Cost to boost analysis: PBN vs 301

ThopHayt said:

That is exactly why I am suspicious that 301ing is the next loophole Google will go after. It has become more popular lately and if I've learned one thing about SEO it's that as soon as a tactic gets too popular an update comes along that slaps it. I'm sure they'd love to go after PBN's as well, but it would be easier to go after 301's frankly. A good PBN is tough to tell from a legit site.

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i see your point as far as it being popular. but it has been popular long before gorang "outed" it a few years back. why didn't they just patch it back then?

i think it's really hard to patch 301s without totally messing up the whole internet. it's an important part of the whole web ecosystem. maybe they're trying to figure out how to patch it whilst minimizing collateral damage, and have been stumped these few years. but it's not working that great anymore, so maybe they're on to something.

did a test lately using plain old spammy blog comments. can't wait to see what happens

Another vote for PBN. 301's are ok, but they are hit and miss in my experience. So much easier to tweak PBNs, but of course, it is a lot more work than just a 301.

However, if you are going with rank-and-bank methods, the answer would be different.

301 redirects are much more powerful than pbn backlinks.

I've tried both methods using the same expired domains.

The pbn took weeks to rank where as 301 redirects using the same expired domains ranked me within 24 hours.

To save on costs you can purchase multiple expired domains and point them to one expired domain. Then take the one expired domain and point it to a money site until it ranks, then switch it to another money site until that ranks, etc. You can continue switching the one expired domain between multiple money sites to maintain their rankings.

However you must blast all of the expired domains with the keyword or keywords that you are trying to rank for.

ThopHayt said:

I've been wondering about something: Where is the greatest return of gains to money spent, 301 redirects or PBN's? Overall 301's (if high quality) are more expensive even than creating your own PBN. But does a $1,000 network of 301's redirects outrank a $1,000 PBN? Has anybody looked into this?

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A work around that is to redirect 19 expired domains to one expired domain and point that to the money site

The Mentalist said:

but you can't redirect 20 expired domains to your site and expect it to last.

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I would never 301 a domain that is not directly relevant to the domain it's pointing to. On that note, I only find those domain once in every 10 I buy. So with a ratio of 1:10 I can build 9 contextual links that are reference based links, from quality articles that rank, then 301 a domain with those anchors already established. I've had some great success with this. Also every niche is different, so don't take this as gospel and then come back to me all pissed.

Do authority sites (say you have a link on NBC.com or something legit) accept 301's more without penalty because the massive domain authority???