PBN Q&A: Ask me anything about how I build, manage (and rank with) PBNs

Why do PBN gets de-indexed? recently one of the seo guy was offering quality domains like pr5 with high pa and da but those were de-indexed.

If you sell links on your PBN, then it comes a Public Blog Network, not a private one. If you sell links on your PBN on a forum, then it becomes even more vulnerable. Google employees know their job and will hunt your network sooner or later, especially if they see too many people ranking and banking and it becoming too popular.

So let's keep PBNs private, not public.

We also know Google is constantly lurking around BHW, and since PBNs are one of the most efficient ways to rank nowadays, they will certainly take action and work even harder to make people buy more AdWords. I'm not sure why those domains may have been de-indexed, but there certainly was a footprint of some kind that triggered a manual action.

Also, call me paranoid, but I bet Google is already employing people behind the curtains to search, report and destroy large PBNs. I also know they really want to get to mine someday, so invest in diversification, avoid footprints and keep your fingers crossed.
 
Hey alexthepbndude,

Thanks for answering question!



In the next few days, I'll receive 10 great domains for my first PBN. Just wanted to ask if you could explain the little trick regarding hosting companies.

Also, I have a few additional questions:

1.) If I register with a wrong name for hosting, won't they realize that once I pay them?
2.) Could you ever correlate too heavy linking to one of your money sites (for example, 2-3 links from 2-3 different articles on the same PBN site) to penalties? I'm just not sure how heavily I can link to one money site per PBN site. I should know that.... after all, I only have 10 PBN sites for the start and want to use all its power, but not make unnecessary footprints.
3.) Do you update your PBN sites with content that has no outgoing links? If so, do you have any ratios (for example, for every 3rd article linking out, you upload one without links)?
4.) Do you update your PBN sites with content that links to other authority sites?
5.) Have you tried mixing in outgoing links to authority sites within the articles that actually link to your money site? Is there any benefit, besides making it more random?
6.) Do you block ahref, majestic etc. crawlers on ALL sites? Or randomized?
7.) Do you make any efforts to make your PBN survive manual reviews? If so, what actions can you recommend?

A lot of questions, and I might have some more when I come home. :P

Thanks a lot in advance!

warm regards,
neocortx

You're welcome neocortx.

The hosting trick is to actually know how much resources your average PBN site needs. In most cases, you will need A LOT of disk space, not bandwidth, since most of these sites have just trickle traffic. Now go and register on the biggest hosting forums and start a thread, tell them the resources you need and how much you can pay for an account and ask sellers to bombard you with their offers. Believe me, every hosting company wants to attract more clients and your Inbox will be filled pretty quickly. A sale is better than no sale :) Nuff said.

1. We use around 4-5 different names, PPs and CCs for hosting. These are real people who work with me and some of my relatives. But generally speaking, I don't think you should be too worried about using the same names for hosting accounts over and over again. It's the name on the domain with the registrar that you should be worried about.

2. I would link from my 10 PBN domains as long as it works. When I see no further SERP movement, then it's time to add another batch of 10 domains and further build my network.

3. Nope, but when posting with Softnoia Blog Creator I always make sure links are dropped randomly so that out of 10 for example, 1 or 2 don't get any links at all. It always happens randomly. The developer is a great guy and recently implemented a feature that allows this.

4. My older sites have outgoing links as resources at the end of some posts. I don't bother linking to authority sites from most of the new domains I got this year. I don't want to lose all that link juice :cool:

5. As mentioned before, I did, and besides making posts look more natural, I didn't really notice any other benefits.

6. We do randomize bot blocking patterns and order to avoid footprints. Some sites aren't blocking anything at all.

7. Not anymore since I had a really high quality blog network with 100% unique content written by American writers that got smashed in the past. So it really doesn't matter anymore to me. No matter how hard you try, they will still be able to see it's a satellite site belonging to a blog network.

However, even if I personally don't do it, this doesn't mean I don't recommend people to spend times making their PBN sites look really good. I do!
 
If you have 5-6 hours per day to spend searching for domains then I would say you need around 10 to 20 days to find and buy all 100 domains, which have powerful links from authority websites. Since I'm focusing mainly on expired domains, let's say you will pay an average of $15 USD per year per domain, depending on the registrar.

