PBN Q&A v2.0: Ask me anything about our improved PBN game in 2018

[DevXM]

i have a couple of questions, not sure if asked before:

1.) where do u find these auction domains?
2.) how much should i expect to spend on a decent domain?
3.) why do people buy domains like veyfv.com or bsdub.com (basically they look like random letters)

 

[DevXM]

I saw answers to my earlier questions, sadly I can't edit, so I will ask new:

1.) why do people buy domains like veyfv.com or bsdeub.com (basically they look like random letters)

2.) I assume, a site in the network should not link to more than 4-5 money sites? Does that not then exclude buying links from most of sellers on BHW? I mean they get many orders and sell all year, even on a large network they are probably linking out to a bunch of shit sites from each site on their network (so OBL is like 50)....I can't imagine buying decent links for less than $100?

3.) how much should i expect to spend on a decent domain? (let's say RD 50)

4.) If buy links, how much should I expect to spend on a niche-relevant nice link?

Sorry if u there is an undertone of rage, as you said PBN's are not very practical for the small guys....

 

[partes]

Hello, thank you for the opportunity to ask you. I have a few questions:

1) Let say that I have YY money websites on the same VPS server with 1 IP (all my websites are on one IP). And I will create ZZ numbers of web 2.0 Tumblr (expired, PA60-80) and create content and post the article and link to one of my money sites. The question is, should I create for every money website a separate set of ZZ Tumblrs? O can I reuse them to link (within an article) to the second of my money sites?

2) I have tried to find the answer but I am still unsure: does expired Twitter's PA matter? Is there a point to retweet tweets from my main Twitter with a bunch of those high PA Twitters (PA 70+)?

Thank you!

 

[alexodysglobal]

I still didn't get it! Why PBNs are so powerful? I managed around 10+ websites of my clients and always get a backlink from Footer of those websites. Also, some of them are HIGH DA/PA websites with aged domains but I can definitely notice that PBNs are much more powerful than those genuine websites. Why is that so? Is it about link placement?

@Shehryar Aziz,

Well, first of all PBNs aren't more powerful than links from genuine websites. When you get a high quality, niche relevant or super powerful aged PBN domain, then it mimics a genuine website and that's why you deem it as powerful.

In regards to seeing PBN links more powerful than footer links from genuine sites... well, the problem is, Google doesn't see and score all links equally. SEOs are aware that certain tags are applied to links simply because some type of links have been abused in the past (ie. footer, sidebar links) therefore, a contextual link on a niche relevant blog post or article featured on the homepage of a good site/domain (regardless if it's a PBN or not) will weight more than a footer link surrounded by no text or barely any text on the exact same site or domain.

So try to stay away from footer links. Play the contextual linking game. I'm not saying footer links have no value, but Google is easier able to identify them as higher risk and even though they will crawl and index them, their weight is going to much less than that of one contextual link, placed in, let's say top of your article.

One more tip: Tests have been performed and folks noticed that the higher a link is placed on a page, the higher it can score. Links in the first paragraph of an article will score much higher than links in the last paragraph or, even worse, in the footer of the same site.

One more thing, links in the footer of the site can propagate side-wide and if the 'genuine' site has 500 pages you will get 500 links from all those pages, which may do more harm than good. However, getting just 1 link from the same footer of the same site may look even spammier since Google is aware most sites have exactly the same footer and can tag that link as a niche edit or injection (basically hacked link).

So that's why you probably get the feeling PBN links are more powerful. It's all about the link placement mate. Contextual links on relevant, properly optimized pages are always more powerful, especially if that's a homepage, since homepages are in 99% of the cases the most powerful page of a site, due to all those incoming links.

Alex

How much would a healthy 10-site PBN cost per year?

@EliteSmith

This depends on the domains you can or cannot afford to buy.

Let's say if you can't afford to spend more than $100 per domain (and we're talking average power auction domains here), then the math is pretty simple.

$100x10 domains = $1k for domains for the first year.

