Creating a good private blog network (PBN) takes some time, knowledge and money. It is really doable to create a good PBN with a couple of thousands if not hundreds. If you do not have the money, get a job, because good PBNs cost money.
So, how do I find PBN sites?
If you do not know how to know which domain is a good one- continue reading, you will know at the end.
Getting a couple of sites for $100 and throwing some random content will not do the trick if you want to rank big time keywords. But if you want to be first for keywords with low competition this will do the work. Of course you will need keyword research knowledge and you will need to know what low competition is.
You do not need PBN for all keywords.
If you have SEMRush account you can see that they give this competitiveness column for each keyword and they mark this column with KD% which is an estimate of how difficult it would be to rank in organic search.
If I see that KD% is below 75% and the keyword is well paid and have a lot of searches I will try to rank that keyword with basic on-page SEO. This usually works. That is one of the reasons I like SEMRush. So, why waste good PBN if you can rank without links, right?
PBN prices, from small and cheap to big and “expensive”
Is PBN good for your SEO? If you are in a small niche with a low competition and you cannot seem to move in top 3 there you might need a PBN. For these weaker keywords with low competition a 5 site PBN could do the trick.
Start at expireddomain.net (register for a free account because you get more metrics if you register) and search new coming auctions or Buy Now domains. You can set the “in the last 24 hours” in the setting. This way you get domains that are new to the market.
You can get some low hanging fruits for a couple of hundreds there, some DA 30-ish domains with clear history. Basically $1K could get you 5 nice domains. But you will probably need to spend a week or two in front of your screen if you wanna go extra safe route.
If you need something more or if you have a client that wants the real deal, you will probably need to spend $5,000-$10,000 in order to secure long term or stable rankings.
If we are talking about enterprise solutions, $50,000 can take you places when it comes to a great PBN. I am talking out of this World PBN setup.
Often I see people asking:”Is this domain good (for PBN)?” or “I bought a domain that was previously spammed, what should I do with it?”.
Setting up Hosting for PBNs
What I like to do when it comes to hosting for private blog networks is to think of each site as a separate human being. This means that manual reviewer should not be able to connect these sites. Each site should be hosted with a different hosting provider (different IP of course). Furthermore overall look and feel should be different and mix of HTML and WP sites are what I am for. This is all common sense but many people fail on easy things.
Do not interlink your PBN sites
Another common sense thing that people forget about. There is no reason to interlink your PBN sites, that is a big no-no. Why would you do that?
Having “relevant” PBNs is for morons talking on SEO forums
I heard it 1000 times:”You need to get relevant links, bla bla bla…or you will not get laid”. This is one of those things that just make no sense. If you are in pet shop niche, and you get a link from Salon.com I am sure you will not complain about it. A good link is a good link.
So forget about making your PBN relevant, rather make it in the same niche it was before you bought it, and you might actually get some traffic to your PBNs. And guess what, you can even throw some Google Ads so you earn money with your PBN.
Use different anchors when linking to your site
Do not ruin your money and effort by playing the spam game. Make your keyword cloud appear natural.
So, do not use all same anchor on all sites, instead use 30% brand name, 30% percent random keywords and 30% keywords u wanna rank for.
Building a powerful network of PBN sites with a twist.
People new to SEO tend to skip great opportunities just because domain was spammed with gibberish content and bad links. People are scared. They think that few months of bad history can totally destroy a domain with hundreds of legitimate mentions in top online magazines.
I will prove you they are wrong. And I will show you that spammed domain can be resurrected in a matter of days/weeks. Building a solid network is not hard, nor time consuming, and requires basic SEO knowledge and some balls.
If you are new to SEO this might be too much for you.
Few weeks ago, I went to auctions.godaddy.com to check out expiring domains market. I don’t visit this place as often as I did before but with the help of expireddomains.net you can see basic data (History,SEMRush, TF…) and prices.
Now, there are some domains with great metrics but if the domain is spammed….to death.. I don’t bother with these domains. “Blue pills” all over the place means only one thing.
Don’t even bother. Too many links to disavow. I am not saying it can’t be done, I am just saying it may take a lot of time to disavow all links, and for what? So you can have a domain that probably won’t rank for anything. Small amount of legit links =not good.
But, if a domain shows years of clean history and hundreds (if not thousands) of clean links from big sites….well, that’s a completely different story. It does pay off to bid on these domains.
Few weeks ago, I saw one interesting domain (I will refer to this domain as AGENCY from now on) in my kind of niche (Marketing, SMM, PR, Consulting…that sort of thing) on auction and the price at that time (some 5 days before the auction closed) was around $100. Domain authority of AGENCY is …50. Nice.
But here is the thing
I submitted my proxy bid at $300. This means that GoDaddy will bid in my name to the maximal price of $300. Which is a bargain for this domain. I thought someone would probably outbid me, but nothing changed since the price reached $147.
I was waiting to see what is going to happen in the last 5 minutes (that’s when the price usually goes up tenfold) but the auction ended with my win and I got domain for $147. I couldn’t believed it.
I knew I would need to submit domain at http://www.google.com/webmasters/ to see if there are manual actions since AGENCY was spammed. But before submission I wanted to see if Google is going to index it if I put up a site.
If it index it, this would mean that the AGENCY probably survived spam. I bought a premium theme, created fair looking (PR agency kind of ) site. I also created a blog for AGENCY and site looked good. Few days passed, nothing changed, site wasn’t indexed.
I entered domain into Webmsaters Search Console and I got a sweat little message.
Pure spam and gibberish content.
First step– I submitted reconsideration request that was just a short message. Don’t sweat about reconsideration requests. Just send a short message. My message was 2 sentences long. I won’t be showing a screenshot of an actual message here but it was something like:” I got the message that domain is under penalty. We think it was either hacked or spammed before. Domain is clear from spam now, please let us know if we have to do anything else”
It is really that simple. No need for long stories .They will see if you are telling the truth or not. I was expecting to see their answer in 2 weeks but it actually took them 8 days. And this is what they sent.
AGENCY wasn’t indexed just yet and I did wait 24-48 hours before I saw first page indexed. They did say in their message that it will take some time before you see changes. In both your Search Console and Google index.
When first pages were indexed I checked Search Console and noticed that Manual Action is gone. Site is clear. A fresh start. I immediately ordered 10 more articles for the site so I can update the blog for AGENCY from time to time. I will also now go and recreate the pages with the highest amount of inbound links. This won’t be spam content and I will try to keep everything legit.
Second step-Just in case, I also submitted a small disavow file with a list of 20-ish domains that were used to spam AGENCY with bad links. Submitting disavow file is also easy, especially if you are disavowing domains, instead of specific URLs.
Third step is to see if we can rank some pages using old links and new content THAT FIT these links. So, no viagra and cialis BS.
Costs for this domain
$147- GD auctions
$10-ish for domain registration (one year)
$50-ish for a premium template at Themeforest. You don’t have to use premium template but it makes all the difference if you don’t want to look like 1000 of other sites out there.
$100-ish for articles
$0-logo. My VA did it
So, that’s just shy over $300 and I got myself a great domain.
Just in case you wonder how good this domain is, I will here list some of the domains where Agency is mentioned. (real mentions, not some fake link injections)
Mashable, TechCrunch, The Next Web, IndianaEDU, SAP, WashingtonPost, CopyBlogger, TED, HubSpot, ChrisBrogan, Content Marketing Institute, Web Pro News, Guy Kawasaki, CISION, Venture Beat….and hundreds of other reputable sites from North America, Australia, Europe, South America, Asia.
Don’t be afraid to act, don’t do what other people do.