What are the stats on the domains you are looking for for around $15? (DA, PR, TF, CF etc?) - and numbers of links and linking domains?

Also can you share what your ideal domains stats look like, or what you normally get in general?
 
OP, do you have experience building money sites on dropped domains? Do you advise for or against this? I'm asking because I started my PBN ventures by building a couple of money sites on dropped domains with clean history and good backlink profiles, and am not seeing these sites moving above page three. It's been several months since I started them...

While I do use expired/dropped domains for my PBN since link juice laundering from authority domains to my money site is what I'm mainly interested in, I never use dropped or expired domains for my money sites.

I get good quality domains from Freshdrop for my money sites. I attentively check them to be at least 5 years old, brand-able TLDs (no numbers, no dashes), at least one page indexed in Google, at least PR1 (real), have a decent, clean and non-spammy backlink profile and of course always check the Wayback Machine. You want domains close to your niche.

While I haven't been building new money sites for a while, I know what you are talking about. For a brief, but straight to the point explanation of what's going on with your money sites on dropped domains, read Terry Kyle's article on the Random Ranking Factor. I believe this is what you are going through right now simply because Google treats dropped domains as new domains (as far as I know).
 
how do you pick anchor texts?
Here is my dilemma. If I don't do exact anchor texts, and pick generic ones like "click here to read more" then site won't rank. If I do pick exact anchor text, site gets penalized for being overoptimized. So I dont know what to do.
For example, let's say your keyword is "cosmetic dentist los angeles"
you have 20 sites in your PBN. what anchor texts do you pick for each one?

Hey nonai,

I would recommend to keep a spreadsheet for every backlink you create from your PBN and make sure you never repeat one single anchor text or in case you decide to use several generic anchors, make sure you keep them pretty close to your main keyword. This way you stop worrying about ratios and also don't lose potential link juice to your money site. Here's a list of potential anchor text to link from 10 out of your 20 sites in a PBN. I'll BOLD/UNDERLINE the anchor text.

1. It's hard to find a good cosmetic dentist in los angeles these days.
2. I found a really good specialist simply by typing 'cosmetic dentist Los Angeles' in Bing.
3. So click here if you want to find out more about the best cosmetic dentists in LA.
4. My brother is a cosmetic dentist and owns his own clinic in Los Angeles.
5. Los Angeles is in the news after cosmetic dentist being accused of murder. Click here to read more.
6. Most cosmetic dentists in LA make around $100.000 USD per year on average, report says.
7. The first thing we did after moving to Los Angeles is find the right cosmetic dentist.
8. The best cosmetic dentists are probably in los angeles, many say.
9. Dr. Brian's website is cosmeticdentistlosangeles.clinic, as far as I remember ;)

Always make sure you don't repeat a single anchor text, not even once!
 
Fantastic thread, mate. We appreciate you taking the time to lend some insight from your experiences.

I'm in the process of setting up a mix of cheaper, $1-style shared hosting accounts as well as some HostNine type accounts for my future PBN and I was hoping I could get your thoughts on a few things?

1) I've recently signed up with iPage for one of the expired domain names that I purchased with NameCheap. It says, however, that my domain needs to be registered for 60 days before I can host 'or transfer it' it to iPage. Is there an obvious way around this that I'm missing because I'm new to PBN or have I made a mistake somewhere along the line?

Ultimately, I don't want to buy an expired domain and then have to wait 60 days each time to host it and get it up and running, you know?

2) When signing up to hosting accounts, I've read that google can't see the details you enter to sign up for that hosting account - which is great - but what are your thoughts on privacy/security when it comes to the email address used for those accounts.

By this I mean, when I sign up to Hosting Company A and use my personal @gmail.com account to set up that hosting account, should I then use a new @gmail.com account when signing up to Hosting Company B or am I safe running the one account?

Once again, I'm really appreciating the help. While I wait for a reply I might re-read the thread again :P
 
can you explain more !!!! about these footprints plzzz!!!! any example ??? !!!