Want better domains, like $150, $200, $300 per domain? Just multiple the average price of a domain by 10.

Good hosting costs around $3-4/mo per hosting account or IP. @Diplomat 's PriorityProspect is $3.1/mo per IP with fair usage storage space and bandwidth included so you're looking at:

$3.1x10 domains = $31/mo ($372 year)

I'm not going to talk about fancy setups here that can easily cost from $50 to $100+ and assume that since you're just starting out, these will be handled by yourself. Just make sure you're using 10 unique themes and that at least half of them display full posts on the homepage, then get some fake ads in the sidebars and several fake banners and some social bells and whistles and you're set, at least for the time being. Disable comments, turn on akismet, block link crawlers and all that.

I would recommend around 2-3 500+ words articles or each site to begin with.

You can get a pretty OK'ish PBN quality non-native English article for around $1, $1.5 USD per 100 words, so you're looking at investing around ~$20 USD per PBN for content, so $200 total for 10 sites.

At the end of the day, if you're going after $100 USD domains, you may be looking at a total of $1572 USD for the first year.

$1000 USD for domains
$372/year for hosting them
$200 for content.

Second year will be cheaper since instead of paying $1k for domains you will only pay about $10 for renewing each domain. That can be even slightly cheaper if you choose registrars like NameSilo or PorkBun and transfer your domains over.

Alex

I saw answers to my earlier questions, sadly I can't edit, so I will ask new:

1.) why do people buy domains like veyfv.com or bsdeub.com (basically they look like random letters)

2.) I assume, a site in the network should not link to more than 4-5 money sites? Does that not then exclude buying links from most of sellers on BHW? I mean they get many orders and sell all year, even on a large network they are probably linking out to a bunch of shit sites from each site on their network (so OBL is like 50)....I can't imagine buying decent links for less than $100?

3.) how much should i expect to spend on a decent domain? (let's say RD 50)

4.) If buy links, how much should I expect to spend on a niche-relevant nice link?

Sorry if u there is an undertone of rage, as you said PBN's are not very practical for the small guys....

@DevXM,

1. It's the cleanliness, relevancy, quality, strengh/power of a PBN domain and its links that matters, not the name. We're obviously trying to stay away from bad words in the domain itself, but as long as the name doesn't infringe any copyright or trademark, isn't hate language, etc - we can use it.

2. You are correct, that's why people build their own networks and link sporadically.

3. There's no rule of thumb. You can have a domain like tax.com which let's say has 50 REFD, but due to being a premium name can easily cost at least $50k+. Then you can have domains powered by 50 super quality refds that cannot be compared with other domains that have the same volume of links, but of a much lower quality, so due to the super authority links powering the first one people can bid up to $250-300 for such a domain. It happens all the time. I could tell you a domain powered by 50 OK'ish REFD should be priced no more than say $100, but it won't be correct since you can only price a domain when knowing more about it.

Let's take the same 50 REFD domain, but add in the domain name a keyword that is relevant to your money site. The value of the domain, just due to having the keyword in the domain, immediately doubles (at least for those who understand why this is so powerful). Then let's add even more topical relevance to that domain. That adds even more value to the domain, then let's say those 50 REFD aren't just some directory/comments/average citations, etc, but are actually links from the highest quality authority sites in your niche. You could be looking at a $500 USD domain here.

So what I'm trying to say is that you cannot price a domain just by knowing the number of unique referring domains.

4. Usually the rule of thumb is, the more you pay, the better the link. Think about it as economy class flights vs private jets.

Alex

Hello, thank you for the opportunity to ask you. I have a few questions:

1) Let say that I have YY money websites on the same VPS server with 1 IP (all my websites are on one IP). And I will create ZZ numbers of web 2.0 Tumblr (expired, PA60-80) and create content and post the article and link to one of my money sites. The question is, should I create for every money website a separate set of ZZ Tumblrs? O can I reuse them to link (within an article) to the second of my money sites?

