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PBN SEO – How to build a Private Blog Network

August 9, 2014 By Alex Fortin 14 Comments

Backlink is the name of the game. To get them you can either create great content and promote it or build backlink yourself. Today in this PBN SEO post, I’ll show you how to build a private blog network that will rank your site for any keywords. Stay Tune!

That’s why you need to know how to build a Private Blog Network  (PBN).

Let’s start by having a look at what other SEO experts think of Private Blog Networks.

Brian Dean from Backlinko.com is an active user of PBNs:

 BD

And this is what Matthew Woodward from matthewwoodward.co.uk has to say on Private Blog Networks.

MW

Now that you see that everybody is using it, you’re probably wondering how  you can create your own.

How to build a Private Blog Network step by step and start ranking any site.

There  are 3 three simple steps in setting up your own Private Blog Network.

  • Step 1 Choose your domains
  • Step 2 Pick a hosting provider
  • Step 3 Create and publish your content

Rinse and repeat.

Let’s have a look at each step in more detail.

Step 1: choose your domains

The first step is to purchase an expired domain.

Why an expired domain?

Because you want all the  authoritative juicethey have already built to be passed down to your money site!

To find these , just head over to www.ExpiredDomains.net .

Filter your results

There  are  millions of domains available on ExpiredDomains.net. We need to set some filters up. Select “Expired Domains,”and open the “show filter” option.

expired show filter

We only want to search through Deleted.com, Deleted.net, and Deleted.org domains.

Let’s narrow down our search by selecting the ones that have only been renewed in the last 24 hours.  Make sure to click on “no,” “Fake PRs,” “no unsure,” “PRs,” and “no PageRank -1.”

common filter

Next, we are going to click on “Additional Filter,” select the language you are looking for, and obviously select “only available domains.”

additional feature

Finally, click on Adwords & SEO Filter. We want a minimum of Moz Domain Authority (DA) (DA) of 10 and a Moz Page Authority(PA) of 10.

seo filter

That’s pretty good. We had over 2 million domains to look through when we started and now  we’ve narrowed it down to 528. That’s exactly what we want.

We don’t care too much about PR for now. What we are really looking for is a decent amount of backlinks coming from multiple domains. The more, the better. We also want a high TF/CF DA/PA.

In the picture below I sorted the website by DP (the number of backlinks from different domains) CaribBeAnnetConnect.com looks like a good pick. It’s an old domain, with over a 100 backlinks, and they are coming from 38 different domains. Let’s run some further analysis to see if we are going to  pick this domain or not.

Deleted .com Domains » ExpiredDomains.net

Analyse your domains

Head over to http://moz.com/researchtools/ and enter your URL. Make sure to test the www. version because  it will return a different result. The DA is 26 and the PA is 38. There  are 50 different domains pointing to our website. This looks great and it’s exactly what we want.

Open Site Explorer1

Now log in to http://www.majesticseo.com/ and open a free account so they won’t limit your daily search.

We want to make sure there are no spam links pointing to our site. We also want to check the anchor text diversity. The brand name is 63% of the anchor text., There is a little bit of diversity and it doesn’t look too spammy.

We don’t want any Chinese, porn, gambling, or any shady backlinks like that. Click on different links on the left to double check that those links are legit. Do the same on moz.com.

Site Explorer Results   Summary   Majestic SEO

Head over to http://www.domaintools.com/ and enter the URL. It will pull out the history of the domain. You don’t want to see the domain drop more than 2 times.

Finally, you want to make sure it is indexed by Google. In the search bar type: site:domainname.com. In our case, the search doesn’t return any results and this site expired in the last 24 hours. This is not good, and trying to re-index a site can be really hard. This is not what we want to do, so we need to drop this domain at this point.

site caribbeannetconnect.com    Google Search

That’s all you need to do to analyze them. Usually, you’ll be able to find a few good domains every time you  have a look. There  are 100,000  domains that expire  every day, so there’s plenty of choice. Just take your time.

Repeat the process with the .com, .net, and .org domains. You don’t need to get all of your domains at once. Get a few, build them up, and come back later to get some more.

If you want to see what the domain looked like before, go to https://archive.org/ and enter the domain URL. They take regular snapshots of all the webpages on the net and you’ll see exactly what the site looked like when it was online.

Register your domain

Head over to your favorite name registrar, search for the domain, and register it just like you would do normally for any domain name. Just make sure to get the WHOIS privacy. https://www.namecheap.com/ offers it for free on new domains and it is a good place to get started.  i

Remember, we want to keep our footprint as low as possible, so use different registrars and different accounts to purchase your domain name.