Here's a list of potential footprints that will sooner or later get your network busted:

1. Just one registrar account
2. Same domain registration information (using your real name for your PBN domains is NO-NO)
3. No whois guard/privacy or fake name reg details.
3. (SEO) Hosting companies known for hosting blog networks.
4. Same WP plugins.
5. Same CMSs (even though I do use only WP and do fine).
6. Blocking spiders on ALL websites using the same technique.
8. Posting duplicate content (either accidentally or intentionally)
9. Deliberately becoming famous by ranting about how to trick Google with your real name and giving them a reason to target all your online real estate including your PBNs.
10. Being reported by your competitors.
11. Using your real gmail account for getting confirmations for the purchased PBN domains or chatting with someone about PBNs.

:rolleyes:
 
Thanks, but I don't use wordpress. Do you happen to know what it does in the background? Does it use htaccess for blocking?

One of the main reason for me sticking to WP lately is SpyderSpanker for privacy and Softnoia Blog Creator for posting. SS doesn't use .htaccess or robots.txt to block bad bots, including SEO link crawlers. It just serves different Error pages like 403 Forbidden to certain IPs, IP ranges, etc. Just Google "how does spyder spanker work". I'm not allowed to post links.
 
Wouldn't installing SpyderSpanker - or any other plugin for that matter - over and over again on 100+ create a juicy little footprint?
 
Hi Alex,
I've read almost every comment and post on this thread.
I am about to start ,creation of PBN n/w ,Its truly helpful.I've read lot of blogs post and bhw thread too :)
Still i have following questions ,if possible kindly point me out.

1)As you said ,You dont care much about PA or DA ,PR stuff like that ...so if i take any aged,clean ,non spamy domain ,but has no backlinks ,but it is clean ,may have some PA/DA/PR ..Will it be useful to invest time into searching for such domain for buying,what places you recommend for searching expired domain other than expired domain.net ,freshdrop..
2)what are u thoughts on using services like Azure ,Digitalocean ,or similar ? Which domain providers would u recommend (i use Namecheap ,internet.bs)?
3)What are u thoughts on domain that are bought for future ..but havent used ? I got few domains which are 1 year old lol just liek that ...just installed WP kept them like that ...
4)Also Using reseller hosting ..Will it be better idea ? rather creating normal client account .. :P that way we can create multiple account and manage them too :P
 
Fantastic thread, mate. We appreciate you taking the time to lend some insight from your experiences.I'm in the process of setting up a mix of cheaper, $1-style shared hosting accounts as well as some HostNine type accounts for my future PBN and I was hoping I could get your thoughts on a few things?1) I've recently signed up with iPage for one of the expired domain names that I purchased with NameCheap. It says, however, that my domain needs to be registered for 60 days before I can host 'or transfer it' it to iPage. Is there an obvious way around this that I'm missing because I'm new to PBN or have I made a mistake somewhere along the line? Ultimately, I don't want to buy an expired domain and then have to wait 60 days each time to host it and get it up and running, you know?2) When signing up to hosting accounts, I've read that google can't see the details you enter to sign up for that hosting account - which is great - but what are your thoughts on privacy/security when it comes to the email address used for those accounts.By this I mean, when I sign up to Hosting Company A and use my personal @gmail.com account to set up that hosting account, should I then use a new @gmail.com account when signing up to Hosting Company B or am I safe running the one account?Once again, I'm really appreciating the help. While I wait for a reply I might re-read the thread again :P
Firstly, be careful which cheap hosts you use - G is targeting them - especially the $1 type.1. You can't transfer a domain name to a new registrar before 60 days - but you can change the dns and host it wherever you like.Just be aware that when you transfer a domain name to a new registrar, you have to unlock privacy - this means your details could be exposed for a few days while the transfer is approved. Make sure you enable it as soon as it is has moved to the new registrar.2. Easy - Don't use gmail !
 
Would you ever rank 5-10 sites in the SAME niche with a PBN of your size? If so, how would you do it?

charlesmacneil55,

Yes, I've ranked 3 different pages from different sites in the same market, for the same competitive keyword. However, I did it just to test things and it's not a common practice for my money sites. These days I look towards buying websites that already produce money, inflating their rankings using my PBNs and either selling them for profit or just keeping them and enjoying the cash-flow.

