Build your own private Blog Network And Rank For Anything
If you want to drastically improve your SERP results then you better learn how to build a private blog network! The way things are going you are going to need your own PBN to rank your money sites, especially if you are in a competitive niche!
But, before you start, you absolutely must go about it the right way! If you mess it up then you will have wasted a lot of time and a lot of money, and you could also jeopardise your rankings as google will slap you off the SERP’s.
But you have no need to worry about that as I m going to show you exactly how to do it under the radar. So grab a coffee and let me show you how to build a private blog network so you can rank any site!!
Why do we need a Private Blog network for SEO?
You’ve probably heard all about it. Sites getting de-indexed by Google for purchasing links from blog networks and link farms. It’s been happening for the past couple of years as Google has fished out these large network of sites and shut them down. So do private blog networks work?
Problem is, if you had links from them you are likely to be punished too. Purchasing links from blog networks these days is a big no no. However, blog networks are an extremely powerful way of ranking your sites as you can get high authority back links that google still seems to favour.
Imagine having 50+ sites with a PR between 3 and 7 and they all included a link to your money site. Just think of all that link juice!! This alone can be enough to rank some sites number 1.
Not only that but you have total control over all of the links. You can remove them when you like, experiment with anchor links and also use your private blog network on a number of different money sites. You have total control over your Tier 1 links.
Not only can you use them to boost your own sites rankings, but you can also sell links to SEO agencies and also sell links to other niche site builders (can be a little risky though)
If you are serious about SEO then you need to start building your very own blog network starting today.
Will Google find out and ban my sites?
If you don’t do things correctly then yes, they will shaft you! if you are stupid and leave footprints then Google will eventually discover what you are doing and give you a good slap.
There are a lot of footprints that can be left and a lot of newbies fall into the trap of doing this. A few of the most common mistake people make are:
- Using the same Hosting account for all of their sites
- Using the same C-class IP address
- Registering them from the same I.P address
- Not using contextual links
- linking to your money site from all of your blog at the same time!
- Having the same content on your blogs
- Using the same Domain registrar
All of these mistakes could leave a footprint that gets your sites banned. Building a private blog network takes time, thought, and money. But the most important factor is ‘Organisation’.
You must keep a good record of everything because you are going to have lots of Domains with different registrars, different hosting accounts, different C-class Ip’s not to mention all the different usernames and passwords.
How to build a Private blog network
Buying Expired Domains Is Vital
The first and most important step to build your private network is to purchase expired domain names that have a good link profile, are aged and have a decent Moz ranking. Along with Google PR, these are the most important Metrics to look for when buying domains.
We don’t want domains with spammy shit. We must do a bit of research before we purchase anything!
Where to find Expired Domains.
I explain about finding expired domains here, but when it comes to building a blog network we don’t need to be quite as specific,
but we do need to make sure we get a few things right. I personally use Moonsy.com and Expireddomains.net to search for expired domains.
The first thing I do is to sort them via Moz DA. By doing this it usually brings up the best of the bunch as DA is more up to date and relevant than PR.
Now you will probably get a few high pr domains, like pr 7 but this does not necessarily mean they are good. In fact, I think pr will start to have less relevance in the near future, so PR is not the bee all and end all.
I have put together a general guide to pick out possible domains worth purchasing.
Guide:
- Must have a PR of 2+
- Must be .com, .net or .org (unless you are specifically targeting a country, e.g .co.uk)
- Minimum age of 3
- Moz DA at least 20
- Must have at a couple of hundred links at least, and must come from various I.P’s
Obviously the higher the Pr and DA the better, but the higher you go the higher the price!
Go through and find a few domains that fit my criteria, you can click ‘add to fav list’ by clicking the eye next to the domain. You will now have a list of possible domains for your blog network.
Do your Homework
Now that you have your shortlist, it is time to check the back link profiles. To do this I use Ahrefs. It’s the best, simple.
