AMA about PBNs (setup, footprints, things to avoid, et al.)

[janist]

If I'm setting up PBNs in a blog style and showing full content on the homepage, what will be the best practice?

Showing full content on the homepage and linking once per article (money site)

Or should it include internal and authority links as well? (I'm worried about the link juice lost in authority links)

Currently, I'm doing 2 money site links + 0-1 authority link and 1-3 internal link per post and showing the full article on homepage.

What do you think?

Think I answered part of this above.

For displaying your content, we recommend a mix. Don't display full posts on all your PBN sites. Randomize. We usually would recommend to add at least 1-2 articles without links to the site.

Two money site links + 1 authority link is fine. Any good domain should have enough juice to pass around. We wouldn't recommend to no-follow the authority links. The idea is to resemble a real site and not a lot of sites use the no-follow tag. Having said that, we rarely use "authority" links, but rather links to sites that are super relevant to the topic but nowhere close in the ranking hemosphere that we are targeting with our money site. Usually informational sites.

Internal links are also always great and definitely recommended. It is one of the most overlooked techniques in the entire realm of SEO to create topical relevance for your PBN. If your PBN has no internal links, it leaves a huge footprint. So use those often and don't be afraid to use exact match anchors for those.

 

[GrizzlyBeardMan]

Yep, it works great and we're not quite sure why. It seems the algorithm in specific foreign countries like Germany, Netherlands even Sweden is lacking behind or it is unable to trigger certain action due to language barriers. Idk.

But it works quite well, if you use english content and foreign anchors. We've also seen no adverse effects on the PBN domain itself.

Having said that, PBNs in the native language (german, dutch, swedish etc.) tend to work even better and will probably withstand the test of time just a bit longer. The algo is already super complex, it's probably just a matter of time until the foreign SERPs catch up. But until then it's HAMMERTIME.

As I'm working with foreign serps a lot I can tell it's very true. The algo is lacking hard on things like content, niche, relevance, context, anything to do with language for that matter. It just doesn't get it. It's still a lot about authority. English PBNs with English content work well for foreign sites as long as they have decent authority, because that is the only thing being passed really. If you can get even a few homepage links from DR 60+ sites you will get good movements. Works even on hard niches very well.

Also, true about the longevity, if you care about your site, you can still boost it that way but have it at a reasonable % of your total backlink portfolio. Still it will be a few years before anything serious happens regarding language analysis for foreign SERPs.

Saying this just to back up what @janist is saying

 

[NicheExploiter]

Thank you for both replies. This information is very useful because I thought that using foreign PBNs could cause damage.
Also because finding specific PBNs for foreign languages is really difficult

 

[AAW]

Hey,

my partner in crime (@roman375) and I saw a lot of new PBN related threads pop up over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, we also saw a lot of misinformation and misguided advice.

So we've decided to start this little AMA, where you can ask us anything regarding PBNs.

Quick background:

We've been running a relatively decent sized niche network here on BHW for a few years now. We also have a bunch of completely private blog networks for our own sites. We've gathered some valuable experience in creating and managing PBNs for large scale link building over the past few years. Of course, the beginnings were bumpy, but that's how we learned to blend in with the masses and stay in the shadows of big G.

So, let the questions flood in.

Thank you for the detailed answers on some posted questions here. It is a long journey to learn how to setup PBN, a lot of work too, I see that you guys selling some PBN services, I bet this post will help increase your client base, my questions are:
1- Do you actually offer PBN setup services for clients who don't have the time and the skills to make one or 10 for themselves? lets hope my question does not violate the forum terms LOL, PBN for me is interesting to learn, I find that sometimes you got to buy the thing from the expert and take your time to manage it and then you will learn better this way, it is more expensive of course.

2- What is in your "free guide" as I see from the links in your signature.

PBN scare the hell of me, thats why I don't get into them, unless I'm 100% trusting the person who is offering the services, fortunately enough, I did find some good ones here, possibly this was the best I bought on this forum, the rest were crappy guest posts or whatever, all gone south LOL

 

[janist]

Thank you for both replies. This information is very useful because I thought that using foreign PBNs could cause damage.
Also because finding specific PBNs for foreign languages is really difficult

You're welcome.

Thank you for the detailed answers on some posted questions here. It is a long journey to learn how to setup PBN, a lot of work too, I see that you guys selling some PBN services, I bet this post will help increase your client base, my questions are:
1- Do you actually offer PBN setup services for clients who don't have the time and the skills to make one or 10 for themselves? lets hope my question does not violate the forum terms LOL, PBN for me is interesting to learn, I find that sometimes you got to buy the thing from the expert and take your time to manage it and then you will learn better this way, it is more expensive of course.

