Beware of PBN Gurus

There's been a lot of shit going on in regards to PBNs over the last week or so and lots of misinformation out there right now. There is one in particular that I would like to address:

- Spending alot of money to make your PBN blogs look like "real sites" (whatever the fuck that means) is NOT the solution to avoiding Google's wrath.

You could spend the bare minimum on a pbn blog AS LONG AS YOU ARE ABLE TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE YOUR FOOTPRINTS. Blowing wads of cash on a pbn in a feeble attempt to make it look legit is a wasted exercise if you are leaving large footprints everywhere. A winning PBN owner will work hard to minimize footprints to beat googles algorithms by avoiding a set of patterns that will trigger a penalty. The losing PBN owner spends a ton of money to make a site look "real" to beat a manual review.

best avatar ffc

I have to agree... making your PBN properties look like real sites will get you out of a manual review (maybe)...

everyone's complaining and trying to figure out why the crappy PBN sites they have are getting deindexed, what is the footprint, how is Google doing it ? OH MY LAWD THE HUMANITY !

there's no footprint, there's nothing magical...

you are getting deindexed because of the way you link outside of your PBN...
I've found a few PBN's in the last month and all it took was a script which scrapes domains that are about to expire and MOZ/Majestic/hrefs (cuz you might block 2 of them out, but never the 3rd... i mean clients have to see your links somehow right ?)

also why is everyone who has a PBN renting/registering their domains for 1yr and 1yr only ? how is that for a footprint ?

I probably share your view, OP.

To me, PBN domains are totally a numbers game. The focus should be on ring-fencing them from one another, so as to contain the damage of any de-indexing action that is bound to happen at some point in the future.

Spending time and money creating sites that "look legit" seems like a backwards step, in my opinion. Just put more sites online, treat them as disposable items, and ditch them when they burn out.

mudbutt said:

There's been a lot of shit going on in regards to PBNs over the last week or so and lots of misinformation out there right now. There is one in particular that I would like to address:

- Spending alot of money to make your PBN blogs look like "real sites" (whatever the fuck that means) is NOT the solution to avoiding Google's wrath.

You could spend the bare minimum on a pbn blog AS LONG AS YOU ARE ABLE TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE YOUR FOOTPRINTS. Blowing wads of cash on a pbn in a feeble attempt to make it look legit is a wasted exercise if you are leaving large footprints everywhere. A winning PBN owner will work hard to minimize footprints to beat googles algorithms by avoiding a set of patterns that will trigger a penalty. The losing PBN owner spends a ton of money to make a site look "real" to beat a manual review.

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This is true up to the point that any site ranking for a competitive keyword in a "Money" niche is going to get hit with a manual review, eventually.

That means a REAL person looking over the sites in your network. Maybe not in depth, but spun articles, 100 wordpress blogs, and crappy layouts on your entire network will burn that entire investment when one of these dudes checks you out.

See: https://www.leapforceathome.com/qrp/public/job/1

Google is paying thousands of people to do nothing all day but manually go through search results, and rate the sites according to quality. This applies to your money sites, as well as the sites linking to them. The manual these guys use is 150 pages thick, and while I cant share it here (The friend who forwarded it to me is under NDA, and I said I wouldnt) suffice it to say its all about nuking linking schemes and thin affiliate sites.

The point to all this? If the difference in making a site in your PBN look legit is an extra $50 a domain and 30 more minutes of your time, and your not willing to do that, you will suffer for it. While you might think its more profitable to cut corners in the short term, the network and sites that have been sending me checks for 3 years prove otherwise.

cashcorp said:

This is true up to that point that any niche with REAL money in it is going to get hit with manual reviews, eventually. This is coming from Payday/Gambling anyways.

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Yep, this is true. Big money niches that are known for constant manual reviews play by a different set of rules which is why the majority of them are not ranking via traditional PBN methods.

mudbutt said:

Yep, this is true. Big money niches that are known for constant manual reviews play by a different set of rules which is why the majority of them are not ranking via traditional PBN methods.

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Depends what you mean by "Traditional". I can say that my link profiles are not "Pure" pbns. Rather I obscure things with other links whose sole purpose is to flesh out my profile. (I mean maybe they help with ranking, but I wouldnt know. Thats not why those properties exist).

Truth be told, getting past reviewers is the name of game for me. Ranking is easy; Apply links until successful. In my case, since I go after such competitive terms, it ALWAYS means doling out a huge investment up-front. 15 sites wont get me to the 10th page.