Enter the domain into Ahrefs and it will search for all of the back links. I know there are other tools out there to do this but Ahrefs will give the most complete link building profile. You can also see referring domains, I.P’s, Anchor text and a load more useful stuff!
Ok. Looking at the screenshot above of Moonsy.com, there are a couple that fit my criteria. Item4sale.com looks pretty good. So I’ll take a closer look in Ahrefs. Enter the URL and you will be presented with an overview like this:
As we can see, it is showing 17,000 backlinks with 366 referring domains. So immediately we can see there are plenty of links from different sites.
To delve a little deeper you can click on the ‘Total Backlinks’ to see each individual link.
By doing this you can get a quick sense of the type of sites they are coming from.
The next thing I check is ‘Anchors’. I want to see the type of anchor profile, if I spot anything dodgy like adult or foreign anchors then I will probably discard the site.
Having clicked on ‘Anchors’ it is showing 83 different anchor text. Most of it is to do with the game ‘World of War craft’. There are a few Chinese anchors but not many.
Overall it doesn’t look too bad. We are never going to get anything perfect with an expired domain.
If you could get this domain cheap it may be good to add to your blog network!
There are thousands of domains expiring everyday, take your time and use Moonsy.com to find the ones that fit our criteria. Set yourself a target of 1 per week, or whatever you feel comfortable with.
When it comes to cost it depends what your overall budget is. I pay up to $200 for an expired domain for my blog network but most are between $30 – $80.
OpensiteExploer– Use this free tool to check the DA and PA of the Domain.
As you can see, this domain has a DA 36 and PA44, a bit lower than what Moonsy said but still ok. Ignore the ‘Total Links’ as OpensiteExplorer is not as good as Ahrefs and crawling the links.
MajesticSEO – Use this great feature to see the Trust flow and Citation flow of the domains. You can also upgrade to the pro version for lots more features.
archive.org – I use this free tool to check what a domain used to look like. This is a good indication to its authenticity.
Hosting Spread it about
Getting this right is essential. If you host all of your sites on the same account then you are leaving a massive footprint. You need to use different hosting accounts and providers. There are some services that offer reseller accounts so you get different C-class I.P’s for each domain.
If you are using the same company then you must get separate C-Class IP’s.
There are hosting companies such as SEO Host and SEO hosting, but from experience I would not recommend using them. Firstly you may as well stand up and shout ‘Im creating my own private blog network’. If you are using SEO hosting then it’s pretty obvious what you are doing.
Another way around this is to use very cheap hosting account, sign up for a couple of dollars, host 1 domain and move onto another one for your next domain. You will end up with a lot of usernames and passwords, but if you organise yourself properly you can manage it.
I like to use BlueHost a lot because they offer a low cost solution and have great customer support
Create an Excel Sheet and save all of your login details for each domain, this will save you a ton of time and hassle in the future!
Setting up the sites
If you have a VA (Virtual Assistent) then get them to do this to save you time. But if you want to do it yourself here is what to do.
Most people use wordPress these days so its not a problem if you use WP for most of your Blog Network. Go to your Domains Cpanel and install WP.
Login to your WP dashboard and select a new theme. You will want a different theme for all of your sites.
Now download the following plugins.
WP Security – make your site as secure as possible, I can’t tell you the amount of times my blogs have been hacked!
WP Robot 3 (optional) – This is an automation software that automatically adds content to your blogs. Now I know Auto blogs get a lot of bad press, but if you do it correctly then you will be ok, remember that our Blog network sites are only there to linking opportunities to our money sites! (They have since released WP robots 4)
Get a new Article automatically published everyday. WP Robot 3 is a great plugin. You can enter your categories and sites keywords and it will go out and scrape articles for you. It will also spin them if you enter your BestSpinner API credentials. However you do need to buy a license and you also need a couple of other tools to help WP Robot get the actual content.
I personally use:
ArticleBuilder .net
Big content search
There are also a few free resources that you can select in WP Robot and they are: ezineArticles, GoArticles and EzineMark.com.
