R.I.P Private Blog Networks

Not Really RIP but now that I have your attention

Yes, I have been reading numerious threads were people have been talking about loosing their rankings all of a sudden. I was smart enough to have done a test because I felt somthing was going to change very soon (Im Physic ) and made a blog that only had backlinks from private blog networks.. All the content was 100% Unique and passed copyscape, updated daily, pretty much the works.. Im about 90% sure that everyone has at-least tried some of these networks. The reason why I've done this is I had a very strong feeling a few months back that google was going to slap private blog networks.

The keyword competition was very low so I was already on page 3 without any backlinks, just onpage SEO. To make a long story short, after about a year of being #3 for my search term its back to where it was before I started to do any backlinking.

The reason for this is to many people started bragging about their rankings with private blog networks. I notice more and more sales threads coming up with people talking about "High PR Network With Different C-Class IPs" or "High PR Network With Aged Domains" etc... Now im not trying to bash BHW because this was not the only site were I was seeing these sales threads, as you know if you are a member of one SEO forum then you are probably a member of another one. I know people like to help, so when one method is working and you are a member of another forum and share that method and in turn someone else will copy your method and most likely end up sharing it on another forum (you see where im going with this) it only takes a matter of months before a good portion of the SEO community know whats working and whats not (If any of you read a book called Purple Cow by Seth Godin you will know what I mean when I say it takes a matter of months).


I would not be able to tell you that, even the best physic couldn't with such a big mind google has.

But, I can only tell you what I think is happening. Google knows about these High PR Blog Networks just like how they know people were manipulating blog comments and as we all know blog comments use to be king at one point before google updated their algorithm.

Now Part of google TOS is not to minipulate their search engine to gain higher ranking and of course none of us follow this rule or you would not be here reading this . So basically what I think is being done is google is kinda mad, they dont care about all your various links, your legit links and so on.. If you had a good portion of your links coming from a blog network which has been hit then your ranking should be going down PERIOD. Why you ask? Google is not stupid they know people are/were doing this and they know how much of a gain in SERP gain people were getting from these methods so all they had to do is simply devalue those links from the blogs that they discovered within these high PR blog networks.

So it would be no different as when you have a post from a high pr blog (on the front page) and you notice after about a week your site moves down in serp (not much) because the post are no longer on the homepage (were the real PR is) and has moved down to probably the second page or so as new blog post comes in. With this example, you see how even though you have other links before using the blog network, as soon as your link on the blog network leaves the homepage you already notice a drop in serp.

Now with that being said, by them devaluing an entire blog you would be nieve not to expect your ranking to drop once they deindex a blog on a private blog network (and from my experience even though these blog network claims to have 1000's of blogs I always end up having numerous post placed on the same blog over and over again which is a bigger read flag.) So google can do 1 of 2 things, drop your blog to the postion it was before you used the blog netowrks, or since you violated their TOS they could just drop it lower and in extream cases deindex your site.


1) Start your own private blog network.
- Google knows they cannot devalue blogs like they did with blog comments because a good potion of the internet now n days are made up of legit blogs and web 2.0 sites and doing so would do more damage than good.
- So by starting your own private blog network the chances of google deindexing your blogs are slim to none for the simple fact that you are not selling the service and therefore have no reason to investigate your blogs in the first place.

2) Use non popular blog networks
- If you use non popular blog networks, you are really just kinda slowing down the inevitable but your chances of getting slapped is significantly reduced compared to using a widely know network like BMR because all google really has to do is sign up for the service, pay for as many links as possible and simply deindex the domain, problem solved for them.

3) Most importantly, just like with anything in SEO. Dont put all your eggs in one backlinking basket and your site will live to see the top once again.
- Self Explanatory.

Anyways im hungry so im going to go get somthing to eat but I though I would share this to help a few noobs since when I was new I got help from alot of people so I thought ill do the same.

Diversity was always a key.

aznxmtg said:

Diversity was always a key.

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Not a key, the key

Anchor Text Variation is a big part of the new update.

Robby54 said:

Google knows they cannot devalue blogs like they did with blog comments because a good potion of the internet now n days are made up of legit blogs and web 2.0 sites and doing so would do more damage than good.

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This is exactly why blog networks are not dead, and never will be. As wannabie said, diversification is absolute in this game.
Bottom line, you simply cannot depend on one type of link to rank. It has never worked long term, and never will.

themidiman said:

This is exactly why blog networks are not dead, and never will be. As wannabie said, diversification is absolute in this game.
Bottom line, you simply cannot depend on one type of link to rank. It has never worked long term, and never will.