However, if I decide to start a new money site tomorrow I would probably go for 5-10 new or pre-owned domains in the same niche from the very beginning, therefore try and beat Google's Random Ranking Factor. One of those 5-10 sites will definitely rank. Then I identify the winner and keep adding pages, building links and simply further grow the website.

Here's a question for you (I already have my own answer but I'd be interested to hear yours):

Say a domain has just one decent quality backlink from a PR3 GOV/EDU page which is a genuine editorial link (not comment spam) with fairly low OBL (say less than 30-40), but the DA/PA/TF/CF are all low. If you could pick this domain up for reg fee and use it as part of your PBN, would you? Or do you insist on certain metrics? And why?

SteveWaller,

Even though I look at least 2-3 HQ links in the link profile of a domain, I would probably grab that domain, and here's why.

I see my PBN as a list of contextual targets. Therefore I believe in the overall power of a network, even though some individual website may be less powerful than another. When searching for domains these days I no longer pay attention to any other metrics except a clean and non-spammy backlink profile and good links from authority domains. If those are editorial links hosted on pages with PR, I grab them without thinking. My tests show that 50 links from diverse targets provide a bigger SERP boost than 5 links from domains with "good" DA/PA/TF/CF etc metrics. At the moment, my goal is to increase the list of targets where I can get contextual links from. That's it ;)

Three more questions:

1.) How quickly do you build your links? WHen I place a post, I put 2-3 links in it. I do it about once day. Just wondering how fast you do it.
2.) I had a PBN once and ranked a site in a few months but it received an Un-natural links message in WMT (I set up WMT retroactively and saw it). What causes this and how can I prevent it?
3.) Ugh I forgot the 3rd question.

charlesmacneil55,

1. I build links absolutely randomly, to pages that I think require a boost. I just constantly check my stats and see what ranking boost can improve traffic. I use only 1 link to my money site per article.

2. I never use any Google code on my sites, including WMT, so I can't really tell. It probably has to do with over using anchor text.

1. What are your metrics when finding the expired domains.
2. Do you use any tool to manage your PBN's
3. What anchor texts do you use to link out from PBN to money site. If you just use generic anchor texts and naked/raw urls can you rank your site without exact match keyword?

mrdonman,

1. My only metric is: a clean backlink and website profile and good quality editorial links from authority websites. Links hosted on pages with PR are a good bonus.

2. Most of the work is done manually by my VA. However, we are testing MainWP on a batch of sites to easy the job of plugin and other WP updates. SBC (Softnoia Blog Creator) is used to post to the PBN.

I remember my 3rd question now!

Have you ever cleared the contents of a deindexed PBN, and asked for a reconsideration request?

charlesmacneil55,

Nope, never. I just forget about the website and buy another one if it gets deindexed for some reason. A PBN reconsideration request is like admitting you're building PBNs lol.

Just one question and i'd like to get answer for this.

What are the metrics of these domain.
PA
DA
TF
CF
type and niche of Links point to site ?
Moz/Yahoo listed?

futurestunner,

I can just copy paste the PA/DA of a batch of domains in my network if you want, after processing them through a bulk DA/PA domain checker.

However, I don't really care about these metrics these days as long as the domain has very good links and clean non-spammy profile. I don't pay attention to the niche of the website. DMOZ/Yahoo dir links are a bonus, but not an absolute requirement.

I keep generic domains for my network and build niche specific PBNs for my clients with deep pockets.

Hey man i have question,

Do you link to micro niche or larger "niche" websites?

If micro niche lets say i start with 10 Blogs in network and l do them in same niche and then link them to my money site. Can i use same 10 blogs for other money sites if you consider they are on same hosting like previous? Is it risky?

Or is it better to link from 10 blogs to only one bigger website ?

Do you have your money sites under same hosting?

wriper,

1. My main earners are websites with at least 50-70 pages. I link to internal pages mostly.

2. Yes, I do think you can link to other money sites as long as you don't just target a very specific niche. You can create multiple categories and post whatever you want (newspaper style).

3. Don't EVER host your money site on the same hosting as one of your PBN domains. Too risky.

4. I try to host my money sites on dedicated IPs with different hosting providers to avoid footprints.

Q: When are you going to try and sell us something?

