Creating a Private Blog Network (PBN) is building a website network to help boost your main site’s search engine rankings. This is generally done by purchasing expired domains with decent-to-good authority and creating content that backlinks to your primary website, which you would like to rank. It’s important to note that PBNs are considered a black-hat SEO strategy by Google and can lead to penalties if detected, but setting up a good Private Blog Network can be achieved by following certain basic practices.
Build a Private Blog Network
Here’s a basic guide on how you could theoretically build a PBN while finding ways to overcome the associated risks.
Step1: Structure your network
- Take a synopsis of what you’re going to achieve with your Private Blog Network. Whether the key motive is to improve the ranking for a particular niche or keyword, or to increase the domain authority/rating, or build a good community of relevant blogs?
- The basic idea will help you to understand what should be the ultimate outcome. Then, go back to the start, and chart down the expense that takes a toll on you. It can be domain purchase, domain ID protection, website hosting, content writing, or more.
Step 2: Find Expired Domains
- Research with the tools available online to find relevant niche domains. The most prominent tools are Ahref, SemRush, Ubersuggest, and Majestic, where you can find the number of referring domains, backlinks, and their ratings with traffic history.
- Use the Wayback machine tool to evaluate the history of each domain. If there’s a possibility or luck chooses you, the history of content being similar and not spammy adds a cherry to your research work.
Step 3: Acquire Domains
- There are platforms to make your job easier in obtaining the right domain, for which you can use expired free listing websites, and domain auctioning websites.
- While purchasing the domains, mask the WHOIS information with domain ID Protection to avoid exposing all the registrant details online that show all the domain belongs to the same owner. There are certain TLDs, where you can’t buy ID protection, which is a rule by the appropriate TLD’s registry. For example. .in domain doesn’t have ID protection.
Step 4: Setup PBN Hosting
- Hosting your blogs is one of the crucial parts of avoiding the footprint to build a perfect Private Blog Network. Best PBN Hosting should provide you with unique IPs, a separate website managing control panel, and private nameservers (nameserver independently created).
- A separate managing control panel gives no room for more than one website to be in the same space.
- A unique IP address differentiates between domains from pointing to different IPs when traversing online.
- Private Nameserver setup will make the nameserver identical to your set of blog network to project them unique.
Step 5: Develop the Websites
- Each site should have a unique design with different themes, and structure. Use WordPress, Joomla, or any other CMS that allows for varied designs.
- Most importantly, Publish high-quality, relevant content regularly to develop the website organically. The content should include links pointing back to your landing page, and they should be used sensibly to avoid detection.
Step 6: Link Building
- Place internal links in the content that seem natural. Avoid over-optimizing anchor text, like having the exact match target keyword that directs to the landing page.
- For internal linking between the Private Blog Network websites, be very cautious in not exposing the network online showing everything belongs to one.
Step 7: Maintain Websites
- Regularly update content, plugins, themes, and content management of the websites. It will keep the crawling of the websites in-flow and doesn’t break online availability.
- Periodically check the health of your domains with stats, the relevance of your content, and the status of your backlinks.
Step 8: Monitor Performance
- Use tools to track the impact of your PBN on your main site’s SEO performance and make the adjustments that you think recent modifications affected positively or negatively.
- Be quick to adjust your SEO strategy, which you keep learning every day in the industry.
Also Learn: The Future of PBN in Modern SEO: Opportunity & Best Practices
Risks and Considerations
- Penalties: Google actively penalizes sites that participate in link schemes, including the use of PBNs. Penalties can range from losing rankings to being completely de-indexed.
- Ethical Considerations: The SEO community generally considers the use of PBNs unethical. Consider the long-term implications of using such strategies on your brand and reputation.
Alternatives to PBNs
Given the risks associated with PBNs, consider alternative SEO strategies:
- Content Marketing: Create compelling, useful content that naturally attracts backlinks.
- Guest Blogging: Legitimately contribute to other blogs in exchange for backlinks with quality content.
- Social Media Engagement: Use social media platforms to increase visibility and natural link attention.
Building a PBN involves a significant investment of time and resources with a high level of risk. It’s crucial to curate these factors carefully and consider more sustainable, risk-free SEO strategies.