I won’t go into detail here but I create campaigns to submit an Article every 24-48 hours. I make sure i tick ‘super spun’ and ask it to grab images where possible. You only have to set this up once and it will run forever, continually adding fresh content to your blog.
I also like to add a couple of articles myself, with information about the blog and anything else I can think of.
Add a few widgets to the sidebar to make it appear like a real blog, add your categories, calendar, maps or anything. Just make sure to mix it up a bit between your blogs. You can also add a couple of extra pages such as ‘about us’ page and a contact page. This will your blog seem more genuine! Also add a ‘privacy policy’ to every site.
Hide Your Ass
Anytime I am working on a site, from registering a domain to adding content, I always use a VPS. Basically this hides your IP address and gives you a new one so you can actually appear to be somewhere you are not. By doing this you are never leaving a footprint. It’s just an extra safety gard that I like to use.
The best VPS service that I have come across is HideMyAss. It’s only about $10 per month but it’s well worth it. You can even use it on your mobile devices so you can appear to be in a different country when your not!! can be helpful for accessing certain sites!
What Niche should my blogs be about?
If you are only planning on using your Blog Network to help boost 1 or 2 of your money sites then you should set all of them up in the same niche as your money site. so lets say your money site was about fishing rods, you would create a blog network of fishing sites.
You can actually go a little broader with some of them. Just make sure they are not about the exact same topic!
If you plan to use your Blog Network for SEO on a number of different money sites in different niches then simply create a number of general niche blogs. For example I have a few blogs on each of the following topics.
Electronics – apple, iphones, gaming and anything else you can think of.
Business – SEO, internet marketing and anything to do with business
Health – Include any topic regarding health
These are the 3 main Categories. Feel free to mix it up a bit by creating say 20-30 general blogs and 10-20 niche specific blogs!
Adding links to your money site… Ka Ching!!
This is the bit you have been building up to. Placing links on your blog network to give your money site a good kick up the arse! but be careful, you have to go about it the right way….
I only have 1-3 links on my blog network sites for each money site.
You must upload a unique article that includes your main ‘money site’ keyword that you want to rank for. Now place a raw link as close to one of the keywords in the article. For example:
Building a blog network is great, to find out how to build your own private blog network visit http://doseoyourself.com where there is tons of information on blog networks.
As you can see, If my keyword is ‘Blog networks’ then I would place my raw link (http://doseoyourself.com) within a sentence that contains my keywords. Google will actually pick this up and your money site will get a boost for these keywords, although you havn’t used your keyword in your anchor.
Although you can just use your keyword as the anchor I don’t really recommend it to often. By all means do it a few times over your entire network, but the main links you want to create are raw links and Brand name (basically the name of your site or company).
When using raw links be sure to mix them up a bit. www.yourdomain.com, http://yourdomain.com, http://www.yourdomain.com
Read my post on why I think Anchor links are dead, and using this method is much better and safer!
Use your keyword anchor to often and you will get slapped.
Place Contextual links to hide your footprint
If you have 40 blogs, all about your nice and they all have 2 outbound links, and those 2 links happen to point at your money site then this is going to look suspicious! It will leave a big footprint and your hard work could be wasted.
Make sure that you add other outbound links to different sites, preferably high authority sites such as Wiki and government sites. This will diversify your outbound links and also help with authority, because if a site happens to link out to massive authority sites plus your money site, then this makes your site look good.
Always include at least 1 contextual link in the same article as your money link, and also place a couple around each and every blog network site, to make them look natural.
Boost the power of your Network
Once you have your pbn up and running and you have started to link to your money sites, it’s time to start giving your network a boost, and we do this by building a solid back link profile to each one.
We don’t need to be as precise as we are in our SEO Blueprint, we just need to build plenty of relevant links to boost the authority of our blogs.
How do we do that?
Our good friend GSA Search Engine Ranker.
Im not going to go through every little detail here as I have already dome this in Step 7 of my guide. GSA is great for building a large number of backlinks automatically. Please read this post to see how to set it up! Hopefully you have already followed our guide and completed your Tiered link building.
