How To Stop Worrying About Using PBN - PERMANENTLY

Below advice is for anyone who is serious about their PBN and long-term results/rankings.

It is not about hiding your footprints, setup or design. None of that rubbish.

Something far more powerful...

A little history

I've been doing PBNs for about 5 years now and made some nice returns using this strategy.

When I stared out I constantly had doubts in my mind.

Being an owner of PBN rental service, I also have to constantly deal with the same doubts from clients.

I'm pretty sure you know what I mean:

Is my PBN footprint free?

Can I use it safely?

What will happen to my money site if Google finds my network?

etc.

These questions come to mind even more often when there is a Google update announcement

About 2.5 years ago I totally switched my mindset when it comes to PBNs and these concerns disappeared!

This switch allowed to stop worrying about my PBN being de-indexed and money sites penalized.

It's pretty simple:

Power over quantity

Let me explain...

What is happening today is that people are quite often building networks consisting of websites with 10-20 referring domains max.

I used to hunt for expired domains like crazy and built a pretty big network like this as well.

While there's nothing wrong with this strategy (because it brings results) it's a HELL to maintain and scale!

Time consuming and overall just freaking exhausting.


So what I did was switch from 10-20 RDs per domain to 200+ RDs per domain. (I'm talking about HQ white-hat live sources - not dead spam)

The change was amazing!

I was able to get the very same results by maintaining 40 times (yes forty) smaller network.

But something else happened as well... something magical...

To be honest I never really enjoyed managing my expired domains network.

I never really felt like it's worth spending time on. I tried to set it up and put links on it asap and be done with it. Set & forget (I'm pretty sure you can relate)

But with this new network of high-powered sites it was totally different!

The thing is, when you manage network like this it's like managing a set of money sites. It no longer feels like a PBN.

Spending several hundred dollars per domain (or even thousands) will naturally make you form a different kind of relationship with the domain.

Every domain is a like family member!

Those crappy expired domains were barely worth the article I got written for them!

With these high-powered ones however... it's easy and comes natural.

Suddenly there's no problem paying extra for dedicated IP, logo, design, VA to publish unique content on a regular basis, etc.... it just makes sense and you can totally justify the cost!

Building a PBN became a joy (again)!

This extra treatment also makes the current network much safer than the previous one. Simply because you don't MIND to put in that extra effort.

Most of them have traffic of their own and generate affiliate sale here and there.

It's actually little inaccurate to call them PBN since they live on their own so well. They're more like Tier 1 money site network supporting the Primary Money Site.

Imagine that the network of 100 sites you have right now could easily be replaced by 5 high-powered ones WHILE maintaining the ROI you're getting.

Sick right?

So that is my advice to anyone using PBN as their ranking strategy...

Create a network of a few high-powered websites rather than an army of weaklings.


-----------

Now, I totally understand that this is something impossible to do when you're starting out. Especially in today's environment since prices of all types of domains (especially auction) skyrocketed.

However, I urge you to switch to this strategy as soon as you are able. You won't regret it.

Let me know your thoughts on this below...

Thanks a lot

That's exactly what i am trying to do.

I know it wont take a week or even a month to do this.

But good things come to those who wait

Good and descriptive info but the more powerful domain is, the bigger price you pay. As you said, not a solution when you start from scratch unfortunately
What website/tool are you using? expireddomains dot com?

OP tells nothing, the point how do you identify if the domain is power or not, we can't rely on the RD of the expired domain, there must be something else to measure the power?

sashilover said:

OP tells nothing, the point how do you identify if the domain is power or not, we can't rely on the RD of the expired domain, there must be something else to measure the power?

Click to expand...

1) Number of RD-s
2) Anchor text profile
3) Quality of backlink profile - how much authority each link has, how many links does the profile contain from "seed" sites on the internet
4) Relevancy of each link and the site as a whole

I don't mind taking a low metric domain with some crazy .gov etc links. It happens sometimes that such domains just don't have many other links, but good ones are still there. But you are right, the more referring domains is generally the better.

I've got a bit of advice for people doing PBNs: do whatever method gives you the best ROI.

A strategy should never be based on high quality links if your niche won't allow you to afford them.

Anyone could rank a site with 40 500$ domains, doesn't mean you'll make a penny back.

bellissimo said:

Good and descriptive info but the more powerful domain is, the bigger price you pay. As you said, not a solution when you start from scratch unfortunately
What website/tool are you using? expireddomains dot com?

Click to expand...

Thank you.

Actually I'm mostly using vendors like TB Solutions and some private ones found through Facebook groups.

Also Flippa a little.

sashilover said:

OP tells nothing, the point how do you identify if the domain is power or not, we can't rely on the RD of the expired domain, there must be something else to measure the power?

Click to expand...

Well, like I said at the very beginning of this post, it is not focusing on the technical aspect of things.

With that being said...

The only reliable method is to go through the links manually.