MrBeastsOnToast,

I'll probably copy/paste this whole thread into a .PDF and sell it. Best way to write an eBook ever.

Don't forget to PM me for a special coupon ;)

What are the stats on the domains you are looking for for around $15? (DA, PR, TF, CF etc?) - and numbers of links and linking domains?

Also can you share what your ideal domains stats look like, or what you normally get in general?

imdudex,

I've mentioned it multiple times mate, just clean backlink and website profiles with at least several hq links from authority domains. Skype me if you would like to take a look at the metrics, but I really don't pay attention to them anymore.

I'm just hoarding more diverse contextual targets. The trick is to correctly arbitrage your earnings and expenses. Works great for me :)
 
my questions
1) Should I looking domains for PBN with high PR or DA or TF metrics ?
2) Can I use expired domains or should avoid them ?
3) Should I use fake whois or private whois ?
4) How many weekly/monthly links should I place to new domain from PBN?
5) Should I use any other link building strategy with PBN or I can use only PBN links?
6) Should I build Tier 2 links to PBN posts/homepages ?

Thanks

netkam, sorry mate, I accidentally skipped your questions for some reason...

1. I've mentioned it several times in this thread. I don't pay attention to metrics anymore. If you do, you will end up inventing some kind of metric of your own like 'alexthepbndude-trust' lol so I say it's a waste of time. Since we've easily managed to inflate these metrics with noobish GSA blasts, we simply stopped paying attention to them. We all know that PBNs are basically used for link juice laundering. So what you want from a PBN domain is a clean, non spammy, backlink and website profile and at least several hq links from authority websites. If links are hosted on pages with PR, that's a nice bonus (eg: a link from an internal whitehouse.gov PR 5 page).

2. 90% of my network is made up of expired domains. I ocasionally buy non-dropped PR 1+ sites from GoDaddy Auctions. But those are more expensive and sometimes you have to play a very difficult bidding war just for what? For PR? Nahh... Why waste time when expired domains provide decent results? I say go for expired domains.

3. When I first started I used to buy a lot of whois privacy protection from GoDaddy. Namecheap offers it free for the first year. These days I just create a brand new email for every expired domain I get, confirm it with the registrar and simply get name ideas from fakenamegenerator.

4. As many as you need, as long as it works. I try not to post more than once per day, per site. Use common sense. If you want post more articles, create the impression of a bigger newspaper style website which publishes 5-7 articles per day. It shouldn't be a problem if your site looks decent.

5. Due to the effectiveness of PBNs I completely forgot about any other linking methods except PBNs. However, my old sites (or the ones I buy) already have a decent backlink profile so I can easily hide the PBN links. Nevertheless, for newer websites, I would recommend creating accounts on all possible social media websites first, so that at least something shows up when someone is querying your domain in ahrefs.

6. I've done it in the past. It becomes too time consuming when managing a large porfolio of PBN sites. And the tier 2 links to your PBN domains are basically the incoming links to the domains itself, the main criteria of choosing and buying a domain after all.

1. I'm guessing you blocked robots with htaccess? What code did you use?
2. What good qualities do you look for in the backlinks of a domain you want to use for a PBN?
3. Let's say there is a backlink from TechCruch from 2006 where the PR is N/A or 0. If this is still good for a PBN domain, what gives the juice flow? Is it the fact that it is a PR8 authority website? If PR doesn't matter here, would I look at DA and PA of that TechCrunch backlink? Do I check the backlinks of the TechCrunch backlink? lol I am confused about this.

TragikGod,

1. I use SS on some sites. Some other random bots on other sites sites are blocked with htaccess. Around 30% of the network doesn't block anything. I make sure these websites look much better than the rest though.

You can use the following code in your .htaccess

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*rogerbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*exabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*mj12bot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*dotbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*gigabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*ahrefsbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*sitebot.* bad_bot
<Limit GET POST HEAD>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot
</Limit>

However, it has been proven that most link crawlers which belong to companies that are out there to make money spoof their agent and still crawl links. They also do not honor robots.txt when asked to. That's why getting SS is highly recommended. It will block not only the agent, but the sub-net of IPs these are hosted on.

