PBN domain extension. Does it matter?

Hello,

I am buying PBN domains from sellers here. Does .fr, .co.uk, .cc or any domain extension matter?
Though I am ranking english websites (gaming ones), mostly in US.

Need your opinion. Thanks!

country base extension could be matter because if your target is uk and your PBN is .fr then your website should be ranked well in France rather then UK

I am buying PBN domains from sellers here. Does .fr, .co.uk, .cc or any domain extension matter?
Though I am ranking english websites (gaming ones), mostly in US.

Click to expand...

Hi,
would only include cTLD like .fr or other languages to support a local market (US) if they were niche related.
It might be a good impression if great international niche related authority sites are linking to a (future) great local site.

Cheers
Dan

francis1017 said:

Hello,

I am buying PBN domains from sellers here. Does .fr, .co.uk, .cc or any domain extension matter?
Though I am ranking english websites (gaming ones), mostly in US.

Need your opinion. Thanks!

Click to expand...

What I'm about to say is purely a theory based mostly on logic, so I'd be happy to hear if someone has fact or evidence to back it up or refute it.

I believe that the aim of buying domains that are relevant to your country is purely to avoid suspicion. If your link profile consisted of mostly French domains, linked to from other French domains in (you guessed it) French and your site is American and written in English, that seems like a pretty big red flag in terms of suspicious activity. That's not to say that this type of linking doesn't occur naturally 'in the wild', just that I avoid it to fly extra low under the radar.

In terms of 'link juice' being passed on, from a site that has been repurposed, I don't think you'll have a problem. Although I can't definitively say whether Google regards all links as the same in terms of geographical location proximity, i.e a link from Algeria is less valuable to a site in the US that a link from a US site to a US site. That being said, I've often noted people in the business of foreign SEO saying that English PBN sites linking to foreign ones presents no issue.

I believe the best form of SEO is making your efforts appear natural, as though no SEO has taken place. For this reason I play it safe, if I'm ranking a money site in a particular country I stick to PBN sites that have links from other sites in that country. I chose the words of that last sentence carefully because I don't believe you have to have a corresponding domain extension to the country that you're operating in, for example many legitimate UK businesses have .com domains exclusively and rank absolutely fine in the UK despite the local domain extension being '.co.uk'. Instead, I believe that as long as the sites that link to you have the majority of their links from the same country as you, then you're fine...I've applied this philosophy to SEO in non English speaking countries with success so far.

tl;dr: Play it safe.

There are a few TLDs that require you to be a resident of the country in question and do not allow for WhoIs privacy if that is important to you. Like .us, for example. You have to live in the United States and cannot use privacy on them (unless that has changed recently).

following this thread.

myopic1 said:

...if I'm ranking a money site in a particular country I stick to PBN sites that have links from other sites in that country. I chose the words of that last sentence carefully because I don't believe you have to have a corresponding domain extension to the country that you're operating in, for example many legitimate UK businesses have .com domains exclusively and rank absolutely fine in the UK despite the local domain extension being '.co.uk'. Instead, I believe that as long as the sites that link to you have the majority of their links from the same country as you, then you're fine...I've applied this philosophy to SEO in non English speaking countries with success so far.

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I agree that this is probably the safest way to approach choosing expired domains for a PBN although I wouldn't be 100% strict on this rule. I'd certainly favour domains with links from other sites in that geographical area, but I wouldn't discount others with good links either. I'd find some sort of balance between the two.

It's a similar argument, in a way, to that of finding niche relevant domains. If you have a health related money site, then it might be more "natural" to find domains that were health related sites with backlinks from other health related authorities. Whether or not the ranking juice you receive is any higher, you might just avoid tripping red flags if Google ever get a handle on algorithmically tackling PBNs.

If you are ranking English sites then it' s better to avoid using .fr, .uk domains, as these are country oriented domains.

Its always good to mix it up, but since you're targeting english, better to stay with com,net,org,.us,info, etc.

That being said, a few links from .fr, or even .in won't hurt, as long as those sites have good clean profile, and decent link juice.

Thanks for the inputs.. I decided to buy only .com, .org and .net domain extensions just to be on the safe side.

I would buy cTLD links only if my domain had some authority already, making him international. But if it's a new domain, it will look spammy as hell to get links from all over the world.

It best to stick with popular tlds for your target audiences.

Diversification doesn't harm, however .COMs should dominate your tld cloud when targeting US.