PBNs still WORK- AHREFs OP!!!

[PbnGeek]

People talk all about the trash and mumbo-jumbo about PBNs without any proper research into the subject.

Just worked on a client site with some powerful PBNs and wanted to share the results here.



Quite positive, right?

Here I have simplified(from highest search volumes to lowest) the results in this excel snapshot:
The last column is the difficulty of the keywords as per AHREF standards.

How I went about achieving these results?

Let’s do this.

Well, you’ll need 2 tools here.

1. AHREFs (I used arehfs- newbies can use the trial version if you don't want to buy)

2. Any rank tracking tool of your choice.

The first thing to do was to get a list of all the keywords that the client site was indexed for.


So, we agreed to start off with one page(eg: client_site.com).

AHREFs:

• The keyword list was pulled off AHREF for the client_site.com/inner_page. All indexed keywords were present in the list. (ahrefs/organic keywords tab)

• As the indexed keywords had sufficient volume, we just went with this list. (Otherwise, we would have pulled keywords from ranking competitors- incorporated them into client_site.com/inner_page and then continued)**.

• Exported the above list to Excel and whittled down the list according to a few parameters.

• The above keyword list had approximately 800kws. Sorted the Volume column in descending order. Got rid of all keywords with volume lower than 300(You can keep up to 200 if you like).

• Left with around 45kws. Sorted the difficulty column in ascending order. Again, got rid of any kw with AHREF difficulty over 30(You can lower it to 20 if you have sufficient kws and volume). Keywords left: 35

Now we are down to a workable limit.

**Important Note: Instead of trying to rank for a keyword that the page is not indexed for, it is better to focus on those keywords that have already been. The ROI is better in the latter case. It is easier too.

It also means that your page is not up to par for those keywords that have not been indexed. If you still want to get that keyword in, instead of just focusing on backlinks, go through the serps for that particular keyword. Make sure that the content on your page is up to par with those pages who are ranking on the top for that keyword.

The pre-requisite of viable ranking is choosing the correct keywords.

In fact, the pre-requisite of anything to do with SEO is research aimed in the correct direction.

Now that we have a set of keywords whose difficulty is not too high. On the plus side, all these keywords have appreciable search volumes. These are just perfect to be targeted.

AHREFs is such an OP tool. All the possible research you could need is a click away. Even an amateur can understand what to do in a few clicks. And just using this information for your backlinking can do wonders.

In all the time I have been doing SEO over the past few years, most clients and SEO providers alike only ever mention one or at most 2-3 keywords, which you provide, when creating backlinks for your money sites and no further research.

I went for a different approach with this project. Instead of working on only 2-3 kws I shortlisted almost 35 kws to work with.

Instead of one main keyword- the approach was to maximize the context and relevance of the links used by inserting the appropriate and related keywords.

These 35 keywords were grouped into batches* with each batch containing related keywords and the content was spun around them. Each batch had a variation/long tail of the same keywords. They were all different but not to the point that they would be irrelevant together.

*Sort the keywords in ascending order and use similar ones together or with closely related properties(PBNs).

Time to finally start backlinking!

The PBNs are multi-niche with avg DA/PA 20 and RD 100+

• Added all relevant keywords to the tracking tool. Very imp!

• Each batch of keywords was targeted by taking the AHREFs difficulty as a reference. The number of links was in ratio to this difficulty.

• The PBN links were drip-fed over a duration of 2 weeks.

I started seeing improvement almost by the second week. The keywords are still going up and down but I think the trend is quite positive. One round of backlinks has moved the overall positions of the keywords to a higher level.

I have also seen some keywords with low volumes disappear and replaced by long-tail versions of the same- most likely due to the relevance improving for those particular keywords due to the recent links.
Will probably need to fine-tune these keywords some more.

All in all, pretty pleased with this approach.
I will keep track and update if there are any major changes.


What should I try next?

 

[jefis]

Great job. I'm working on a huge PBN myself. Can't wait till we launch it. I believe the results are going to be amazing

 

[BrandingCat]

Pbns will always work if done properly.

 

[Mysterious Stranger]

Totally agree @Meddie

I am also using this tactic since ages and it still works fine for me. It's kinda funny, that people thinks PBN is a trash. Maybe low quality PBN - yes, it's trash. Well made PBN? It's pure gold, no matter how many updates were released from Google

 

[Radarkitai]

How did you index your Pbns? I am facing issue with indexation

 

[KenWalker]

People talk all about the trash and mumbo-jumbo about PBNs without any proper research into the subject.