2) I have tried to find the answer but I am still unsure: does expired Twitter's PA matter? Is there a point to retweet tweets from my main Twitter with a bunch of those high PA Twitters (PA 70+)?

Thank you!

@partes,

1. I would recommend to single purpose both your PBNs and Web2.0s. Don't link to multiple sites and multiple niches. An exception may be working one single niche. Say gambling. And then ocasionally getting one more link from say one of the Web2.0s for the first site to power up one of your new sites. That can't hurt much. But if you do it regularly it can sooner or later harm you. Just make sure your linking looks natural. I would try to build clusters of PBNs and Web2.0s around each money site separately to make sure I stay out of trouble.

2. I don't think that's a ranking signal. If your twitter's account title/username would have your keyword there and link to your site from the profile snippet, then it may be valuable. Otherwise, it's just social proof, good to have, counts as a link, but don't think it would be as benficial (in terms of a off-page ranking factor) as other signals Google seeks.

Alex

 

[DevXM]

Thanks @alexthepbndude

I think for PBN's, I generally just stop at the first process, which is finding domains. I've been trying for a long time and I found only 1 decent domain. Even made a thread about it: https://www.blackhatworld.com/posts/11687621/

Been trying for 2 months and bought 6 domains: 1 new, 4 dropped, 1 GD closeout...on reading more I realized I only have one decent domain, which is the GD closeout.

 

[tpierce024]

First off I gotta thank @alexthepbndude because ive been following your PBN info for years since your last thread and you need to know that the research and value your putting out is directly helping in my seo success so thanks a lot as youve helped me continue to change my life for the better on my seo path and im wiling to bet many would say the same.

My question is when checking to see if an auction domain is indexed, are you specifically looking to see if the homepage is indexed or simply if any pages are indexed?

Also, side question, I been kinda wondering ever since the first time I came across your first theead and read every reply you had on it... are you aware of Greg Morrison?

Thanks a lot Alex

 

[mishagaboff]

Hi Alex. Thank you so much for your replies. Spent an hour of time reading and did not regret.
I have a question for you.

Usually, PBNs are created so that later they can be monetized by placing references of clients, or for pushing into a very competitive niche.

But what if my niche is not so competitive, and I simply don’t have any other sites. Do I need to rank the website of the Moving Company in Canada? Does it make sense to invest in PBN?

It is also interesting, do you provide your link selling services from your personal network?
Thank you.

 

[Guts]

A thank you from my "gut" for doing this, since these threads are enormous i cease to read every post so here are my doubts.

1. What is a decent size PBN 5,10,15 or 200?
Or is it correspondant to the amount of BL required for they keywords used?

Like for ranking on a keyword with 20 average BL requirment, 5 or 10 PBN links will do?

2. What software are you using to manage them as of 2019 and also i noticed you have decided not to block spiders anymore, have it made any impact?

3. How often do you update the PBN assuming you are done with 3-4 blogposts of 500-600 words

Thank you in advance for giving your golden time for us.

 

[r1004]

On topic question:

1-When bying an expired domain, do you recommend to restore the old website with all the links or build a new website??

 

[alexodysglobal]

Thanks @alexthepbndude

I think for PBN's, I generally just stop at the first process, which is finding domains. I've been trying for a long time and I found only 1 decent domain. Even made a thread about it: https://www.blackhatworld.com/posts/11687621/

Been trying for 2 months and bought 6 domains: 1 new, 4 dropped, 1 GD closeout...on reading more I realized I only have one decent domain, which is the GD closeout.

@DevXM,

It takes persistence and dedication to develop an efficient way of finding really good domains. It's like mining for gold or any other precious metals. Definitely not easy, especially the spam-checking part. That's why we have a team in place (7 folks and 4 spam-checking phases) these days handling this part. Then we have another team in charge of buying and bidding. Then we have another small team focused just on picking up the ones we need for our own business. And at last we have a team taking orders and selling some of domains that we don't have money sites for, etc...

