How important are PBNs for SEO?

[Ekooo]

Hello guys,

I started my journey for SEO 2 months ago and over the time I heard very much about PBNs and how useful they are when it comes to backlinking and collecting link juice. Since it sounded very useful I wanted to ask if its worth investing in building one as a beginner and also how much money I should spend on it, how many domains etc. since I have literally no idea.

Thanks in advance for the answers and your help!

 

[menthol]

Hello.

I'm not a guru, but here are my 2 cents about PBNs from my experience so far.

What do you need for a PBN?​

Domains

• new domains - will take a lot of time and some money to grow them up until the point when they can bring some juice to your projects
• expired domains - it saves you the time of growing a new PBN blog but it's risky. You have to closely analyze a domain before buying it, it's going to be hard to find for free a very good domain that's available for registration as 99% of them are bought by other companies and sold at auctions (~$100 for a decent domain, and the sky is the limit for extraordinary domains)

Hosting

• shared or VPS - up to you, doesn't really matter that much as you won't host big files and you won't have a lot of traffic on your PBN. If you are good enough to have lots of traffic on a PBN blog then you're a guru for me ) Also, I'm using CloudFlare on every single domain I have, which *as far as I know* hides the stuff pretty well so you're not going to be affected by Google if you have 20 blogs on the same hosting (which used to be a big problem a couple of years ago)

Articles

• you write them - you better have a lot of time and creativity to write articles for tens of PBN blogs
• you hire someone to write them - you better have a lot of money to do it
• you use an AI - ChatGPT has saved me for the last month but I don't know for how long it will stay free, however there are many other AIs that can write articles and they are definitely cheaper than a human. However this option still requires some time as I recommend you to go through the articles and do some human-editing.

How many PBN blogs do you need?​

I guess here it all depends on how far do you wanna go. You can have a PBN with 5-10 blogs or you can have a PBN with 1000 blogs. Personally I just started a new PBN like 2 months ago and as my budget is very very low I'm only opening like 1-2 new blogs / month. If I had enough money I would have opened 50 blogs in the first month, for example. Sky is the limit.

How useful is a PBN?​

From my experience, very useful. Depending on the niche maybe you can grow your money site using links just from your PBN. If there is a highly-competitive niche then maybe you need links from very big websites as well. However, a good and clean PBN can only bring advantages if you use it carefully. Also, diversifying your backlinks profile is always good at some point.

Conclusion​

It all depends on what you want to do and what's your business model. I will always prefer to have control over my backlinks and, if possible, grow my projects using my PBN (that's still a dream for me). I always think about it like that: if you buy links from 20 sites, you'll get one link each and that's it. If you have a PBN of 20 sites, you can get unlimited links to your money sites.

Good luck with your journey!

edit: this is not a guide, it's just a short summary of the information I have so far. also I forgot to add the part when you keep bringing links to your PBN even if there are new domains or expired domains and also other parts, but it's already 4AM in my country, I'm drinking my glass of wine and I'll go to sleep )

 

[lawrencelau]

I don't own any PBN, yet I buy some PBN backlinks to push my keyword up

 

[Ekooo]

• expired domains - it saves you the time of growing a new PBN blog but it's risky. You have to closely analyze a domain before buying it, it's going to be hard to find for free a very good domain that's available for registration as 99% of them are bought by other companies and sold at auctions (~$100 for a decent domain, and the sky is the limit for extraordinary domains)

Hey, thanks for the detailed answer u gave me! Which criteria do u use for finding good expired domains?
And if the Domain is like "bestcookies" or smth, then the blog must have smth to do with cookies?

 

[Fahedawan]

Hello guys,

I started my journey for SEO 2 months ago and over the time I heard very much about PBNs and how useful they are when it comes to backlinking and collecting link juice. Since it sounded very useful I wanted to ask if its worth investing in building one as a beginner and also how much money I should spend on it, how many domains etc. since I have literally no idea.

Thanks in advance for the answers and your help!

if you are newbie in SEO then don't run for PBNs now because Google is much smarter now and you can easily being traced, so try to make other kinds of links.

 

[menthol]

Hey, thanks for the detailed answer u gave me! Which criteria do u use for finding good expired domains?
And if the Domain is like "bestcookies" or smth, then the blog must have smth to do with cookies?