3. If the domain has only 1 backlink from TC then I would probably think twice before buying it and look for other better options. If the link was at least pr 2 I would have purchased it, taking into consideration that TC editors rarely remove broken links from their articles. Ideally, you want as many authority links as possible, so if you have the TC PR n/a page, make sure the domain has at least several more links and you're good to go.

Still confused? :)

how do you manage all these sites? i'm in the process of buildingg a remote management service for WP sites, would that be something that makes your work easier? (as you can manage all websites from one dashboard)

gatra,

I've hired a VA which keeps a very comprehensive excel spreadsheet. He is using roboform, which stores the WP, ClientArea and cPanel username and password for every PBN domain so that we can have access to the right issue whenever necessary. We are also testing MainWP on a batch of sites in order to ease the pain of manually updating plugins, themes and WP in general. I'll let you know how it goes down the road or if it provides a footprint responsible for a later de-indexation.

Wouldn't installing SpyderSpanker - or any other plugin for that matter - over and over again on 100+ create a juicy little footprint?

SEOExplored, yes, it would, in a way or another. That's why I do not install the plugin on ALL my PBN sites. Diversify mate.

Hi Alex,
I've read almost every comment and post on this thread.
I am about to start ,creation of PBN n/w ,Its truly helpful.I've read lot of blogs post and bhw thread too
Still i have following questions ,if possible kindly point me out.

1)As you said ,You dont care much about PA or DA ,PR stuff like that ...so if i take any aged,clean ,non spamy domain ,but has no backlinks ,but it is clean ,may have some PA/DA/PR ..Will it be useful to invest time into searching for such domain for buying,what places you recommend for searching expired domain other than expired domain ,freshdrop..
2)what are u thoughts on using services like Azure ,Digitalocean ,or similar ? Which domain providers would u recommend (i use Namecheap ,internetbs)?
3)What are u thoughts on domain that are bought for future ..but havent used ? I got few domains which are 1 year old lol just liek that ...just installed WP kept them like that ...
4)Also Using reseller hosting ..Will it be better idea ? rather creating normal client account .. :P that way we can create multiple account and manage them too :P

Debugger,

1. While I don't care about any exact metrics, I DO CARE about backlinks, the more, the merrier I haven't tried the following yet, but some folks around use DomCop, RegisterCompass, TBSolutions for finding expired domains with a decent number of links and unique referring domains. However, we mostly scrape for broken links on authority websites and see which ones are available for registration. It's an extremely tedious process which takes up to 7-8 hours on a daily basis, but my VA handles it right and I'm also happy.

2. I haven't used any of those cloud services for hosting yet, but it's in the to-do list of my VA to test it on a batch of sites, again, for diversification. We currently have several registrar accounts with each of the following companies: NameCheap, GoDaddy, Name and several of the local registrars like 1stdomains CO NZ

3. I would recommend at least installing WordPress, throwing in several posts and letting them index and age naturally.

4. The problem with reseller hosting is the exact same NS for every account you create. That's why most people go with individual shared accounts and as many different hosting companies as possible. Again, diversification.

What hosting do you use for these sites?

macdonjo3,

My VA has a huge list of hosting companies. Some disappear down the road. Other pop-up. He makes sure to keep the spreadsheet updated and is contantly looking for new targets on big hosting forums like WHT. He also is fond of negotiating yearly pricing with bigger hosting companies so that when buying for 12 months or more, monthly pricing drops below $1 USD.
 
Thanks for sharing your experience..! (SORRY BHW doesn't allow me to use paragraphs for some reason...) __________________________________1. If I have a small PBN with 25 sites. Is it OK to use the same cheap hosts 2-3 times on them? ______________________________________________2. Do you think using URL of the moneysite as anchor text would help ranking more than just some other anchor? _________________________________________3. Do you use Image-links sometimes? ______________________________________________________4. If a domain has excellent links but has was dropped several times, BUT wasn't spammed or used as a PBN, would you buy it? ______________________________________________________5. what if archive is showing empty "errors" throughout for a domain I bought, from day 1? get rid of it despite the excellent backlinks? screenshot: http://gyazo.com/891eb565d8a1eaec4ac4235df645879e
 
6. I also want to hire a VA to help me. What do you pay your VA? Does he work for you full time? Where can I find a good one? Thanks!!
 
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