It also means a huge loss when a site gets killed before it (At minimum) pays for itself.

Sticking? Thats the whole battle for me. Its also probably why I'm being such a hard-line "Quality" preacher right now. I cant even imagine having the kind of lee-way some of the people in this thread are talking about.

Whatever works for you good folks, works for you.

cashcorp said:

The point to all this? If the difference in making a site in your PBN look legit is an extra $50 a domain and 30 more minutes of your time, and your not willing to do that, you will suffer for it. While you might think its more profitable to cut corners in the short term, the network and sites that have been sending me checks for 3 years prove otherwise.

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Who is saying anything about cutting corners? The fact that I don't spend an extra $50 and 30 minutes on a PBN doesn't make my PBN more likely to be "discovered" by Google. There is no need to be wasteful with time or money if there is no benefit. Blowing money just to make a website "look real" is huge waste if your footprints are not covered, which is the point of this thread. That's a matter of being smart with your resources, nothing to do with being frugal.

Absolutely, I suppose I was taking it for granted that people were building PBNs without footprints. Thats sort of step 1. I also got a little distracted by Tonys reply, so that part of my reply was more to him than you.

Its not that complicated - and actually lends itself to making a "higher quality" pbn at the same time.

Cashcorps Stupid Simple Rules For Avoiding Footprints (Aka: Its not rocket science)
-1 IP, 1 site
-Shared hosts are king. To hell with SEO hosting. Not worth the risk.
-Varied CMSes (I use dozens. Magneto, Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Html templates, weird 1 off clone scripts, you name it.)
-Varied designs and layouts (Especially in regards to CMS templates.)
-Drip your linkbuilding
-Dont concentrate your juice to the homepage. Does it work? Yes. Worth the risk? Not in my opinion.
-Dont always link from your PBNs homepage.
-Link out to OTHER authority sites in your niche. (I link to money.co.uk, etc. for example)
-Varied use of Google Analytics (And I DO install Google analytics on SOME sites in my networks, some even run adsense.)
-Varied Registration dates
-Some private whois, largely public (Falseified) whois data.
-Varied domain registrars

I'm sure I've forgotten some stuff. Its late and frankly I dont feel like writing an entire manual. The biggest, baddest, most important thing I have to add on that point though - And Tony already laid it out for everybody - Fence your networks. At least personally, none of my PBNs link to other money sites. 1 network, 1 site. (Thats the extreme version though.)

-Fin

You can spend as much as time you want on any site but still if some one reported your money site and your pbn's will be like a open book to google.

Just stay ahead , i never got my blogs deindexd and that's because i have not posted my method on bhw or other forums.Just few tweaks can do wonders.
-=-

OP I agree with you, I couldn't have said it better myself. Anyone who manages a PBN needs to cover their footprints completely.

Just curious on your opinion. Do you / would you invest in premium content that allows you to establish relevancy while link injecting your PBN?

To me, I find that the bigger investment in content is worth every penny. Not only because of the protection you may have from a manual review, but because of the extra weight links from your PBN sites will carry.

I'd love to hear your opinion on this matter.

I totally agree with this thread and i am glad i read it for my own self confirmation. Thanks OP

The best PBN's are those that don't even look like PBN's. Obvious I'm sure, but I have been buying sites from sites like Flippa that are REAL sites and they'll stay that way. I will hire writers that know about the subjects and let them manage the websites themselves. Now and then I'll sprinkle a link or two I need.

Hosting stays with the original hosting company and I try and buy sites that already have privacy enabled that way no real Whois change shock.

I keep the original monitization methods in case I need to sell the site at some time.

This is the future of PBN's.

I usually agree with you OP, and I do agree now, but hiding footprints shouldn't even be the rule, that's common sense....but as CEO Sam Massey say:"Some people don't have common sense"

Most of the Gurus giving information to noobs on PBN's, usually totally coincidentally, sell Domains or offer a course or membership site on building PBN's

WF has WSO Gurus
BHW has PBN Gurus

@OP I think the footprint comment is so obvious, that it shouldn't really need mentioning, BUT a lot of people trying to build PBN's still haven't grasped the basics of SEO and are too cheap to do a proper job.
Somebody with your level of SEO experience, CAN spend less because you know what you are doing.
Other people are spending less because they have no money and are trying to build PBN's on the cheap, to then send the links to some piece of shit site they are calling a money site.

Noobs are being fleeced because they are sold the idea that PBN's work like magic to rank anything.