2- What is in your "free guide" as I see from the links in your signature.

PBN scare the hell of me, thats why I don't get into them, unless I'm 100% trusting the person who is offering the services, fortunately enough, I did find some good ones here, possibly this was the best I bought on this forum, the rest were crappy guest posts or whatever, all gone south LOL

1. We don't, sorry. The best way to learn is to set up 5-10 PBN sites yourself, create a process description for every step along the way and then find a VA that can do it for you. Easy to scale, easy to monitor. No footprints.

2. Give it a visit and check it out. It covers everything from A to Z. It's just shy of 13k words, so grab some coffee while you read it.

But we didn't start this thread for self promotion, but rather to educate and provide some guided advice for common PBN misconceptions.

And PBNs shouldn't scare you. If you know how to avoid the dreaded footprints, you'll end up with a wonderful asset that you can leverage to your liking for SEO.

 

[asker1]

If you plan to keep the OBL = 1 on the homepage, you don't even have to use full articles on the homepage. You can make the site look like a business page instead and add the link (surrounded by at least 250-300 words of content) in one of the elements.
....

Thanks for your reply.

So there are 3 options as you have mentioned:
1) static page on the home page with the link
Downside: I will be loosing some link juice compared to an inner page that can be more relevant from multiple aspects (more relevant URL and also the homepage will have probably non-relevant external anchor text coming, but depends on the expired domain)

2) home page showing full articles, so the link is showing
(so basically I am getting a link from the home page and also the inner page?)

3) home page showing excerpts, so you have to go to the inner page/article to see the link.
Do the links transfer significantly less link juice to the money site if its not directly on the home page?

Lets just say you have 200 PBN at your disposal and only a single money site to link to (so OBL = 1). In what way would you mix those 3 variants? Does it even matter? Or would it be a huge footprint if I would always go for the link from the home page of the PBN?

 

[janist]

Thanks for your reply.

So there are 3 options as you have mentioned:
1) static page on the home page with the link
Downside: I will be loosing some link juice compared to an inner page that can be more relevant from multiple aspects (more relevant URL and also the homepage will have probably non-relevant external anchor text coming, but depends on the expired domain)

2) home page showing full articles, so the link is showing
(so basically I am getting a link from the home page and also the inner page?)

3) home page showing excerpts, so you have to go to the inner page/article to see the link.
Do the links transfer significantly less link juice to the money site if its not directly on the home page?

Lets just say you have 200 PBN at your disposal and only a single money site to link to (so OBL = 1). In what way would you mix those 3 variants? Does it even matter? Or would it be a huge footprint if I would always go for the link from the home page of the PBN?

Overall, it doesn't really matter, as long as there's some diversity.

Having said that, if a domain has a ton of inner pages with links that we rebuilt and populated with new content, we would probably use a static homepage and utilize internal links from the inner pages to the homepage and vice versa. If a domain has most of its links pointed to the homepage, we would most likely display full posts or expandable posts (where you can still see the link).

You simply want to make sure that your links are placed on the most powerful pages of the domain.

200 homepage PBN links might be a bit too obvious, if these are your only links. If they are used to complement an already powerful link profile of 500-1000RDs, then that's a different story.

Just use common sense. It's not rocket science.

 

[germanweb]

How much time in average goes by till you see Results after sending PBN Links?

I have send 3 PBN Links from Auctions Domains with only OBL 1 to my Money Page 14 Days ago but can hardly see any Movement. All used Domains are Clean and have Contextual Links from Authority Sites. Im working with the European Google. (GER)

Should I send more Links to my Moneypage or wait? All Post of the PBN are indexed already.

Also how much Time do you wait after creating your PBN linking out to your Moneysite?

For Example: You Setup your PBN Domain, Design, URL Structure and so an and post 2-3000 Words Content. Do you then just wait till all Post are indexed and link out or do you post the Article with the Link right away?

Greetings

 

[janist]

How much time in average goes by till you see Results after sending PBN Links?

I have send 3 PBN Links from Auctions Domains with only OBL 1 to my Money Page 14 Days ago but can hardly see any Movement. All used Domains are Clean and have Contextual Links from Authority Sites. Im working with the European Google. (GER)

Should I send more Links to my Moneypage or wait? All Post of the PBN are indexed already.

Also how much Time do you wait after creating your PBN linking out to your Moneysite?

For Example: You Setup your PBN Domain, Design, URL Structure and so an and post 2-3000 Words Content. Do you then just wait till all Post are indexed and link out or do you post the Article with the Link right away?