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I completely agree. It will always be a game of "making links look natural" through diversification of links as well as anchor texts.

Use non popular blog networks ?

can I get an example ? or should I be building/hosting my own blogs

themidiman said:

Bottom line, you simply cannot depend on one type of link to rank. It has never worked long term, and never will.

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I think I've said that 400 times.

I even tell clients to not spend so much with me but rather spread out their budget on a lots of different backlinks.

Robby54 said:

2) Use non popular blog networks
- If you use non popular blog networks, you are really just kinda slowing down the inevitable but your chances of getting slapped is significantly reduced compared to using a widely know network like BMR because all google really has to do is sign up for the service, pay for as many links as possible and simply deindex the domain, problem solved for them.

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I think this is a much better practice than attempting to create your own blog network using c-class IP's. When you are creating a blog network it's incredibly tough to avoid creating a footprint that is very easy for Google to follow and start devaluing your blogs, forcing you to not only maintain your site's ranking, but also try to manage and update a blog network.

Besides losing PR as you are bumped off the first page of a site, blogs with fewer postings each day also look much more natural to Google than a blog that gets hundreds of posts a day and you're more likely to find fewer submissions on a smaller, little known site.

These threads about blog networks being dead are getting annoying. I use quite a few blog networks, and none of my sites have been hit. And as another member said, there are so many legit blogs out there, I find it difficult to believe that Google would be able to crackdown specifically on blogs being used to manipulate rankings.

wannabie said:

Not a key, the key

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Yep, its all a psychological game, one of the reason why porn makes about 13 billion annually is not because people think its cool to watch, its all about instant gratification and with that being said there is always going to be people using the latest method working for the moment instead of waiting paitently for a long term solution .

thedon23 said:

These threads about blog networks being dead are getting annoying. I use quite a few blog networks, and none of my sites have been hit. And as another member said, there are so many legit blogs out there, I find it difficult to believe that Google would be able to crackdown specifically on blogs being used to manipulate rankings.

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I never said they were completely dead. And the reason why you have not been "hit" is because google most likely did not de-indexed any of the blogs your links were coming from yet.

Blog networks are certainly not dead. You just need to know how to use them. There was a great thread about the type of variety you should have as your anchor text. Additionally, as people are stating in this thread and all threads, variety is the key. You should never have all your links coming from one source. You never to diversify.

My main reason for saying that blog network is somewhat dead is what is stopping google from de-indexing more blogs once they become aware of the service? Meaning once they know about BMR and other networks alike all they need to do is keep paying for their subscriptions to these networks and keep de-indexing more blogs.

Now blog links itself (Value Wise) will never be dead. Im talking about the services.

Dori Friend Part Owner of seolinkmonster said it her self, she lost all her blogs because google kept de-indexing them and had to purchase a whole new set of blogs and she changed the name of her blog network, hence seolinkmonster was born.

PBN will still be around, just do a bunch of different links from various sources so you don't get hit so hard, like don't put all your egs in one basket

I'd say one thing I've also ALWAYS done is vary my anchor text. My first real site in August of 2010 was hit pretty quick. Over the period of the month, all the backlinks I built used the SAME anchor text. Site got sandboxed shortly after.

Ever since then, I've been very, very careful in terms of anchor text. I use HUNDREDS of variations, and it's been working quite well for me so far.

Robby54 said:

My main reason for saying that blog network is somewhat dead is what is stopping google from de-indexing more blogs once they become aware of the service? Meaning once they know about BMR and other networks alike all they need to do is keep paying for their subscriptions to these networks and keep de-indexing more blogs.

Now blog links itself (Value Wise) will never be dead. Im talking about the services.

Dori Friend Part Owner of seolinkmonster said it her self, she lost all her blogs because google kept de-indexing them and had to purchase a whole new set of blogs and she changed the name of her blog network, hence seolinkmonster was born.

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Robby, stop being a moron
your private network that you used was an oxymoron
how can you consider that a private network
when you haven't even done your homework

cool0403 said:

Robby, stop being a moron
your private network that you used was an oxymoron
how can you consider that a private network
when you haven't even done your homework

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Umm what private blog network are you talking about? I never listed the network I used?

I sand by my statement. Blog Networks Are Dead/Dieing. Secondly if you read the first line of this thread I told you why the title is the way it is.

The reason why I am clarifying is because people read what they want to see and ignore the rest, this is why im not offended by your comment.

Robby54 said:

Umm what private blog network are you talking about? I never listed the network I used?

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I think the point he is making is that if a blog network is open to the public, it cannot be private. My network is private, as nobody has access to it, no posts are sold.