Is this technically a PBN?

Hi all, this is my first post here on BHW. Though I've been lurking for quite a while, I figured this would be a great time to join.


I had a question about Private Blog Networks and what is technically a PBN. I plan on launching a niche website for each of my main (ecommerce) site categories. I have 3 main categories in this main ecommerce site, so I'd require 3 websites (one for each of these categories). The sites would be targeting SERPs much harder than my main site.

If i was to build a site for each one of these categories, with SEO optimized products that target serp ranking much harder than my parent site, along with having link-building campaigns for them, all whilst linking the "buy" link to my main site, would that be considered bad in google's eyes? Content would be real, and useful to the public. I would also rather openly claim the sites as sister sites to my ecommerce platform.


Thank you guys in advance!

No. Don't launch different sites. Use the same website and use pages for each category, example: www.site.com/computers , www.site.com/telephones , etc, you get the point ?

LeanLow said:

No. Don't launch different sites. Use the same website and use pages for each category, example: , , etc, you get the point ?

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I would like to and have thought about it, but the problem is that a lot of our content is user generated, and taking our users out of focus in these pages (or even focusing on unattractive SEO targeted methods on these pages) would be a -1 to our site. Thats why i've thought about bringing the site some link juice via the method above. Assuming what you said isn't possible at all. Would it be a terrible idea? Should I focus on long-tail blog content instead? Ect..

Any recommendations are appreciated!

iMaurice said:

I would like to and have thought about it, but the problem is that a lot of our content is user generated, and taking our users out of focus in these pages (or even focusing on unattractive SEO targeted methods on these pages) would be a -1 to our site. Thats why i've thought about bringing the site some link juice via the method above. Assuming what you said isn't possible at all. Would it be a terrible idea? Should I focus on long-tail blog content instead? Ect..

Any recommendations are appreciated!

Click to expand...

I'd recommend to change your SEO company then...

You should focus on building juice/authority to the main domain and siloing the power to rank inner pages. When you have strong / authoritative domain, your pages rank with only a few links, look at your competitors and you'll see...

Why are you launching the separate sites?

If you're doing it so you can spam those more freely, good call. You'd kind of build them as your affiliates, and blast them to rank fast.

Other than that, I can't think of any other reason to do it. That is not a PBN, technically.

What I meant was, I could treat each product page or even category page as an seo optimized article, thus it'd do better in serps. + I would build a large link portfolio for it as well so it'd be a high ranking site that would direct traffic to my not-so-optimized site. My website currently has category pages that look more like youtube search results, and product pages that look more like youtube videos. Not a real pretty text-to-html ratio. These separate sites would have a ton of text which would carry variations of the keyword i'm trying to rank for (in a non-spammy way) + useful content that users actually are looking for (which would direct them to my parent site).

In a nutshell: these other sites are more likely to rank than my own parent site. So i was thinking about doing this. Maybe i'm completely wrong, or maybe i'm not technical enough to explain this correctly

That's sort of like a PBN, yes. Anything that gets you traffic from Google, without you buying Adwords, is considered "bad" by Google.

"Good" is when you produce awesome content that Google will use to profit for themselves, by placing your content on their properties and not paying you. Ask Wikipedia about that.

PS. Welcome to BHW!

bartosimpsonio said:

That's sort of like a PBN, yes. Anything that gets you traffic from Google, without you buying Adwords, is considered "bad" by Google.

"Good" is when you produce awesome content that Google will use to profit for themselves, by placing your content on their properties and not paying you. Ask Wikipedia about that.

PS. Welcome to BHW!

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Thanks for the welcome bartosimpsonio , I like it here. I hear you on everything man, what im talking about is niche sites that do actually provide useful content, not spun content that would never be read. These sites would be clearly linked to my parent site, and ill even brand it as such, but they would carry valuable search traffic that would be primarily be directed to my parent site. All whilst the content provided on either sites is valuable.

Should I expect to cry sometime in the future if i do this and Matt Cutts finds out? lol

The answer is probably yes.

Yes is the answer, any form of artificial link building is what Google do not want!

Use the same website and use pages for each category, example: site/computers , site/telephones