Step 2: Pick a hosting provider

Go to: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4 you You can acquire   very cheap hosting for about  $5-$15/year per domain. Open a new account with a different provider for each of your domains to avoid a footprint.

Shared Hosting Offers   Web Hosting Talk

Step 3: Create and publish your content

Your content needs to look as natural as possible:No spun content; only a well-written-unique article. On https://www.odesk.com/ you can get an article for bout $3-$5 per 500 words. Make sure the length varies between articles. Some  are 200 words and some  are 1000. It needs to look natural and no one writes blog posts of exactly 500 words.

If you need  ten articles, get  ten different people to write  one article each. That way you can better compare quality and price between writers.

Get about  five articles per website to start and add 1-3 one to three pictures per article and/or a YouTube video.

Link to your site

Link  your money site  to the first few sentences of your article so it  hopefully shows up on the  page blog excerpt.

Link  to a non-competitive  authoritative site in your niche two to three times per article.  You don’t want a 500-word article with only one link to your money site because this could raise a red flag. But the main reason we are linking to an  authoritative site is to add relevance and actually help us rank higher.

Don’t use the exact match keyword you are gunning for in your anchor text. If you are trying to rank for “coffee maker”, use a phrase that contextualizes  the keyword but is not  an exact match: Ex:  : “Top 10 best coffee makers of 2014″

Diversify your anchor text. Use The URL and the brand name of your money site in the anchor text. Don’t worry., You’ll still get link juice  passed down to your website and it will look even more natural.

Don’t point all your links to your  homepage. Have at least 20% pointing to the inner page of your money site.

Make every site different

When someone lands on one of your sites, you don’t want them to think it is a Private Blog Network. They need to think it’s a genuine website with unique, high-quality content. To achieve that, you will need a few things:

  •  Insert a logo that looks professional (go on fiver to get one)
  • Install some random plugins, like social sharing and side bar widgets.
  • Install a different WordPress theme on each blog (having  20-11 installs on every site is a big no no.)

Randomize permalinks. Select a different setting for every website.

Permalink Settings ‹ Alex Fortin .com — WordPress1

Create additional pages

Create an About page, a Contact Us page. Sometimes add a Privacy or a Terms and Conditions page to keep it random. (you can get a template for those pages if you Google it)

What types of plugins to install

The less, the better.

  • Redirection (301 redirects broken links of old, deleted pages)
  • askismet (keep your post free of spam comments )
  • w3 total cache (speed up the site)
  • yaost WordPress  SEO (best  SEO software)
  • Yet Another Related Post Plugins (related post plugin)

Remember

Never interlink your blog network. Keep every blog separated from each other. Nothing must link them to one another.

Do not use spun content. You are creating a highquality website that you will use to rank your site again and again. Treat them like gold.

Create links from forums and blog comments pointing to your money site to diversify  its backlink profile.

Build your empire gradually. Once you purchase a domain, apply a WordPress theme  to it and add a few articles right away. Do not spread things too thin;slow and steady wins the race.

Put this string of code in your .htaccess file to block the backlink checker so competitors can’t report you.

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*rogerbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*exabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*mj12bot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*dotbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*gigabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*ahrefsbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*sitebot.* bad_bot
<Limit GET POST HEAD>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot
</Limit>

Wrapping it up

There you have it. The complete guide to create your Private Blog Network.

Ready to get started?

Just remember to bookmark this page so you can come back to it later.

Oh, and one last thing: If anyone asks you how to rank a website in 2014, just link to this post!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: PBN, Private Blog Network

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. news-bbc says

    February 8, 2015 at 3:37 pm

    hi.. i want to make pvn network, i have 1 confusion i need select my site related domains ? or find any good rank expire domain ? my 2nd Question is i use new ip/proxy for all domain or use my own ip ?
    i mean when i put post or log in my domains so use proxy ip ?

    Reply
    • Alex says

      February 9, 2015 at 6:25 am

      Hi

      When selecting your expired domain, try to look for highly related domains. This will help you a LOT in the creation of your PBN and the link juice you will receive from them will be a lot better. If the site as nothing to do with your niche, than just stick with the original niche of the site and write the 1 article that will link to your site with a twist that makes it credible that there is a link to your site. (the idea is to survive a manual verification from google)

      Second question, you don’t need to log in using different IP, as long as their are hosted on different server then it doesn’t matter which IP you use. I personally login using my own IP but its up to you. If you are worried, you can use a service like UltraSurf (http://ultrasurf.us/) which is totally free and let you change your IP at will.
      Cheers

      Reply
  2. live4therisk says

    March 29, 2015 at 11:08 am

    How many money sites can you point to per PBN Site? The reason I ask is I want to get a gauge for how much it costs per link?

