PBN Q&A: Ask me anything about how I build, manage (and rank with) PBNs

My zodiac sign is pisces and those of you who know their astrology know that pisces like to work alone and don't really enjoy crowds.

Well, this is what I did till know and managed to build a network of over 500 sites in my PBN, in total silence. I don't claim to be a guru (and I'm open minded and DO follow plenty of other guys in the internet marketing world), but managing a such a relatively big porftolio of satellite sites requires some experience and I guess I did gather some bits of it. These days I decided to join BHW and share some of my PBN techniques here on the forum.

Since I was already starting to get questions in my introductory post I decided to start a Q&A thread, simply because this will allow the information to spread faster and will be more helpful for both beginner and intermediate (and maybe some of the advanced guys out there) PBN builders than waiting for weeks for me to compile a series of posts (which I will still do, on less known stuff, but later down the road).

So fire up your questions and let me know if I can be of any help in your PBN hustling journey

I will answer any questions on:
1. finding the right domains
2. hosting your network
3. hosting tricks
4. domain registrar tricks
5. hiding your network
6. ranking techniques
7. posting to your pbn
8. debunking myths
etc..

And later on, if some of you don't agree with whatever methods I currently make use of, I will gladly start a case study thread and share my results. I also want to mention that I'm obsessed with split testing so don't just take my word for it, allow me to prove it

alexthepbndude

My questions,
1. finding the right domains
2. hosting your network
3. hosting tricks
4. domain registrar tricks
5. hiding your network
6. ranking techniques
7. posting to your pbn
8. debunking myths

1.) Have you ever been deindexed? If so, do you know what caused it?

2.) How do you think of ways to link out to authority sites? I mean, if you want to create a lot of outbound links to confuse G, what are your best ways to weave them into your content?

3.) My dream is to make sites that literalyl will pass a manual review. are your sites very incognito like that, or are they obvious?

Hi Alex, let me start

1. How many hosts do you use to manage 500 PBN sites? Are they SEO hosts or you use small mom and pop shared hosts? How hard it is? Do you outsource?
2. Which platforms/CMS u use except wordpress.
3. Have any of your PBN sites been deindexed ever?
4. How do you diversify anchor text (ratio?) across your PBN. What other methods u use?
5. Your Best SEO success so far?

I will ask some more later.

Hello, thanks for offering your time to answer questions, just 1 single question.

Lets say I have 40 sites in my network, and I want to rank 3 diferent websites, 1 of tablets, 1 of laptops and 1 of mobile phones, how would you link your websites? Just 1 single post linking to any of the sites, or every website would link to my 3 websites?.

Thanks in advance.

T

can you please share with us your experience with Google Sandbox or ranking waiting period after May everyone is talking about right now.

winosergio said:

Hello, thanks for offering your time to answer questions, just 1 single question.

Lets say I have 40 sites in my network, and I want to rank 3 diferent websites, 1 of tablets, 1 of laptops and 1 of mobile phones, how would you link your websites? Just 1 single post linking to any of the sites, or every website would link to my 3 websites?.

Thanks in advance.

T

Click to expand...

Each PBN blog can link to your 3 websites. How?

Create articles focusing on the respective topic of each PBN blog and find a way to slip your links in. For example, if your target keyword was "best tablets" for one of your sites, and you wanted to publish it on an investment PBN blog, you could publish something along the lines of:

"I use one of the best tablets to stay on top of the latest stock news"

You see how I've included a link to the tablet site in an investment article? Do the same for the other 2 sites on each site and you can have 40 links to each of your websites.

hardcorebiker said:

Hi Alex, let me start

1. How many hosts do you use to manage 500 PBN sites? Are they SEO hosts or you use small mom and pop shared hosts? How hard it is? Do you outsource?
2. Which platforms/CMS u use except wordpress.
3. Have any of your PBN sites been deindexed ever?
4. How do you diversify anchor text (ratio?) across your PBN. What other methods u use?
5. Your Best SEO success so far?

I will ask some more later.

Click to expand...

Same question. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this OP.

1. finding the right domains
2. hosting your network
3. hosting tricks
4. domain registrar tricks
5. hiding your network
6. ranking techniques
7. posting to your pbn
8. debunking myths

I need answers to all of them.
-=-

How much do you need to start a decent sized network and how long does it take to see results?

Awesome answer, but I was thinking about the footprint behind 40 sites linking to the 3 same websites everytime.

I asked that question because I am seeing Public BN deindexed, and I dont know if it is because of spun content( dont know if it is spun or not because my english is not perfect and for me i does not look bad) or because there is an obvious footprint of linking always to the same sites .

SEO Power said:

Each PBN blog can link to your 3 websites. How?

Create articles focusing on the respective topic of each PBN blog and find a way to slip your links in. For example, if your target keyword was "best tablets" for one of your sites, and you wanted to publish it on an investment PBN blog, you could publish something along the lines of:

"I use one of the http://# to stay on top of the latest stock news"

You see how I've included a link to the tablet site in an investment article? Do the same for the other 2 sites on each site and you can have 40 links to each of your websites.

Click to expand...

Axioms said:

My questions,
1. finding the right domains
2. hosting your network
3. hosting tricks
4. domain registrar tricks
5. hiding your network
6. ranking techniques
7. posting to your pbn
8. debunking myths

Click to expand...

I would probably have to write a $97 USD eBook to share all this stuff, but I want to give it all away for free, so please be more specific

charlesmacneil55 said:

1.) Have you ever been deindexed? If so, do you know what caused it?