Just worked on a client site with some powerful PBNs and wanted to share the results here.

View attachment 122439

Quite positive, right?

Here I have simplified(from highest search volumes to lowest) the results in this excel snapshot: View attachment 122438
The last column is the difficulty of the keywords as per AHREF standards.

How I went about achieving these results?

Let’s do this.

Well, you’ll need 2 tools here.

1. AHREFs (I used arehfs- newbies can use the trial version if you don't want to buy)

2. Any rank tracking tool of your choice.

The first thing to do was to get a list of all the keywords that the client site was indexed for.


So, we agreed to start off with one page(eg: client_site.com).

AHREFs:

• The keyword list was pulled off AHREF for the client_site.com/inner_page. All indexed keywords were present in the list. (ahrefs/organic keywords tab)

• As the indexed keywords had sufficient volume, we just went with this list. (Otherwise, we would have pulled keywords from ranking competitors- incorporated them into client_site.com/inner_page and then continued)**.

• Exported the above list to Excel and whittled down the list according to a few parameters.

• The above keyword list had approximately 800kws. Sorted the Volume column in descending order. Got rid of all keywords with volume lower than 300(You can keep up to 200 if you like).

• Left with around 45kws. Sorted the difficulty column in ascending order. Again, got rid of any kw with AHREF difficulty over 30(You can lower it to 20 if you have sufficient kws and volume). Keywords left: 35

Now we are down to a workable limit.

**Important Note: Instead of trying to rank for a keyword that the page is not indexed for, it is better to focus on those keywords that have already been. The ROI is better in the latter case. It is easier too.

It also means that your page is not up to par for those keywords that have not been indexed. If you still want to get that keyword in, instead of just focusing on backlinks, go through the serps for that particular keyword. Make sure that the content on your page is up to par with those pages who are ranking on the top for that keyword.

The pre-requisite of viable ranking is choosing the correct keywords.

In fact, the pre-requisite of anything to do with SEO is research aimed in the correct direction.

Now that we have a set of keywords whose difficulty is not too high. On the plus side, all these keywords have appreciable search volumes. These are just perfect to be targeted.

AHREFs is such an OP tool. All the possible research you could need is a click away. Even an amateur can understand what to do in a few clicks. And just using this information for your backlinking can do wonders.

In all the time I have been doing SEO over the past few years, most clients and SEO providers alike only ever mention one or at most 2-3 keywords, which you provide, when creating backlinks for your money sites and no further research.

I went for a different approach with this project. Instead of working on only 2-3 kws I shortlisted almost 35 kws to work with.

Instead of one main keyword- the approach was to maximize the context and relevance of the links used by inserting the appropriate and related keywords.

These 35 keywords were grouped into batches* with each batch containing related keywords and the content was spun around them. Each batch had a variation/long tail of the same keywords. They were all different but not to the point that they would be irrelevant together.

*Sort the keywords in ascending order and use similar ones together or with closely related properties(PBNs).

Time to finally start backlinking!

The PBNs are multi-niche with avg DA/PA 20 and RD 100+

• Added all relevant keywords to the tracking tool. Very imp!

• Each batch of keywords was targeted by taking the AHREFs difficulty as a reference. The number of links was in ratio to this difficulty.

• The PBN links were drip-fed over a duration of 2 weeks.

I started seeing improvement almost by the second week. The keywords are still going up and down but I think the trend is quite positive. One round of backlinks has moved the overall positions of the keywords to a higher level.

I have also seen some keywords with low volumes disappear and replaced by long-tail versions of the same- most likely due to the relevance improving for those particular keywords due to the recent links.
Will probably need to fine-tune these keywords some more.

All in all, pretty pleased with this approach.
I will keep track and update if there are any major changes.


What should I try next?

answering your question - help me rank

 

[hatfromthewilds]

where did u get expired domains from my friend? sorry if i missed it, im still reading through ur post

i had my own expired domains from either scraping or from public repository (im not sure whether scraping expired domains makes any sense if theyre all listed in that public repository anyway)

 

[seoz87]

1. Did you find the domains yourself or bought them from somewhere?
2. How many posts/content you made on your PBN before adding link to your main site?
3. Do you link from homepage only, internal pages or sitewide?
4. Did you also build links for your PBN ?
5. Were the expired domains/PBN domains niche relevant or general/non-related niches ?