    Reply
    • Alex says

      April 9, 2015 at 10:34 am

      as many as you want. the rule of thumb for safety and manual review is about 3 money site/blog. But if you have a PBN with 5 blog, each of those blog can point to 3 different site. So you can have 15 money site n total.

      Reply
  3. Abhi says

    June 26, 2015 at 7:16 pm

    Hi Alex,

    Great Post Indeed.
    Was very informative and helpful, thanks for sharing. I have few queries.

    1. Does PBN still work in 2015? and any more tips to remember?
    2. From the content what does this mean when purchasing a theme “”(having 20-11 installs on every site is a big no no.)???
    3. How many blogs I can publish on one domain?
    4. How many Domains I should start with to make a decent network if I’m working for small-medium organizations to rank on high and medium competition keywords?

    I would be really looking forward to your response.

    Thanks in advance.
    AB

    Reply
    • Alex says

      July 1, 2015 at 10:28 am

      Hi Abhi

      1. Yes it still work. You are getting back link and back link will always work.22
      2. IT means do not install the same original theme on all your site. Use a different wordress theme on each one of theme so if you get a manual review, it looks like unrelated website. It need to seems like different person build each one.
      3. If you mean how many blog per server, the answer is 1 per server.
      4. Start with one and keep adding until you reach number 1 spot.

      Reply
  4. Martin says

    February 26, 2016 at 11:54 am

    Hi Alex,

    thank you for sharing the .htaccess file.

    I have a question about expired domains. I found a good one:
    TF 29 CT 30 DA 19 PA 29 Age: <10 years, with good looking backlink-profile.

    It was originally frensh, but then chinese and now expired. There are no chinese backlinks and the chinese website didnt look spammy.

    What do you think about domains, that were in chinese/foreign language for some time?

    Thanks for answering my question 🙂

    Reply
    • Alex says

      February 26, 2016 at 5:04 pm

      Hey Martin

      Personally i wouldn’t go for a website with foreign language, particularly not chinese.

      But, if the backlink profile is clean, you can “try it out”, It could be an home run!

      Reply
  5. Sam says

    April 8, 2016 at 8:28 am

    Hey Alex,

    Confused about whether or not you need a different IP address for each domain. Reading other articles about this, they say that is the most important part. So if you get different hosting for each Blog, will it work as if you are getting a different IP address for each blog as well?

    Reply
    • Alex says

      April 8, 2016 at 10:12 am

      Hi Sam

      that’s right. If you get different hosting, you automatically get different IP address.

      Reply
  6. Hank says

    May 13, 2016 at 3:45 am

    I want to make sure that my PBN’s doesnt explode up.

    I have read that you have to make different Ip class C for everyt site, can you explain me more detailed this please?

    Reply
    • Alex says

      May 13, 2016 at 2:40 pm

      Yes, you need different IP Class C for your blog network or else they easily leave a footprint if multiple site have the same one.

      The easy way around it is simply to hire 1 hosting service per website. Don’t use the same hosting for more than 1 website. Use the cheap 10$/year hosting package and you should be good.

      Cheers

      Reply
  7. Jamie says

    July 29, 2016 at 3:13 am

    Hi Alex,

    Firstly great guide, you always sound like you know what you’re talking about and its great you’re educating others in the dark arts 😉

    PBN’s are a great way to rank fast. I know SEO is shifting towards content marketing but meh, you can reach out to hundreds of people and get nothing even with amazing content. During that time you could of put a small PBN up!

    I think you/readers will be interested in something I’ve created. I’ve written a tool (like 100% totally free) to find hidden PBN links. You know how people block them with htaccess and robots.txt well this gets around that.

    It works on the basis that if your competitors have a PBN ranking their money website for “cheap ipads in france” then it stands to reason their PBN page linking to their money website will contain the term “cheap ipads in france” somewhere on it. It might be anchor text, meta tags or content body. So it will rank for the search term “cheap ipads in france”. It might be the 100th page, it might be the 1000th page, but it should be there somewhere. Especially with the search engines set to show all results. PBN Hunter takes all the terms they’re ranking for and crawls every page Bing, Google and Yahoo bring back for that search term, checking for any links to the money website.

    Check it out there’s a link on my homepage, its called PBN Hunter. http://www.SupaGrowth.com. Enjoy! 🙂

    Reply
  8. Abhishek Tripathi says

    January 12, 2017 at 10:52 am

    Hi Alex,

    I loved the way you explained PBN in easy words. The only question where I get confused is that is it necessary to buy expired domains when I am free to make blogs on blogger, wordpress(dot)com, tumbler. And then link the posts of PBN blogs to money site. Which will you suggest and why?

    Regards
    Abhishek

    Reply

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