Private Blog Network - You are doing it wrong

If PBN is really a PBN (belongs only to you) and you know what you are doing, you can rank medium terms with ~15PBN domains (I'm talking the ones that people fight for on auctions and pay 200$ and not the 20$ shitty ones that you see on forums).

I don't do PBN's but one nugget I can offer is I've seen a huge authority site using a PBN in the mortgage industry and it was so well disguised I could not even tell it was a PBN at first glance. They set it up to look like a real REALTOR's or Real Estate Company site... with custom WP theme... expensive looking logo and desin, a feed with real home for sales listings pulled from MLS site or whatever... Super relevant to their niche. Also had real contact number etc... looks better than most real estate/realtors site... I think they had a few set up as a realtor's website (with a fake pic and contact info and everything) and others as a realty company. Very sneaky. It is one of the biggest authority sites in mortgage; had a DA of over 80... and surprisingly using PBN's to rank their interior pages for super competitive keywords that they weren't able to get in the top 3 for even with a DA of over 80. It's not an affiliate site but an authority one almost on par with like New York Times etc..

I've also seen some PBN's that look like corporate sites... and others that look like a product site, like the homepage of a cosmetics company selling a cream (just an example)... and looking super legit but it was a PBN...

I have also seen a shady used car dealer disguising their PBN's as car dealerships.. with inventory and everything.

just a tip that PBN doesn't have to be a "blog". It can be any kind of site in your niche.

lightningblitz said:

Darko, right? It has been a while. Did you read my post to Leith above? Same applies to you. Why do you honest guys in the selling business want to post on a thread I can be mean in? I can't say anything negative about you as you sell high quality.

You are one of the 'good guys' I should have mentioned in the OP along with SEO Lover and Pyro in the domain selling arena.

I have bought a couple of your domains and they were always clean and good domains. They fall into the 'good quality' spectrum and I think you and the two aforementioned may be alone in that league.

Thank you for chiming in.

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Appreciate the kind words, lightningblitz!

Again, great writeup to point people who are interested in building a PBN (or using one) in the right direction!

Thanks this information is good!

Jesse Custer said:

Thanks for the great post.

I have a question. What's your opinion on buying and expired domain and using a Wayback Archive program to restore the website to how it was. Then sticking a link in there. Seems to easy, so I must be missing something?

Also, Basstracker boats mentioned a reliable host which offers different sever IPs for several hundred dollars a year. Does anybody recall that host?

Sorry - that was 2 questions

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You can use Wayback to rebuild the site.

What I suggest and not many people do is to re - create the site the BEST you can, then add a post which is related to the sites topic and your money site.

For example, your money site is about cars and your PBN domain is about vacuums. Most people just put a car article on the PBN. What I do and suggest you do is wirte a post about the right vacuum to clean up dirt in a car. Then place your link in that.

This works better, seems more natural, and works better than just a random car post.

BTB uses Host 9 which gives unique IPs. They are a pretty good host too. But you still have some foot prints by using a single registrar.

LeanLow said:

If PBN is really a PBN (belongs only to you) and you know what you are doing, you can rank medium terms with ~15PBN domains (I'm talking the ones that people fight for on auctions and pay 200$ and not the 20$ shitty ones that you see on forums).

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And you are right on the money. I can't wait to get the two review posts from your network to see how great your domains are. You are one of the few sellers who calls it like it is and I know you actually look at the back link profile of your domains.

freckletone said:

I don't do PBN's but one nugget I can offer is I've seen a huge authority site using a PBN in the mortgage industry and it was so well disguised I could not even tell it was a PBN at first glance. They set it up to look like a real REALTOR's or Real Estate Company site... with custom WP theme... expensive looking logo and desin, a feed with real home for sales listings pulled from MLS site or whatever... Super relevant to their niche. Also had real contact number etc... looks better than most real estate/realtors site... I think they had a few set up as a realtor's website (with a fake pic and contact info and everything) and others as a realty company. Very sneaky. It is one of the biggest authority sites in mortgage; had a DA of over 80... and surprisingly using PBN's to rank their interior pages for super competitive keywords that they weren't able to get in the top 3 for even with a DA of over 80. It's not an affiliate site but an authority one almost on par with like New York Times etc..

I've also seen some PBN's that look like corporate sites... and others that look like a product site, like the homepage of a cosmetics company selling a cream (just an example)... and looking super legit but it was a PBN...

I have also seen a shady used car dealer disguising their PBN's as car dealerships.. with inventory and everything.

just a tip that PBN doesn't have to be a "blog". It can be any kind of site in your niche.

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Man, you are 100% right. I have seen that in harder niches as well and the sites look completely real. Unless the reviewer is from the area and knows for a fact the business is fake, there is no way to prove it is not a real business.

