Please note that although PBNs still work, Google has started to target them. Meaning they are likely not the safest option moving forward. Which is why we currently focus on starting online businesses that don’t only depend on SEO traffic.
Learn how to find expired domains and build your own private blog network the right way. Topics covered include; finding and buying domains at auction, building out a PBN site to link build any money site, how to link build from a PBN, hosting tips, anchor text and more.
DOWNLOAD THE PBN BUILDOUT PDF HERE
Hosts referenced in the episode
Others worth looking into:
To configure home page to show 10 x full length posts, it usually depends on the theme. If it’s not in the theme’s option, you need to replace the_excerpt(); with the_content(); in index.php (sometimes it’s in the home.php).
Sneaky way to uncover the PBN of someone spider blocking: search “domain.com” -site:domain.com. This will help you to find any instances of a domain name being being used as the anchor text (quite a common way to link) on PBN sites. For example, to find mentions of our site, search this: “nohatdigial.com” -site:nohatdigital.com
Shah says:
Hi guys,
I have a UK based insurance website that has been running for almost a year now. The site has done decently well, with traffic increasing on a monthly basis, without building ANY backlinks or adding additional content. I checked the backlink profile and it has 0 backlinks at the moment – the site averaged around 4K uniques last month, mainly through search traffic. I want to start building some relevant links to the site, however finding expired domains in the insurance niche has proven very difficult. I think link building to this site would dramatically increase traffic, what would you guys suggest I do?
Thanks
GregNunan says:
You don’t need to find expired domains that were former insurance site. All you need to do is recreate sites so that they are flexible and can have an insurance article on them. That’s what Link Injection is all about. View this webinar: https://www.nohatdigital.com/blog/nohat-webinar-recording/. Around the 29 minute mark it covers Link Inject.
Eddie Woo says:
Regarding spider blocking for your PBN. The argument I hear from people that I think also do this on a larger scale is to prevent malicious competitors from manually reporting your network and possibly getting your PBN flagged for a more thorough review. Obviously if someone is really out to get you then you couldn’t do much about it, but I have to imagine blocking OSE and Majestic is going to weed out a TON of people that might just randomly uncover your PBN and spam report you (since they provide unlimited/many free searches).
GregNunan says:
Yeah true re people reporting. Definite risk. Running separate networks is the option there.
Rob from CareerDreaming says:
I’ve been following Hayden’s PBN strategies since I heard his podcast on Niche Pursuits and I’ve purchased a few domains since then.
I just got into the top 10 for my first targeted keyword this week and cracked the top 5 today. Pretty pumped about the possibilities with this. Keep up the awesome works guys, huge fan of the site and redesign.
GregNunan says:
Thanks for the great comment Rob and congratulations on cracking top 5. Only 4 spots to go!
Anuj Agarwal says:
If we have to use the spider blocking method – Should it be used on the money site or all PBN sites ?
GregNunan says:
Just PBN sites.
Kevin 505 says:
I’ve got two .org money sites that are about 2 years old that were created fresh i.e. not expired. Both are ranking #1 on Google for the main KW. Are these sites at risk because of the .org ? Worried!
GregNunan says:
.org are no problems. It’s .org.au that we were referring to Kevin.
rick says:
Great podcast. Any change you could provide the links to stuff you discussed. Like you mentioned marketplaces for finding expired domains and some blog post on spam checking domains.
Also you recommended not using GoDaddy due to competition. Do you have other places that you do recommend?
Thanks.
GregNunan says:
Will update later today Rick. Thanks.
Lin says:
Thanks for the informative podcast. In the section about building out a PBN site, you mentioned we should have 3 sticky posts which are shown as excerpts and then 10 full content posts. I think the 3 posts were just to give an initial feel of the site. Does that mean those 3 excerpt posts don’t have any links to money sites?
Also in the spider blocking section, Hayden was talking about finding mentions of sites and to do this, you would google something like sitea.com – site:sitea.com. Is this correct?
Cheers
GregNunan says:
Re excerpts, yes 3 posts with no links to your money sites. But you can put a link or two to related authority sites if you like.
Re blocking, I meant to include that in the show notes actually. Will edit in a moment.
Lee says:
PBNs are getting more and more popular these days, do you think this might become a problem with Google in the future?
I’m slightly worried that I’ll create a big PBN only to have google catch on eventually and begin reducing the quality of link juice passed on from PBNs or even penalizing/slapping them.