I've been in business with people for years, talented SEOs and businessmen who simply gave up on the domain finding part since they realized it's really not their thing and instead tried to figure out other ways to add value to their business (like focusing on sales, better marketing, improving conversions, etc) and simply outsourcing the domain acqusition part.

Another good analogy is fishing. Anyone is free to go and catch fish, but not everyone has time, resources and patience to do it, so they end up buying in in the local store lol

Alex

First off I gotta thank @alexthepbndude because ive been following your PBN info for years since your last thread and you need to know that the research and value your putting out is directly helping in my seo success so thanks a lot as youve helped me continue to change my life for the better on my seo path and im wiling to bet many would say the same.

My question is when checking to see if an auction domain is indexed, are you specifically looking to see if the homepage is indexed or simply if any pages are indexed?

Also, side question, I been kinda wondering ever since the first time I came across your first theead and read every reply you had on it... are you aware of Greg Morrison?

Thanks a lot Alex

@tpierce024,

I'm really honored to have been able to contribute to the achievement of your financial goals (at least partially) throughout all these years mate. It's comments/testimonials like these that keep me going. Really glad I could make a change!

A domain that has the homepage + some other pages indexed and ranks for its own name is the most valuable one since the chance of it being penalized is very low. Next comes the domain with just the homepage indexed and ranking; third are the domains that have at least one page indexed (not necessarily the homepage) and the least valued ones are the domains that aren't indexed, even though powered by great links. The risk with the latter one is the highest. There is no way to know if these might have been penalized or not.

I'm aware of Greg Morrison

Alex

Hi Alex. Thank you so much for your replies. Spent an hour of time reading and did not regret.
I have a question for you.

Usually, PBNs are created so that later they can be monetized by placing references of clients, or for pushing into a very competitive niche.

But what if my niche is not so competitive, and I simply don’t have any other sites. Do I need to rank the website of the Moving Company in Canada? Does it make sense to invest in PBN?

It is also interesting, do you provide your link selling services from your personal network?
Thank you.

@mishagaboff,

Hey mate,

PBNs are a good source for high-quality, powerful links - IF you know what you're doing. It definitely makes sense to use them for every niche out there, but it's better to stick with other types of links if you totally lack any experience with these.

We don't sell links, but I may be able to point you in the right direction.

Hit me up on Skype: Alex_PBNSolutions

Alex

A thank you from my "gut" for doing this, since these threads are enormous i cease to read every post so here are my doubts.

1. What is a decent size PBN 5,10,15 or 200?
Or is it correspondant to the amount of BL required for they keywords used?

Like for ranking on a keyword with 20 average BL requirment, 5 or 10 PBN links will do?

2. What software are you using to manage them as of 2019 and also i noticed you have decided not to block spiders anymore, have it made any impact?

3. How often do you update the PBN assuming you are done with 3-4 blogposts of 500-600 words

Thank you in advance for giving your golden time for us.

@Guts,

1. We have our own methodology of identifying, approximately, the number of domains required for ranking a certain niche/keyword. It's based on carefully analyzing your top ranking competitors. I could do this really quick and free of charge if you want (don't expect me to reply instantly though - extremely busy these days) so you can hit me on Skype. At the end of the day, I do not recommend making PBN links more than 30-40% of your link profile, especially if you're building a long term project and plan to treat it like an asset.

2. We're still doing it oldschool with spreadsheets. SEO/Rankings wise, there hasn't been any impact when we decided to stop blocking crawlers on each and every PBN site.

3. We schedule 1 article every couple of months for the PBNs powering our bread and butter projects, 12 months in advance. Less important ones don't get so much content. In fact, we only post when we need a link. However, these days we don't link more than once from a PBN to sites that aren't that competitive, keeping everything in clusters.

Alex

On topic question:

1-When bying an expired domain, do you recommend to restore the old website with all the links or build a new website??