I usually check for:

• number of total backlinks + how many linking domains
• what is the quality of those backlinks, are they coming from good and trusted websites or its just spam?
• what are the keywords that have been used for those backlinks (for example finding backlinks with the keyword "porn" = the expired domain was used for porn niche etc)
• check with archive.org what content used to be posted on the website (again easy to spot porn websites or other fishy niches)

About the "bestcookies" example... if you buy an expired domain like "bestcookies.tld" and you want to use it for a PBN it's not mandatory to create a website about cookies on it. But personally I would go for articles related to that niche, not only cookies but all kinds of deserts, baking etc, it will look more natural.

 

[fraNAirA]

I usually check for:

• number of total backlinks + how many linking domains
• what is the quality of those backlinks, are they coming from good and trusted websites or its just spam?
• what are the keywords that have been used for those backlinks (for example finding backlinks with the keyword "porn" = the expired domain was used for porn niche etc)
• check with archive.org what content used to be posted on the website (again easy to spot porn websites or other fishy niches)

About the "bestcookies" example... if you buy an expired domain like "bestcookies.tld" and you want to use it for a PBN it's not mandatory to create a website about cookies on it. But personally I would go for articles related to that niche, not only cookies but all kinds of deserts, baking etc, it will look more natural.

What is your anchor text strategy and when backlink start affect on ranking?

 

[SERPhustler]

Better focus on posting lot more content and then, sending some good guest post links, if you really want to build something for a very long long time.

 

[menthol]

What is your anchor text strategy and when backlink start affect on ranking?

I just try to diversify as much as possible.

When it comes to time... I started a new site 2 months ago, I started to bring links 1 month ago and so far absolutely no results. So what I can tell you is that it definitely takes more than 1 month for a new domain ) On this particular site I think I will see results in 6 months to be honest. For sites that already have a backlink profile and all of that, most probably SEO effects will take place way faster.

 

[Thunder Digitals]

You have literally no idea about PBNs? Then it is better to buy PBN links than build your own network. Because it would save you lot of time, money and headache.

 

[Diplomat]

Hello guys,

I started my journey for SEO 2 months ago and over the time I heard very much about PBNs and how useful they are when it comes to backlinking and collecting link juice. Since it sounded very useful I wanted to ask if its worth investing in building one as a beginner and also how much money I should spend on it, how many domains etc. since I have literally no idea.

Thanks in advance for the answers and your help!

PBNs are awesome! They can be very powerful and deliver excellent results. As a beginner, you should definitely learn more about them before you start building your own. Building a high quality PBN can be expensive because good domains are expensive, but at the end of the day that cost will be worth it.

There are loads of guides here in BHW about PBN building by many smart people so you may want to take a closer look at them.

 

[Guestwriting]

PBNs can be beneficial for SEO if implemented properly. They help improve search engine rankings and provide backlinks. However, it's important to note that PPNs are only one part of an overall SEO strategy because you are unaware of them. Building your own PBNs can be risky, time-consuming, and a waste of money. So, it is better to buy links.

 

[Hawkeye Digital]

Buying pbns are better then owning one , as you would have to make about 200 to 300 domains to get an good rankings , so the costing would be high for making network so buying is preferred by many .

 

[Diplomat]

Buying pbns are better then owning one , as you would have to make about 200 to 300 domains to get an good rankings , so the costing would be high for making network so buying is preferred by many .

It's never a better idea to buy PBN links over owning one. Also, you don't need 200-300 domains for good rankings.

Owning the PBN is the best because you control the quality, and you control links on them. That's the whole point of the PBN.
Also, 50 nice domains can easily rank over 200-300 dropped low quality domains.

You get what you pay for.

 

[HustleTong]

Totally depends on whom you're buying from
Effective for the most part

 

[Nahidhassan2981]

PBNs make it seem as though a website has “earned” links from other websites on merit. This is why backlinks are a Google ranking factor in the first place: Every link back to your site is a vote of confidence, showing Google that people like and trust your content.

 

[visibilitygeek]

PBNs, or private blog networks, can be used to improve a website's search engine ranking. However, they are considered a black hat SEO technique and can lead to penalties from search engines if discovered. It is generally recommended to avoid using PBNs and to focus on creating high-quality, relevant content and building natural backlinks from reputable websites.

 

[woguojun]

If you own your own pbn
You can put backlinks on homepage with low cost