Greetings

1. Hm, 14 days is not long enough to gauge results. Give it 4-6 weeks. Having said that, while three PBN links are a decent start, it might not be enough to make a dent in most niches.

But your post doesn't contain a lot of information aside from the the SERP target.

How competitive is the niche?
What anchors did you use?
Is your site and content well-optimized?
How many contextual links do the PBN domains have on average and what's the avg. DR for those?

Have to be a bit more specific.

2. We let all of our PBNs idle for roughly 2-4 months. But this is not necessary by any means. It's just our preference. You can link right away, once the site is fully indexed and kickin'.

 

[splishsplash]

How much time in average goes by till you see Results after sending PBN Links?

I have send 3 PBN Links from Auctions Domains with only OBL 1 to my Money Page 14 Days ago but can hardly see any Movement. All used Domains are Clean and have Contextual Links from Authority Sites. Im working with the European Google. (GER)

Should I send more Links to my Moneypage or wait? All Post of the PBN are indexed already.

Also how much Time do you wait after creating your PBN linking out to your Moneysite?

For Example: You Setup your PBN Domain, Design, URL Structure and so an and post 2-3000 Words Content. Do you then just wait till all Post are indexed and link out or do you post the Article with the Link right away?

Greetings

How much were the auction domains, what's their DR and RDs, and what kind of authority links? Sometimes what people think are powerful aren't really powerful.

But you'll never rank anything in 14 days with 3 of any links. I wish it were that easy

The only way to approach SEO is as a long term venture. You rank through the process of consistent link building and adding content to your site. You see results from the cumulative effect of age, links and content. If you added 3 links every month for 2 years you would have a very solid and strong base, but look at most sites that are ranking on the web. They are all generally 2-5+ years old. The occasional one is 6-12 months, but they often have a 301 or really aggressive high end link building. Ie, 50+ strong guest posts, footer links, 301s, pbns, and even then you're seeing lottery winners. No one can guarantee a site they create will have those kind of results in 6 months, even with a heavy budget. The only thing you can rank in < 6 months are very low comp keywords almost no one is targeting, and even then it still takes a bit of time.

@janist Nice write-up. Most people just write crap about pbns they've read elsewhere, but your content is really good

 

[HustleTong]

Your first priority on buying expired domains ideal for flipping?

 

[janist]

@janist Nice write-up. Most people just write crap about pbns they've read elsewhere, but your content is really good

Thanks appreciate the compliment (especially from someone else who clearly knows how PBNs work and how to structure them).

Your first priority on buying expired domains ideal for flipping?

First priority: Making sure the domains is brandable and relevant to the niche we are targeting and that there won't be any issues down the road with trademarks etc. This will make it a LOT easier to sell down the road.

Everything else like wayback check, link profile and anchor profile analysis follow after that.

 

[germanweb]

1. Hm, 14 days is not long enough to gauge results. Give it 4-6 weeks. Having said that, while three PBN links are a decent start, it might not be enough to make a dent in most niches.

But your post doesn't contain a lot of information aside from the the SERP target.

How competitive is the niche?
What anchors did you use?
Is your site and content well-optimized?
How many contextual links do the PBN domains have on average and what's the avg. DR for those?

Have to be a bit more specific.

2. We let all of our PBNs idle for roughly 2-4 months. But this is not necessary by any means. It's just our preference. You can link right away, once the site is fully indexed and kickin'.

How much were the auction domains, what's their DR and RDs, and what kind of authority links? Sometimes what people think are powerful aren't really powerful.

But you'll never rank anything in 14 days with 3 of any links. I wish it were that easy

The only way to approach SEO is as a long term venture. You rank through the process of consistent link building and adding content to your site. You see results from the cumulative effect of age, links and content. If you added 3 links every month for 2 years you would have a very solid and strong base, but look at most sites that are ranking on the web. They are all generally 2-5+ years old. The occasional one is 6-12 months, but they often have a 301 or really aggressive high end link building. Ie, 50+ strong guest posts, footer links, 301s, pbns, and even then you're seeing lottery winners. No one can guarantee a site they create will have those kind of results in 6 months, even with a heavy budget. The only thing you can rank in < 6 months are very low comp keywords almost no one is targeting, and even then it still takes a bit of time.

@janist Nice write-up. Most people just write crap about pbns they've read elsewhere, but your content is really good

Hi thank for all of your answers.

My Moneypage is well optimized.

The PBN Domains have an DR of 14 - 23.

The RD are 32 - 87.

Some partial match and blank url Anchors.

The Domains where around 100 Euros each.

They have links from some big german News Papers with a DR of 91 - 55. Contextual Links.