@r1004,

I recommend creating content that's a mix between the old topic of the domain and the site you're planning to link to. Say you buy a churchX.com domain, but aim to link to your funeral services client. The best thing you can do to make the most out of your PBN link is to post 2-3 articles that talk about the step by step process of properly organizing a funeral procession at ChurchX. This way you're going after the golden middle, not fully repurposing your old site, keeping the topical relevance intact, but also making it relevant to the site you're going to link to.

Just use your imagination, there are ways to connect even the most awkward niches out there lol

Let me know if there is anything else.

Alex

 

[Sund97]

What hosting can you recommend me for building PBN's on.
Does .com .net .org .biz matter when it comes to link juice from em.
How do i see if a link/domain was spammy and not worth buying.

 

[Deleted member 657006]

just seen the ansaw above a couple for domain cost, to expensive, it just getting too much money to survive in seo with pbn and link cost profetic money.

so seo comming down to cash now ..

it ok when your a business and got money comming in , but to start up , there no chance without massive investment .

getting depressing being honest

i heard of the new way where you dont use any protection on links no more just normal website will do.

but the way pbn looking for price not worth touching seo .

 

[tpierce024]

Definitely @alexthepbndude I gotta give props where props are due and the reality is your putting out some great ROI producing content when it comes to cutting edge SEO. Also, it’s great because it typically matches up with other cutting edge SEO info I receive.

Question, when you say you check if the pbn ranks for its own name, are you talking about before purchasing or after? Typically I check for the pbn name ranking after I buy the domain and its been re-indexed with my new title and content.. is that something you do?

When I bought expired domains, just recently stopped because the reality is they no longer work nearly as consistently as they used to which ive confirmed on 2 sites, I actually did the Diggity pbn check and things would pass with flying colors, but on one site i linked out with 2 aged pbns (made relevant via title and what not) and its still on the first page for a search term with 5400 searches per month and making money daily where the 2nd site got 32 expired pbns (made relevant again) and it was stuck bouncing between the bottom of the 2nd page and the top of the 3rd. BTW I read your randomness post which was great, as the content from you always is.

Needless to say, I noticed the difference, began slowly the deleting the expired pbns and buying auction/non-dropped/expiring and the 2nd site has already moved up to the middle of the 2nd page and is coming up day by day.

I learn a lot of hard lessons in SEO, but theyre learned once and for all and expiring > expired pbns is everything is 2019 and the foreseeable future as far as things look now. It is what brings 1st page+ rankings and, if the kw research is done right, solid ROI.

Also, side question again, would I be correct in assuming you have been in or are currently part of Greg’s program?

Thanks a lot Alex

 

[NCWebDiva]

Hey Alex,
I've got a question. In the past I setup 5 wp blogs as amz affiliate sites, then I got into local web design.
Question - could or should I repurpose these old indexed sites into mini-pbn?

 

[Matheus Moreira]

I wanna get a domain that is "as generic as possible" and then create a lot of sites "inside of it", like a blog aggregator/platform.

These sites can be about anything, their topic is not related, for example site1 is about dogs and site2 is about furniture.

1) How to select a domain that fits this strategy? What should i consider?

2) Which route should i go for maximun juice, host the sites as folders or subdomains?

Example 1: site1.domain.com and site2.domain.com

Example 2: domain.com/site1 and domain.com/site2

3) Whats your opinion about this strategy? Obviously its not something that is focused on quality, i think i would even spam the domain for one year and then let it go and grab another one.

Thank you!

 

[Lauren11]

Indexed blogger domain vs good da blogger domain which one you prefer and why?

 

[Kenas]

Why does some of my domain show up on ahrefs while i have them all "private" ?

Should i GSA blast the PBN ? a single domain or none ? (i need more kw´s)

how do i get more kw´s showing up ?

Thanks @alexthepbndude

 

[alexodysglobal]

What hosting can you recommend me for building PBN's on.
Does .com .net .org .biz matter when it comes to link juice from em.
How do i see if a link/domain was spammy and not worth buying.