2.) How do you think of ways to link out to authority sites? I mean, if you want to create a lot of outbound links to confuse G, what are your best ways to weave them into your content?

3.) My dream is to make sites that literalyl will pass a manual review. are your sites very incognito like that, or are they obvious?

Click to expand...

1. I've been de-indexed in the past quite a lot and the main issues were:
- competitors reporting some of my sites (solved by blocking ahrefs, majecticseo and the like...)
- not concealing my who is info (nowadays I use fake names for every pbn domain)
- hosting with flagged companies more than 1 website

As soon as these issues got fixed the de-indexation rate suddenly dropped to almost 0. I haven't had a domain de-indexed for at least 9 months.

2. When linking to authority websites I would just create a list of relevant references at the end of each post (around 3-4) and insert my links. I would point to relevant articles found by querying my niche in Google News. Don't link to Wikipedia or your competitors websites for God's sake. You help them rank.

3. Your dream makes sense, but it stops working as you think it should when you pass over 200 sites. Too damn hard to manage each website and too expensive, content-wise, even when outsourced. Since I use ultra-spun content these days, my PBN sites are quite obvious. To lower the chances of them looking really bad I outsource article title creation. It has been proven multiple times that 80% of people read only headlines

my questions
1) Should I looking domains for PBN with high PR or DA or TF metrics ?
2) Can I use expired domains or should avoid them ?
3) Should I use fake whois or private whois ?
4) How many weekly/monthly links should I place to new domain from PBN?
5) Should I use any other link building strategy with PBN or I can use only PBN links?
6) Should I build Tier 2 links to PBN posts/homepages ?

Thanks

1. I'm guessing you blocked robots with htaccess? What code did you use?
2. What good qualities do you look for in the backlinks of a domain you want to use for a PBN?
3. Let's say there is a backlink from TechCruch from 2006 where the PR is N/A or 0. If this is still good for a PBN domain, what gives the juice flow? Is it the fact that it is a PR8 authority website? If PR doesn't matter here, would I look at DA and PA of that TechCrunch backlink? Do I check the backlinks of the TechCrunch backlink? lol I am confused about this.

how do you manage all these sites? i'm in the process of buildingg a remote management service for WP sites, would that be something that makes your work easier? (as you can manage all websites from one dashboard)

hardcorebiker said:

Hi Alex, let me start

1. How many hosts do you use to manage 500 PBN sites? Are they SEO hosts or you use small mom and pop shared hosts? How hard it is? Do you outsource?
2. Which platforms/CMS u use except wordpress.
3. Have any of your PBN sites been deindexed ever?
4. How do you diversify anchor text (ratio?) across your PBN. What other methods u use?
5. Your Best SEO success so far?

I will ask some more later.

Click to expand...

Hi there,

Let me answer

1. Anything tagged as SEO hosting will sooner or later be hunted down by Google. There aren't so many after all. That's why I use small shared hosting accounts for my PBNs. I still have some 'alive-and-doing-well' websites hosted with some SEO hosting companies from back in the days, but since late 2013 I've been hosting each new domain I add to my PBN with a different moms and pops hosting company. It gets tricky at a certain point, but I will share a trick down the road on how to correctly find these companies and even negotiate resources if necessary. Let me know if you are interested.

2. Automating the posting process when using different platforms becomes a pain in the *ss, that's why I use only WordPress. No issues so far. So many websites are using WP these days, I really don't see a problem using it as the only CMS for my networks.

3. As I've mentioned in the previous reply to charlesmacneil55, I had issues in the past, but managed to solve them by: a) constantly blocking link crawlers like ahrefs, majectic seo and the list goes on...) b) using fake names for every domain (save your privacy money) and c) avoiding all possible seo hosting companies.

4. It's as simple as not using the exact same anchor text pointing to your money site ever. I don't think about ratios.

5. Yet to come...

... but really, I still find going after long tails more stable long term, even with a powerful PBN, than targeting super tough terms and niches

How much time does it take to go from PR0 to PR6? How to boost it?

winosergio said:

Hello, thanks for offering your time to answer questions, just 1 single question.

Lets say I have 40 sites in my network, and I want to rank 3 diferent websites, 1 of tablets, 1 of laptops and 1 of mobile phones, how would you link your websites? Just 1 single post linking to any of the sites, or every website would link to my 3 websites?.

Thanks in advance.

T

Click to expand...

Hey there,

I tend to think about my PBNs as self-owned targets for contextual links. In other words, I spam myself, which is not that bad, ethically-speaking (as Terry Kyle mentions in one of his interviews LOL). So basically I would post to these targets automatically as long as it delivers results. I would even link multiple times from one PBN website to a money site page (from different articles on that particular PBN site though). When I see it doesn't bump my SERP positions anymore, I post to another 20-30 sites in my network and see what happens

The way I would do it with just 40 sites, is link once from every article to every money site/page if using lower quality content (which is cheaper) and host 3 links in one article if using more expensive and higher quality content. But remember if your site gets busted, the quality of your content won't matter at all. It will get wiped-out by Google since you look like selling links, especially if you use your keyword in your anchor text as most people do anyway...

I've read that G is now also hunting down cheap hosts - not just SEO hosts - the $1/month type hosts, manually looking at all the sites on the same server, and finding the footprints. Any thoughts on this? Registering domains with fake whois can be a bit risky - does private whois really provide adequate protection for a pbn - I know of several big network owners who use it without any problems (so far).