 

[splishsplash]

Hi thank for all of your answers.

My Moneypage is well optimized.

The PBN Domains have an DR of 14 - 23.

The RD are 32 - 87.

Some partial match and blank url Anchors.

The Domains where around 100 Euros each.

They have links from some big german News Papers with a DR of 91 - 55. Contextual Links.

Sounds ok, but 100 euros is very cheap for a domain. I struggle to find any at that range I like.

RD30-60'ish is quite low, and while anything above rd30+ is still fine, don't expect the world from those kind of pbns.

Your typical RD 30-87 with a handful of good links and the rest mediocre is to be expected around the 100 euro mark.

You would generally want to be building 10-15 minimum like that. Ideally 30-50 over the year at that kind of price.

Strong domains, ones starting at about $500 tend to have 120-150+ RD and will contain a significant number of strong contextuals. This could be 5-7 DR80+'s and 20-30 good DR60-80 or 10-15 DR80+ and another 15-20 good DR60-70. Generally they're oozing with endless good links, even down to DR40's they still have lots of links from blogs, or very niche relevant links.

 

[janist]

Concur completely with @splishsplash

You definitely need to scale up to 15-20+ PBNs with those metrics, but you can also consider juicing them up with some tier 2 links (DR30+ niche edits, guest posts would work). The one advantage of using tier 2 links is that you can create some topical relevance as you get to choose the anchor texts and placements for your tier 2 links.

In the end, you will always have to spend a few hundred per PBN site if you really want it to be a work horse for rankings. Either for a really powerful auctioned domain or for a low-mid authority domain + additional t2 links.

 

[Sweetrevenge]

Thanks for all of your answers. I've just read all of them.

Now, my question is : what are all the things you have to keep different for each PBN to avoid footprints ? Just how to avoid them.

 

[janist]

Thanks for all of your answers. I've just read all of them.

Now, my question is : what are all the things you have to keep different for each PBN to avoid footprints ? Just how to avoid them.

1. The first footprint you want to avoid is bad hosting.

We usually recommend single droplet with reputable cloud hosting companies, like:

• Digital Ocean
• Vultr
• Linode
• Rackspace
• Cloudways (managed DO/Vultr hosting)
• AWS
• etc.

Only with this approach you get unique IPs that are not shared with any other website or even worse any other PBN sites (typical with PBN hosts)

Additional footprints you definitely want to avoid:

2. Register your domains with a variety of reputable registrars.

Don't register all domains on the same date and DON'T use dropcatch providers. We can recommend Dynadot, Name, Namesilo, GoDaddy.

3. Use WhoIs

In times of GDPR and privacy concerns, this is more of a privilege instead of a footprint. It's completely free with most registars these days and highly recommended. Not having a private WhoIs probably leaves a bigger footprint.

4. Don't use custom nameservers

The big cloud hosts we mentioned above all give you the option to use their DNS networks. This means you can use their nameservers, for example:

ns1.digitalocean.com, ns2.digitalocean.com etc.

These nameservers are used by hundreds and thousand of sites and apps, so you will blend right in with those.

We don't recommend to use custom nameservers.

5. Blocking crawlers

If you know how Ahrefs et al. work, it makes no sense to block bots. Unless you have an up²date IP list, it will be quite hard to block crawlers.

Also, how many real sites block these crawlers? Why would you, if 80%+ of all sites don't?

In our opinion BLOCKING is the real footprint, especially when you use plugins like spiderblocker and co.

6. Make sure to build unique sites

Having the same ugly a** layout for all of your PBNs will certainly leave a huge footprint. You know the look, right? Simple free theme, full posts on the homepage and no customization whatsoever. Ugh...

Instead you want to build real site, something that passes a manual inspection.

You can either use free themes Astra, OceanWP or Generatepress + Elementor to customize your PBNs or invest in 10-15 premium themes from Themeforest and use those. Or both.

Your PBNs should have a custom logo and a custom layout (menus, stock images, design, etc.)

In addition they all should have mandatory pages like about us, contact us, privacy policy, t&c, cookie policy, etc. GDPR compliance is mandatory these days and not having these on your PBNs will leave a certain footprint (albeit not as big).

We high recommend to try and build sites that look unique and resemble real businesses. You can easily find someone here on BHW that can help you with this.

7. Dont use thin or scraped content

We mentioned that before.

We never, ever use thin (spun or worse) or scraped / expired content. The first is just garbage and the algorithm is just too smart these days, the later involves certain risks of copyright strike, which we absolutely want to avoid on a $500+ domain.

ALso don't use scraped images (same reason -> copyright). Use stock free images from Pixabay or Pexels instead.