@Sund97,

PriorityProspect.com

They also have a thread on this forum https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/p...ated-ips-cpanel-1-click-installs-more.944346/

@Diplomat runs the show

Alex

Definitely @alexthepbndude I gotta give props where props are due and the reality is your putting out some great ROI producing content when it comes to cutting edge SEO. Also, it’s great because it typically matches up with other cutting edge SEO info I receive.

Question, when you say you check if the pbn ranks for its own name, are you talking about before purchasing or after? Typically I check for the pbn name ranking after I buy the domain and its been re-indexed with my new title and content.. is that something you do?

When I bought expired domains, just recently stopped because the reality is they no longer work nearly as consistently as they used to which ive confirmed on 2 sites, I actually did the Diggity pbn check and things would pass with flying colors, but on one site i linked out with 2 aged pbns (made relevant via title and what not) and its still on the first page for a search term with 5400 searches per month and making money daily where the 2nd site got 32 expired pbns (made relevant again) and it was stuck bouncing between the bottom of the 2nd page and the top of the 3rd. BTW I read your randomness post which was great, as the content from you always is.

Needless to say, I noticed the difference, began slowly the deleting the expired pbns and buying auction/non-dropped/expiring and the 2nd site has already moved up to the middle of the 2nd page and is coming up day by day.

I learn a lot of hard lessons in SEO, but theyre learned once and for all and expiring > expired pbns is everything is 2019 and the foreseeable future as far as things look now. It is what brings 1st page+ rankings and, if the kw research is done right, solid ROI.

Also, side question again, would I be correct in assuming you have been in or are currently part of Greg’s program?

Thanks a lot Alex

@tpierce024,

Cheers mate, thanks for the kind words.

- We're checking before acquiring the domain name.
- There's still a lot of randomness. You just need to test and see what works. Don't fall for the hype lol
- I've briefly skimmed thought Greg's program, but I don't consisntely check it. Some of the research and tests we do just seem to bring us to the same results.

Alex

Hey Alex,
I've got a question. In the past I setup 5 wp blogs as amz affiliate sites, then I got into local web design.
Question - could or should I repurpose these old indexed sites into mini-pbn?

@NCWebDiva,

Yeah why not. They can definitely make good contextual link assets.

Alex

I wanna get a domain that is "as generic as possible" and then create a lot of sites "inside of it", like a blog aggregator/platform.

These sites can be about anything, their topic is not related, for example site1 is about dogs and site2 is about furniture.

1) How to select a domain that fits this strategy? What should i consider?

2) Which route should i go for maximun juice, host the sites as folders or subdomains?

Example 1: site1.domain.com and site2.domain.com

Example 2: domain.com/site1 and domain.com/site2

3) Whats your opinion about this strategy? Obviously its not something that is focused on quality, i think i would even spam the domain for one year and then let it go and grab another one.

Thank you!

@Matheus Moreira,

I would not recommend a multi-purpose site or PBN anymore.

Keep it niche/vertical relevant please.

Alex

Indexed blogger domain vs good da blogger domain which one you prefer and why?

@Lauren11,

Don't have any experience with blogspot/blogger domains.

Alex

Why does some of my domain show up on ahrefs while i have them all "private" ?

Should i GSA blast the PBN ? a single domain or none ? (i need more kw´s)

how do i get more kw´s showing up ?

Thanks @alexthepbndude

@Kenas,

You're probably not blocking link crawlers correctly, especially Ahrefs.

Please double check your code.

If hosting with PriorityProspect, use their feature to block via the firewall then there is no reason to worry.

Alex


P.S. I'll do my best to check this thread consistently starting with TODAY.

 

[kevin tan]

Have you ever tried ranking keywords in the financial sector for yourself or your clients i.e. insurance, investing, gold, money, credit cards etc. Have you been successful or no?

With regards to pbns, I'm linking a pbn with high DR, RD, DA, TF to my money site that is not relevant in that niche for the most part, would that be a good idea or no.

 

[kevin tan]

Oh and also with expired domains, if they have been used before as a pbn should I bother picking it up or not.