Simply use Kontent Machine and GSA to build a campaign for each one of your blogs. Make sure to only use the popular platforms such as Web 2.0’s, social bookmarks, directories, wikis.
Avoid these costly mistakes and your blog network will never be caught
1) Never interlink between your blogs. Each one is completely individual and unique, so keep it that way!
2) Link out to each money site no more than 3 times per blog, and use raw links as much as possible
3) Use unique content for the articles that will include your links
4) Add authority outbound links to make your blogs appear natural
5) Try to avoid selling links on your network, it’s a Private Blog Network for a reason!
So that pretty much sums it up. My wrist is now aching from al this typing, but who cares. Go out there and get your site ranked number 1.
Save Yourself The Time And Money And Let Us Build A Private Blog Network For You
Update: We have recently launched our done for you private blog network service, Click here to find out more
What you will Need:
VPN – HideMyAss
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Hi Jason, very detailed instructions about building a blog network 🙂
But I have a question.
Why do you hide your identity (using HMA or anything else) when registering domain names?
More strange to me is to hide your ass when working on the site.
Why are you doing this, and what this have to do with the search engines?
Thank you.
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
January 7th, 2014 at 9:32 am
Hi Nick,
I just do it as a precaution. Nobody really knows what Google can and can’t pick up on. If they detect that a lot of your links are coming from sites that were all registered from the same I.P address (your blog network), then this is a massive footprint and you will get found out because it is obvious you’ve created them yourself. I just get into the habit now of switching on my VPN when working on Blog Network sites and link building.
It might not make any difference what so ever, It’s just better to be safe than sorry!!
[Reply]
Hey Jason! Another great post from you. Although you have added VPS instead of VPN in your post so you might want to correct it. I have question too if you don’t mind.
If for example I build a PBN and have each site hosted in different hosts then I would need tons of accounts that would cost like 4$/month each which is a pretty big monthly cost for let’s say 40 blogs. Can’t we use the same host for 2-3 blogs and save some cash this way?
Thanks!
[Reply]
Hey Jason what about post titles for blog networks? Do you use your targeted money site keyword in there or not? I have seen Becker use his targeted keyword while Hayden will always go for some random irrelevant title.
If my keyword for money site was “xslim burner”
Should my PBN post title for that article that I plan to link to be:
“Trying XSlim Burner”
or something partial like: “Getting Slim with Fat Burners”
I haven’t found anyone that has covered this.
Thanks
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
February 13th, 2014 at 9:52 am
Hi jeff
Good question! I personally mix it up a bit. I use partial keywords as the post title in most of them. A small percentage I will use the exact keyword and the rest just random titles, but still related to the niche! Using your example ‘xslim burner’…. You may have an article about losing weight, titled ‘The 5 best products for stripping fat quickly’… This would be fine!
Also check out this post to ensure your back links are super safe…. http://doseoyourself.com/want-to-rank-a-new-site-dont-use-keyword-anchors/
[Reply]
Hey Jason nice article on PBN’s.
I am wondering a few things that you might be able to help me with.
1) Will you rebrand an irrelevant site and make it relevant? Like buy a site that was previously about witchcraft and turn it into a health blog? Would you change the tag line as well and make some generic health slogan? ie completely make it about health now, rather than keeping the witchcraft theme and trying to link it to a health money site through some kind of personal story or something like that.
2) Im seeing a lot of domains that were previously parked on SEDO in archive dot org. Do you know if parking is something to be concerned about, when buying them?
3) Would you still buy a domain if it was cheap with good metrics but had only like 10 backlinks from 2 different domains but they were a handful of PR 5 and 4 pages?
Many Thanks…Great Site!
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
February 18th, 2014 at 9:02 am
Hey Mike
1) I have purchased expired domains and completely rebranded them. What you will find is that they will probably lose a bit of authority at first. DA and PA will drop and even PR may drop slightly. So once you have redesigned the site. Get a link building package and build ‘health’ related links. The SEO metrics should then go back up pretty easily!