8. Dont interlink your PBNS

Duh. Self explanatory.

You also want to make sure, that the money sites that you link to are on separate and unique hosts.

9. Build links to your PBN

Real sites lose and gain links all the time. So it's recommended to add a few quality tier 2 links into the mix. This will not only help your PBN sites, but also your money site.

It's not absolutely necessary, but incredibly helpful

10. Use internal links on your PBNs.

Real sites have a LOT of internal links. Not only can they help to pass link juice from internal pages to the homepage (and vice versa), but they can help to create topical relevance for the whole PBN site.

Definitely recommended.

11. Don't use search console, ahrefs webmaster tools or google analytics on your PBNs.

Another duh. Paranoia gets the best of us. But why risk it?

12. Make sure you know how to use internal redirects

Some sites have more links pointed to the root version (non-www) some sites have more links pointed to the www. version. Make sure to know which one you want to use and redirect the other variant. Otherwise you may experience underwhelming results.

Also make sure to rebuilt inner pages that have links pointed to them with the exact same URL structure and add fresh content to those with internal links to the homepage.

13. Don't use cloudflare

It's just not necessary. Whoever tells you that it's super useful to hide any footprints, has never run a large scale PBN. You DON'T need it.

14. SSL (optional but recommended)

WHile there are still many sites on non-SSL, it has become pretty much the standard for new sites.

It's completely free with letsencrypt and we definitely recommend to add it to your new PBNs.

Having said that, a few years back SSLs were very pricey, so we still have a lot of PBN sites without SSL for PBN sites that are 5years+. Tbh, we've seen no adverse effects (yet). But ALL of our new builds are with SSL.

15. Maintenance

Keep your PBN sites updated (themes + plugins) and add non-commercial content once in a while.

This is just common sense. We've had a few hacking attempts for some of our PBNs in the past years and we've learned from our mistakes.

Keep maintenance up and use a good security plugin like Wordfence.

Optional A: Create some social accounts for your PBNs. Not really necessary, but makes the site more legit.

Optional B: Use a caching plugin. We love WP-Rocket, but you can also use a free one from the Wordpress directory.

Think that mostly covers the footprints.

 

[germanweb]

Sounds ok, but 100 euros is very cheap for a domain. I struggle to find any at that range I like.

RD30-60'ish is quite low, and while anything above rd30+ is still fine, don't expect the world from those kind of pbns.

Your typical RD 30-87 with a handful of good links and the rest mediocre is to be expected around the 100 euro mark.

You would generally want to be building 10-15 minimum like that. Ideally 30-50 over the year at that kind of price.

Strong domains, ones starting at about $500 tend to have 120-150+ RD and will contain a significant number of strong contextuals. This could be 5-7 DR80+'s and 20-30 good DR60-80 or 10-15 DR80+ and another 15-20 good DR60-70. Generally they're oozing with endless good links, even down to DR40's they still have lots of links from blogs, or very niche relevant links.

10 - 15 PBN Links from domains like i mentioned before to only one Page of my Moneysite targeting 1 Mainkeyword?

Or should i spread those links to several Money Articles/Pages on my site?

Right now i Have poiting 6 of those Links to only one page of my Moneysite.

 

[janist]

10 - 15 PBN Links from domains like i mentioned before to only one Page of my Moneysite targeting 1 Mainkeyword?

Or should i spread those links to several Money Articles/Pages on my site?

Right now i Have poiting 6 of those Links to only one page of my Moneysite.

Yes, that'd be the preferred way. It's basically like this:

Linking to just one page of your money site:
This is the best and safest approach to using your PBNs. By keeping OBL = 1 you leverage all of the link power. This is our recommended way to use PBNs. Of course you can target diff. inner pages on your money site by using separate PBNs. That's totally fine. So PBN A links to moneysite.com/abc/ and PBN B links to moneysite.com/xyz/. That's fine.

Linking to several pages on one single money site:
You can link to more than one inner page on your money site from a single PBN, but we would recommend to use it VERY sparingly, as it can leave a footprint.

Linking to several money sites
Linking to more than one money site from a single PBN is fine, if the niche is somewhat related or suitable and the money sites don't share any footprints (same hosting server, DNS, email, monetization). Example: You could easily link to a tech affiliate blog AND a web dev site from one tech PBN, while linking to an insurance money site wouldn't be ideal (tho you can still do it by using creative content topics).

In the end it's up to you. We like to keep OBL = 1 or max. 2 for private dedicated PBNs.

 

[asker1]

What about link velocity? Does it matter? Lets go back to my example - you have 200 PBN at your disposal and a single money site. How would you schedule it? Thanks.