Simple PBN Footprint Questions

Danny1234 · Dec 31, 2017

Hey guys, searched the forum for some time and can't seem to find any sort of topic on it.

I've got a 20 site network, and I currently have my articles published and pending,and am starting to link out to my money sites after some aging of the posts(about 30 days, or quicker to ones that passed my testing fast).

The couple questions I have, is I plan to use about 10-12 of these for homepage links on excerpts to my money site. The other 8 I plan to use for tier 2 links to those sites.

1) Should I link the tier two links to the post itself, or to the homepage as it contains the link?

2) How many of my tier 1 PBNs can I link to from my tier 2 sites? To gain maximum value for the tier 2 sites, can I link to a couple of my tier 1 PBNs from my tier 2 site? Or is this just a glaring footprint?

thetroglodyte · Dec 31, 2017

Hey Danny you are going to get a bunch of feedback on this question I'm sure and it will probably range from good feedback to highly questionable. I think the question you have to ask yourself is "how longterm am I thinking".

If 1+ years down the road is the goal you need to be cautious about future updates not what google currently may or may not be looking for. For example you shouldn't have a single tier 2 blog linking to every single tier 1 blog. You shouldn't have a tier 2 blog link to a tier 1 blog and the money site.

If you have to ask the question "is this a footprint" then it probably is. Maybe it's not something google cares about right now but it likely will be in the future. And even if they don't penalize your site for it, they will likely ignore the link at some point rendering it useless.

If the goal is short term i.e. trying to sell a hot commodity for a few months until the craze dies down, then I wouldn't stress too much about it if all of your content is unique, unique hosting, ips, etc...

Also, I should add if the goal is long term make sure every one of your blogs has posts to other authority websites. CNN.com NYTimes.com or the equivalent and also some niche specific authority websites. Some posts should have just 1 outbound link some should have 2 or 3. And have posts that don't link out at all. Mix it up a bit. Overall you should have links going out to a lot more sites than just your money site but they all need to be authority based websites since a big google ranking factor is "neighborhood". In addition to that, 1 outbound link on every post or linking to only 1 site is a footprint.

Another smart longterm play is to create unique social media accounts for each blog. Keep them active and get engagement on them even if it's minimal. It's a lot of work but it's not only a huge ranking factor that is increasing over time but it will help keep the blogs looking authentic.

Danny1234 · Dec 31, 2017

thetroglodyte said:
Hey Danny you are going to get a bunch of feedback on this question I'm sure and it will probably range from good feedback to highly questionable. I think the question you have to ask yourself is "how longterm am I thinking".

If 1+ years down the road is the goal you need to be cautious about future updates not what google currently may or may not be looking for. For example you shouldn't have a single tier 2 blog linking to every single tier 1 blog. You shouldn't have a tier 2 blog link to a tier 1 blog and the money site.

If you have to ask the question "is this a footprint" then it probably is. Maybe it's not something google cares about right now but it likely will be in the future. And even if they don't penalize your site for it, they will likely ignore the link at some point rendering it useless.

If the goal is short term i.e. trying to sell a hot commodity for a few months until the craze dies down, then I wouldn't stress too much about it if all of your content is unique, unique hosting, ips, etc...

Also, I should add if the goal is long term make sure every one of your blogs has posts to other authority websites. CNN.com NYTimes.com or the equivalent and also some niche specific authority websites. Some posts should have just 1 outbound link some should have 2 or 3. And have posts that don't link out at all. Mix it up a bit. Overall you should have links going out to a lot more sites than just your money site but they all need to be authority based websites since a big google ranking factor is "neighborhood". In addition to that, 1 outbound link on every post or linking to only 1 site is a footprint.

Another smart longterm play is to create unique social media accounts for each blog. Keep them active and get engagement on them even if it's minimal. It's a lot of work but it's not only a huge ranking factor that is increasing over time but it will help keep the blogs looking authentic.

Thanks for this! Great information. When you say "you shouldn't have a tier 2 blog link to a tier 1 blog and then your money site" are you saying I am doing all of this wrong?

We are thinking long term. We are trying to rank for a couple review pages for our affiliates that would provide us with a hefty amount of income so we'd need it to stay that way. We have built a ton of natural outreach links for the pages as we are a pretty decent authority as it is but it seems like our competitors have some hidden PBNs as well because link profile wise our page crushes theirs, yet we can't outrank them. That is why I started all of these.

I spent about 5-6 hours on each website building it up, making "newsletter" popups, about pages, resource pages, contact forms consultation forms,polls in the sidebar etc. I think they look very realistic but in terms of social media with me being the co founder of our project that already takes up a ton of my time may not be doable. I could look to outsource it though.

thetroglodyte · Dec 31, 2017

Danny1234 said:
Thanks for this! Great information. When you say "you shouldn't have a tier 2 blog link to a tier 1 blog and then your money site" are you saying I am doing all of this wrong?