0. Number of RDs already mentioned.

1. I personally don't give much value to metric summaries, however, metrics are more reliable on the link level. I'm talking about PA, TF, CF, UR.

2. Competition on the page. What is the Outbound Link Count?

3. Where on a page is the link located. Is it valuable contextual link or comment anyone can build?

4. Anchor text profile. Is it obviously spammed with exact match anchors? That's probably reason why it's available, because it has a penalty.

etc.

bignose said:

I don't mind taking a low metric domain with some crazy .gov etc links. It happens sometimes that such domains just don't have many other links, but good ones are still there. But you are right, the more referring domains is generally the better.

Click to expand...

I totally know what you mean. Thank you.

MikeyMikey13 said:

I've got a bit of advice for people doing PBNs: do whatever method gives you the best ROI.

A strategy should never be based on high quality links if your niche won't allow you to afford them.

Anyone could rank a site with 40 500$ domains, doesn't mean you'll make a penny back.

Click to expand...

Yes, thanks for mentioning that. Potential ROI should be calculated prior to making (any) investment.

http://i.imgur.com/AViXDso.png

248RD and DR48 somehow worries me. there must be a bunch of low value behind it

howeve, I get your idea and I too would rather spend 5x the money for stronger domains.

ahrefs and RD are a nice idicator how strong a domain can be.


what hosting do you use ?

Anyone still using DA and PA ? Its best metric. If you are not using it you are a noob.

darulez said:

http://i.imgur.com/AViXDso.png

248RD and DR48 somehow worries me. there must be a bunch of low value behind it

howeve, I get your idea and I too would rather spend 5x the money for stronger domains.

ahrefs and RD are a nice idicator how strong a domain can be.


what hosting do you use ?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't bother with the DR metric, it is garbage. You see sites with metrics like that, but the site will have 40k monthly traffic...

You also see sites that minipulate the metric with blog comment spam too

MikeyMikey13 said:

I wouldn't bother with the DR metric, it is garbage. You see sites with metrics like that, but the site will have 40k monthly traffic...

You also see sites that minipulate the metric with blog comment spam too

Click to expand...

i know. but TF is the same garbage. as is moz even more for .de sites.

eg, that must be some fkn valuable domain, na?
https://gyazo.com/793121003558db961c78422765c2e06b
TF20, RD120+..

darulez said:

i know. but TF is the same garbage. as is moz even more for .de sites.

eg, that must be some fkn valuable domain, na?
https://gyazo.com/793121003558db961c78422765c2e06b
TF20, RD120+..

Click to expand...

Don't look for general TF, look for topical TF of your niche. Then manually check the backlinks for your topical TF

darulez said:

i know. but TF is the same garbage. as is moz even more for .de sites.

eg, that must be some fkn valuable domain, na?
https://gyazo.com/793121003558db961c78422765c2e06b
TF20, RD120+..

Click to expand...

Metrics are ONLY for filtering. They're not for evaluating a domain - they just make finding the right domains quicker and feasible. A list of 100 with the right metrics, you may only be happy with 10 after checking all of them (and the number would be considerably less with scraped domains)

Nice little informative guide.
I was thinking the same thing about building PBNs few days ago but just need high budget to create those PBN network.
Thanks

Pinktoe said:

Metrics are ONLY for filtering. They're not for evaluating a domain - they just make finding the right domains quicker and feasible

Click to expand...

The metrics only matter when you are selling links from your exclusive TF25+ PBN

darulez said:

http://i.imgur.com/AViXDso.png

248RD and DR48 somehow worries me. there must be a bunch of low value behind it

howeve, I get your idea and I too would rather spend 5x the money for stronger domains.

ahrefs and RD are a nice idicator how strong a domain can be.


what hosting do you use ?

Click to expand...

Yes, there are some weak links definitely. But quite hefty amount of strong ones too.

I use Premium hosts mostly. HostGator, Namecheap etc.

However, HostGator and many others are now owned by EIG so I don't recommend them anymore. (and I suggest anyone to stay away lol)

Also, Amazon cloud and Easy Blog Networks for a smaller portion of the network.

Nut-Nights said:

Anyone still using DA and PA ? Its best metric. If you are not using it you are a noob.

Click to expand...

Yep. Still taking the good ol' DA & PA into account.

From my experience OSE has the smallest index of links from the 3 major checkers tho.

Moz as a whole went down hill in the past 2 years imo.

Rockstar007 said:

Nice little informative guide.
I was thinking the same thing about building PBNs few days ago but just need high budget to create those PBN network.
Thanks

Click to expand...

I may release my method of building 15 PBNs for under 100$. But just know, there is methods to do this super cheap.

MikeyMikey13 said:

I may release my method of building 15 PBNs for under 100$. But just know, there is methods to do this super cheap.

Click to expand...

Please do it

Thanks a lot boss.

This was so helpful for me, actually I haven't seen a helpful thread like this.