Most people ignore the fact that if you build a real (fake) business your PBN is going to be safe.

I am a big fan of non - blog PBN sites which you re build and make a contextual post to link back to your money site.

accelerator_dd said:

Appreciate the kind words, lightningblitz!

Again, great writeup to point people who are interested in building a PBN (or using one) in the right direction!

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Thanks again. I am just being honest. You are one of the good guys.

Thanks for an informative insight into PBNs.

Glad to spread knowledge Mister F.

No offense but there have been about ten of these posted over the past couple years with the exact same information, it's a pretty basic guide. When I read "you're doing it wrong" I thought "cool, gonna be some new tips for guys here." Nope, just click bait.

I thought I provided some new insight not yet shared, but I guess not. I will step up my game for next time. My apologies for the click bait. I was responding to all of the threads I read on this forum.

lightningblitz said:

Man, you are 100% right. I have seen that in harder niches as well and the sites look completely real. Unless the reviewer is from the area and knows for a fact the business is fake, there is no way to prove it is not a real business.

Most people ignore the fact that if you build a real (fake) business your PBN is going to be safe.

I am a big fan of non - blog PBN sites which you re build and make a contextual post to link back to your money site.




Thanks again. I am just being honest. You are one of the good guys.

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I knew it was fake because I looked up the address and it was in the middle of a field. On some other ones I looked up the fake real estate agent and there was no more info about them. Some of the other ones were actually submitted to business directories etc... If they used a business address in a building etc I would not have been able to tell.

Much better than the really bad PBN's I've seen where it's just 6 posts with homepage posts to the money sites. I can always tell it's a PBN even when they link to other authority sites and add in a few posts with 0 links to try and mix it up; it's still painfully obvious.

What really crazy is that people invest so much time, efforts and money building their PBNs and doing every little thing right, but when it comes to buying PBN/SEO domains they take shortcuts and doing so many mistakes. http://www.tbsolutions.info/articles/ cover many interesting aspects of those common mistakes.

This is an awesome share OP, thanks for the helpful post

Great post OP. Yeah u are right about the lazy hosting stuff that almost 98% of PBN builders avoid but it is crucial and learned some new points here regarding class A, B IP's and WhoIs details, will definitely gonna try the former address formula . Thanks

wtf is PBN? if its private why some fellas sell links?
cant we use old "linkfarms" or "link swamp" term instead?
"comm.services on PBN" is misleading

Another great post buddy

lightningblitz said:

Who Is this registered to?


The Who Is details, or lack there of, is a major foot print I see a lot of people doing, so I am going to give away a 'secret' on how I reguster my own domains.

Step One - Who Is privacy off the bat and registered under my registrar account.
Step Two - Add new Who Is details to my registrar account.
Step Three - Associate new Who Is details with the domain.
Step Four - Remove Who Is

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I was a little confused at first. So in step four you just remove the private whois and use the new whois details, right?

lightningblitz said:

Some basic things people miss which blows my mind are:

- Free Themes on all Domains
- Wordpress on all Domains
- No profile pictures
- No about us, contact or privacy pages
- One page sites
- No Logo
- Obviously spun content
- Horrible formatting
- Etc

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You nailed it here. Those are simple things to do but still when you start scaling it up, just want to somehow finish it off and that is where you give the first footprint.

lightningblitz said:

Step One - Who Is privacy off the bat and registered under my registrar account.
Step Two - Add new Who Is details to my registrar account.
Step Three - Associate new Who Is details with the domain.
Step Four - Remove Who Is

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Something i can relate to myself and an excellent method to keep your cool when there is mass murder of PBN sites by Google. What i have seen from my experience, it is the Private WhoIs registered sites that get hits first & deindexed. I believe if a manual reviewer takes a look at your site and Private Whois, that combination immediately raises a red flag with them and not too long for your penalty/deindexation. My personal opinion and what i have experienced.

Go Daddy accounts and use the dollar coupon for the first year if you need to.

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No... that is not possible unless you have 10 creditcards, i wanted to open a second godaddy account for a PBN domain from the auction and i could not do it as the card was connected to another account

The rest is absolutely spot on... this is how i build my PBN's

fc-dh said:

No... that is not possible unless you have 10 creditcards, i wanted to open a second godaddy account for a PBN domain from the auction and i could not do it as the card was connected to another account

The rest is absolutely spot on... this is how i build my PBN's

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I use vanilla visa gift cards. I fund the card enough to register the domain + pay for a full year of hosting @ $1/mo. Works perfectly fine.

I never use WHOIS privacy or block bots. Is this a good thing? I use fake name and address, email etc for registrar and hosting. So when someone looks its registered to a fake person. Is that a good thing? I do throw in some Whois privacy here and there