We are thinking long term. We are trying to rank for a couple review pages for our affiliates that would provide us with a hefty amount of income so we'd need it to stay that way. We have built a ton of natural outreach links for the pages as we are a pretty decent authority as it is but it seems like our competitors have some hidden PBNs as well because link profile wise our page crushes theirs, yet we can't outrank them. That is why I started all of these.

I spent about 5-6 hours on each website building it up, making "newsletter" popups, about pages, resource pages, contact forms consultation forms,polls in the sidebar etc. I think they look very realistic but in terms of social media with me being the co founder of our project that already takes up a ton of my time may not be doable. I could look to outsource it though.

Sorry that probably wasn't clear and you probably are not doing it wrong. I mean you should not have a tier 2 blog link to both your tier 1 AND your money site. But that probably came across as you shouldn't have a tier 2 link to tier 1 and then your tier 1 to your money site (which is perfectly normal and fine).

Sounds like you have everything covered. I wouldn't worry about the social media. Get to it when you have the time or resources to outsource it as you said. Half assing it would probably be a waste of time though and as an entrepreneur myself I know how stretched thin both money and time can quickly become.

I assume your blogs all have different themes, some different plugins, etc.. too?

Danny1234 · Dec 31, 2017

thetroglodyte said:
Sorry that probably wasn't clear and you probably are not doing it wrong. I mean you should not have a tier 2 blog link to both your tier 1 AND your money site. But that probably came across as you shouldn't have a tier 2 link to tier 1 and then your tier 1 to your money site (which is perfectly normal and fine).

Sounds like you have everything covered. I wouldn't worry about the social media. Get to it when you have the time or resources to outsource it as you said. Half assing it would probably be a waste of time though and as an entrepreneur myself I know how stretched thin both money and time can quickly become.

I assume your blogs all have different themes, some different plugins, etc.. too?

Every one has a different theme,registrars spread out over 5 accounts, 4 of them being private and 1 being public whois. Twenty different hosting accounts. Most websites have a 404 redirect to homepage if I couldn't find other pages on it that had enough juice to justify recreation. Yoast on all of them, cache on about 60 percent of them etc. I think I've done a pretty good job of masking them. I've got about 5 of them linking right now to our review that are around 30 days old(and passed tests) all with 4 posts published on separate days,and a fifth to come. I vary the external links to 25 to 50 percent of the posts linking out to an external authority.

Just wanted to see if I MAYBE could get away with linking to a couple of my tier 1 sites from my tier 2 PBNs to justify keeping them alive(registration and hosting etc) each year. Just trying to maximize value. I know tier ones should be limited to 1 or maybe 2 links to moneysite, but I wasn't sure about this.

One other question. I have been running tests on these PBNs with medium difficulty keywords and then removing the links after they have passed the test to send more of the juice to my moneysite link. Is this a no no? I would consider myself a beginner/borderline intermediate when it comes to PBNs so I want to make sure I'm not doing anything blatantly stupid.

thetroglodyte · Dec 31, 2017

Sounds like you set up everything really smart. I think you are good mate. And no I wouldn't worry about that as long as you weren't doing it very often and not to every blog.

If I was you, I'd probably sell some backlinks on the tier 2 accounts to help fund the whole thing. You can sell it with pretty high standards in place so you can reject sites that don't meet your criteria. Whether it be on here or fiverr sounds like you have setup a miny gold mine you could open for a handful of posts and then close down for a few months before reopening again. If you opt to go that route I'd keep the tier 1 sites completely private though for your own protection.

faisalmaximus · Dec 31, 2017

You setup everything wisely, be careful about one thing, that is don't give backlinks to same niche sites from the same PBNs all the time. If you do so Google will easily read your footprint and your PBNs may not give the actual benefit.

Danny1234 · Dec 31, 2017

Thanks for the help guys.

In terms of boosting the value of these pbns, do you think a place like seoclerks is good to feed them some web 2.0 links once in a while(talking about both T1 and T2 links)

My domains aren't exactly crushing it metrics wise, I instead focused on solely niche related sites that have a few very high authority backlinks or a bunch of links from medium strength sites.

In terms of hiding the pbns I think I have that down but in terms of extracting the maximum juice possible from the sites I am not too sure of. Some of the sites I picked up only have a DA of 12 or 13 but they have some authority links from massive sites in my niche and I figured a 404 to the home page and a link on an excerpt would pass a ton of juice to my site.

Money isn't exactly an issue as we are generating quite a bit from the money site as it is in a very profitable niche, and the reviews we are trying to rank would more than likely generate us high 5 figure profits over the course of the year. I'm willing to spend, I just don't want to waste. There is two of us doing non stop outreach and while we are getting better at it it's time consuming and frustrating as hell so I was kind of looking for an "easier" route so to speak. But if a 20 Pbn network is gonna cost me 1000 plus dollars a year with hosting registration and content generation it needs to be worth it.

mashina · Jan 2, 2018

You can ask Matt Diggity too. He knows a lot for PBNs

Simple PBN Footprint Questions

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