2) I don’t think parking is something to be concerned about, as long as it has good metrics!
3) No, I would not buy a domain with good metrics if it had a poor back link profile or very few back links. Chances are you will lose all of the good metrics, especially when you rebrand. Make sure that a domain has a good back link profile to back up the metrics.
[Reply]
Hey Jason, I followed this article a while ago and made a PBN site, I mined my PBN and hand regged it though.
Currently I have 2 money sites about 2 months old and 1 PBN site I made a month ago. All the posts on the PBN site are indexed (I assume that means all is well).
I’ve built about a dozen links to each money site via blog comments, 2.0s and a PBN link from PBN site to each of them.
It has been one month since I built those links to money sites. Both OSE and Majestic simply do not show the backlinks.
I am seeing like 1 backlink per site from a single blog comment.
I assumed Majestic and OSE wouldnt show every link but only one per site? and the crappiest ones at that.
Just wondering if this is a bad thing? I assumed my PBN link would show as the site is all indexed. This also makes me completely in the dark regarding my current anchor ratios.
Im sure you’ve run into this so I am asking.
Thanks
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
March 28th, 2014 at 5:26 pm
I would always suggest using Ahrefs as OSE and Majestic don’t always pick up links so easy, they never show as many as Ahrefs
[Reply]
Hey Jason, I got a question I cannot get answers too and was wondering if you could help me out?
Typically you have full posts displayed on homepage for PBN’s. Google will then also index your category pages.
Does this not cause duplicate content? If so how do you go about de-indexing category pages for PBNs? I imagine you dont want to use GWT on a PBN. What do you do?
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
March 11th, 2014 at 9:25 am
Hi
You can simply de-index categories. I explain about this in this post… http://doseoyourself.com/ultimate-guide-wordpress-seo/
[Reply]
Hey Jason,
Thank you very much man ! Your blog is very helpfull.
Keep up the good work!
Arthur
[Reply]
Jason, I followed your link from BHW. You have made a very good post speaking in depth about PBN, I have to follow some of your steps that I was not aware.
Thanks a lot dude!
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
May 27th, 2014 at 2:02 pm
Hey Sergio, glad you found this post helpful
[Reply]
I’m glad I found this post, especially since I purchased my first pr3 site for my PBN today 😀
If you had your PBN link to a page on your money site for say 2 months could you delete all the links and then link them all to different page with a new keyword or do you think Google would catch on to that?
Anyway I cant wait to “give my money site a good kick up the arse” haha
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
May 28th, 2014 at 5:48 pm
Hi Anton, sure, you have total control over your PBN links and changing them to a different money site isn’t a problem. Just be sure to add other relevant outbound links so that it doesn’t look too obvious
Jason
[Reply]
Hi Jason, I would like to ask. Where I should put the backlink from PBN to my money site? From home or page?
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
September 11th, 2014 at 1:07 pm
Yes if possible, include the link within a relevant article
[Reply]
Very useful article. I have some questions for you.
1. Should I use fake or real information when register account with registrar or hosting ? Have any way google find out the real owner of multi-domains ?
2. Some people suggest block bot like ahref, moz, etc… is that good or bad ?
3. Can I use auto-blog and spun content?
[Reply]
Jason Chesters Reply:
October 31st, 2014 at 12:24 pm
Hi Martin
You should use fake details or who-is guard when registering multiple domains
I don’t tend to block Afrefs, moz bots for PBN sites, although it maybe a good idea for your money sites to stop your competitors seeing your back links!!
I have used auto-blog and spun content on previous PBN sites, although it is safer to user unique content!!
[Reply]
A big question hit me, I’m confused while hosting: I found a site where promises 15 ips different class C, but do not know if the site will leave footprints is this http://www.ixwebhosting.com/hosting-plans (no affiliation here ok)
What you indicate, and it is but account?
[Reply]
Hi,
Really Great Article, Keep Updating your site and i just bookmark it.
Thanks a lot;)
[Reply]