 

[Katherine Anne]

Thanks for the guide. Don't have any experience whatsoever in using PBNs, but posts like these give me hope.

 

[TheVigilante]

Never really doubted PBN's, don't we always do the opposite?

 

[FostexKiller]

I'd be interested in hearing about how much you invested, versus how much extra verified organic traffic you have in your Search Console profile.

 

[PbnGeek]

Great job. I'm working on a huge PBN myself. Can't wait till we launch it. I believe the results are going to be amazing

Sounds good! Good PBN networks are a rarity. We can never have enough of those!

Pbns will always work if done properly.

Ikr. *DONE PROPERLY* is a statement that people fail to understand the depth of.

Totally agree @Meddie
I am also using this tactic since ages and it still works fine for me. It's kinda funny, that people thinks PBN is a trash. Maybe low quality PBN - yes, it's trash. Well made PBN? It's pure gold, no matter how many updates were released from Google

Every Google update scares people into thinking that any existing method of ranking is obsolete when they are merely making rookie mistakes.

How did you index your Pbns? I am facing issue with indexation

If your PBN network is properly hosted and managed then you won't face such an issue. The point of having PBNs is getting strong domains to give links to your site. If the domain is strong, then it will automatically index the posts in a week or 2. If it isn't then can't say much about the PBNs. You can try to push some links to the PBN to help it index faster. Or talk to the provider.

where did u get expired domains from my friend? sorry if i missed it, im still reading through ur post
i had my own expired domains from either scraping or from public repository (im not sure whether scraping expired domains makes any sense if theyre all listed in that public repository anyway)

I am not talking about building a PBN network here It is about using my PBN network to rank pages.

PBNs don't necessarily need to be Private- Public Blog Networks are also PBNs- they are the ones in the light and usually function as legitimate websites while providing strong links. Just make sure you treat it better than a Private-BN - lower footprints and OBL.

answering your question - help me rank

Sure. Will PM you.

1. Did you find the domains yourself or bought them from somewhere?
2. How many posts/content you made on your PBN before adding link to your main site?
3. Do you link from homepage only, internal pages or sitewide?
4. Did you also build links for your PBN ?
5. Were the expired domains/PBN domains niche relevant or general/non-related niches ?

1. using my partner's PBN network.
2. This is an old established network. I did not create the PBNs from scratch. So the # of posts is irrelevant. Just got the new links drip-fed on them.
3. PBN or the money site? talking about the money site: I prefer to do it in a 30-70 ratio with homepage- target page. But the client site was multi niche so just focused on the target page here.
4. No.
5. Multi-niche PBNs. The improvement would be stronger if it is niche-relevant.

Thanks for the guide. Don't have any experience whatsoever in using PBNs, but posts like these give me hope.

You should definitely try them out. It can easily move stagnant kws and way cheaper and time-saving than outreach.

Never really doubted PBN's, don't we always do the opposite?

Opposte of?

I'd be interested in hearing about how much you invested, versus how much extra verified organic traffic you have in your Search Console profile.

Under 200$. The keywords are still mostly on the top of the second page while the low vol ones have breached the top 10s. Hoping to see some improvement once the ranks stabilize. it is still just about a month- the trend is definitely good.

 

[TheVigilante]

Opposite of what Google suggests us not to

 

[fiveroundshootout]

Does anyone have a preferred source for PBN's that I can check out? Seems everything I find is spammy.

 

[JayDee1984]

Good read, thanks for sharing op.

 

[KelvyTheBlacky]

Quite informative, OP! How many pbns did you build? Sorry of i missed that.

 

[PbnGeek]

Opposite of what Google suggests us not to

Even Google knows that most upcoming sites use blackhat. it is just that we should know where to draw the line. Going overboard & spamming links is like telling Google that we don't give a fuck about any guidelines and that'll come to bite you in the ass later(read penalty). Backlinking intelligently is the way to go.

Quite informative, OP! How many pbns did you build? Sorry of i missed that.

I used Ahref's KD as a reference as I mentioned. A KD of 10 means that you need around 10 links breach top 10 SERPs. The game in the TOP 10 is on a whole another level. On an average, it came down to 2-3 blogs per keyword(that were shortlisted).