. But I just delete all of the content writen by him now. Sucks.

 

[madoctopus]

1. How many sites do you have in your PBN
2. Have you used aged domains with existing links?
3. Have you interlinked the PBN sites?
4. Have you built links using other methods to the PBN sites. Give details please.
5. Is the PBN content high quality or garbage? Would it pass as natural to a manual inspection?
6. Are you covering multiple niches/topics with same PBN sites, or are you having sites dedicated to a single niche?
7. Over how long (months, years) of a period are the registration dates distributed? (e.g. all domains bought in 1 year period)
8. Are you using regular hosting or some sort of SEO hosting like ip-networx.com?
9. Do you have a management system for everything or using Excel or what?
10. Are you cloaking/hiding links from Ahrefs and Majestic or blocking their bots?
11. What is the anchor text distribution currently (% for exact keyword, related keyword, URL, brand name)?