Definitely agree, it's all about minimising footprint.
but I'm sure that often comes hand in hand with a bit of a cash requirement.

W130SN said:

@OP I think the footprint comment is so obvious, that it shouldn't really need mentioning, BUT a lot of people trying to build PBN's still haven't grasped the basics of SEO and are too cheap to do a proper job.
Somebody with your level of SEO experience, CAN spend less because you know what you are doing.
Other people are spending less because they have no money and are trying to build PBN's on the cheap, to then send the links to some piece of shit site they are calling a money site.

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For this for example the BST section have to be monitorated better. I mean that for newbie buyers it's a trap because there are noob sellers.
Noob sellers are creating PBN + noob buyers are buying poor PBN services = everyono lost money!

mudbutt said:

A winning PBN owner will work hard to minimize footprints to beat googles algorithms by avoiding a set of patterns that will trigger a penalty. The losing PBN owner spends a ton of money to make a site look "real" to beat a manual review.

Click to expand...

Yep, I've been telling people this for a long time now because those manual reviewers are strict bastards and even the faintest whiff of manipulative linking practices will have them hitting the "deindex" or "manual penalty" button on the Google system. So the only thing worth spending time and money on is the necessary steps to not raise any red flags via an algorithmic check of your site and backlinks.

tony_d said:

I probably share your view, OP.

To me, PBN domains are totally a numbers game. The focus should be on ring-fencing them from one another, so as to contain the damage of any de-indexing action that is bound to happen at some point in the future.

Click to expand...

I agree with your here Tony, the bigger the PBN, the less likely it is that the whole thing gets hits (at least if you are taking the necessary precautions like ring-fencing as you say). Not only that, a larger network allows you to have more variation in your sites which once again means less chance of an algorithm flagging any one part of your PBN.

cashcorp said:

This is true up to the point that any site ranking for a competitive keyword in a "Money" niche is going to get hit with a manual review, eventually.

That means a REAL person looking over the sites in your network. Maybe not in depth, but spun articles, 100 wordpress blogs, and crappy layouts on your entire network will burn that entire investment when one of these dudes checks you out.

See: https://www.leapforceathome.com/qrp/public/job/1

Google is paying thousands of people to do nothing all day but manually go through search results, and rate the sites according to quality. This applies to your money sites, as well as the sites linking to them. The manual these guys use is 150 pages thick, and while I cant share it here (The friend who forwarded it to me is under NDA, and I said I wouldnt) suffice it to say its all about nuking linking schemes and thin affiliate sites.

The point to all this? If the difference in making a site in your PBN look legit is an extra $50 a domain and 30 more minutes of your time, and your not willing to do that, you will suffer for it. While you might think its more profitable to cut corners in the short term, the network and sites that have been sending me checks for 3 years prove otherwise.

Click to expand...

While I am sure you're right about big money niches going through constant manual reviews, the truth is that the majority of people do not work in these niches but in areas where manual reviews are virtually unheard of. I think what the OP is pointing to is that you do what is necessary to stay safe in the niche you are working in. Sure, if it's payday loans then you have to go the extra mile and make your PBN sites look "real" but if you just want to rank for the keyword "plus size lycra sportswear" then you just cover your footprints and forget about "real" PBNs.

davids355 said:

Definitely agree, it's all about minimising footprint. but I'm sure that often comes hand in hand with a bit of a cash requirement.

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Actually covering footprints from being spotted by an algorithm isn't all that costly. It's the fleshing out of PBN sites to look like "real" sites that sucks up the money.

mudbutt said:

- Spending alot of money to make your PBN blogs look like "real sites" (whatever the fuck that means) is NOT the solution to avoiding Google's wrath.

Click to expand...

I think you are misinterpreting the actual message, the message being just because you throw a load of cheap shit together, it does not mean it will rank websites. It is best to spend time and money making something proper, rather than cutting corners and throwing a piece of shit together.

You see what some people will do, is you tell them to use unique content for their PBN, they can't be arsed writing the content themselves, they don't want to pay for it, so they work out several articles from ezine which have already been spun to death will do the trick. They simply try to cheapen everything.

davids355 said:

Definitely agree, it's all about minimising footprint.

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Even if your competitor found one private blog linking to your site and reported it then it all depends upon google if they want to deindex whole pbn or just that site. minimizing footprint can save you from competitors , but not from google manual review.

Spending time on those things is just not worth it.
-=-