GregNunan says:
Yes Lee, I think it would be naive to think that PBNs will forever be the way to rank sites. But as of right now, they are a very effective and efficient way to rank sites (once you have a PBN in place). The way to spread your risk is to have a balance of pure white hat sites, sites link built with PBNs and also a building nice flow of fresh sites. This allows you to maximize short-term gains through PBN use and minimizes the risk greatly of losing your entire income overnight in an algo change.
Troy says:
Thanks for the great listen! Definitely picked up a few nuggets!
Dima says:
I’ve got the list of sites from somebody PBN. How am I need to choose the best sites for links? I checked DA, PA, domain age, number of links and IPs. I noticed that every 4-5 sites are hosted on the same IP. Am I need to choose only different IPs or I can take a few domains with the same IP but DA is the most important here?
Please help me understand.
Thanks.
GregNunan says:
Aim to get unique IPs and next, look for the sites are most relevant to your money site with a preference for higher DA sites (we like DA over PA as a metric).
Dima says:
Thank you, Greg!
Dima says:
Greg, are these IPs need to be all groups of different numbers? For example 66.203.11.123 and 66.120.34.22. Can these be unique? Or there are need to be all different numbers?
Thanks.
GregNunan says:
The third set of numbers is what you want to look at.
Dima says:
Ok, I’m looking only for different C-class domains. Am I right? In my previous example these IPs will be unique and I can take them?
You also look at Moz Trust number. Does it need to be always greater than 3.5? Is the DA parameter here is more important than MozTrust? Say I’ve found domain with better MozTrust but lower DA. What is the best?
Thank you!
GregNunan says:
Yup, those IPs were good.
We don’t use moztrust now, just DA.
Tim says:
Here’s a question I can’t seem to find many answers for, or any good resources at all really.
Everyone seems to be running around with one golden boy keyword, and their PBN exists to more or less pump that one single keyword.
WTF do I do when I have 17+ keywords I want to rank on a single domain? Do I need to build a 20-50 site PBN for every keyword?? It’s crazy. I’m tracking 500 keywords and they all dance pretty much all the time, with 15-20 that would really produce if I got them ranking. My strategy has been to see where each one falls with 2500-5000 words of content with perfect on-page and decide which ones are least competitive but I can’t seem to figure out a good strategy that wont cost me 3000 dollars in domain registrations along with the content to place on each pbn. I already have 35 PBN’s in place and cant seem to crack the top 35 for any of my keywords which is annoying considering the investment I’ve placed. I think I just need to sit another 2 months and see where everything settles and figure out where I need to point more links too.
GregNunan says:
You should aim to target as many keywords on each page as possible and that way, when you link build that page you will rank for all keywords.
Sto Rey says:
“aaah DUDE!”
Nice listen guys. cheers
Chris says:
Regarding Main-WP are you worried about this leaving a footprint that can easily be found? Since it allows you to manage multiple sites, or does it protect you from it?
GregNunan says:
Not worried about a footprint no.
Mark says:
Thanks for the podcast. What was the article that you guys talk about that was about spam checking? It was something about working with some type of program that automated it.
GregNunan says:
Hey Mark, here it is.
Mark says:
Thanks Greg
Timmy Deleu says:
Which plan should we take with ipage.com? They don’t seem to offer a reseller account.
GregNunan says:
Just the basic plan Timmy. We don’t use their re-seller (don’t think they have one).
Timmy Deleu says:
Hey Greg,
Are these plans to host one website?
I suppose you guys use these to host different category Blogs?
GregNunan says:
Yep, mix up your hosts.
Assya Moustaqim-Barrette says:
Hey guys,
I was part of the July 2014 PTC. I’m trying the xenu/scrapbox method, but I’m having trouble finding any expired domains at all. I’ve crawled 1000s of links, and its really hard to find those “no such host” links. any tips? maybe i’m using the wrong seed keywords?
GregNunan says:
It just takes time to perfect it. but it’s also so common now that expired domains are far harder to come by. Keep at it!
Nate Tsang says:
Like Greg said, its definitely harder now than it used to be, but its not impossible. If you’re not even getting any “no such host” results though then there could be something wrong with the way you’re gathering your seed lists. Make sure you’re targeting old pages (add something like -2014 -2013 -2012 in your query) when you’re scraping your seedlists w/ scrapebox, and try to target resource pages with lots of links.
Randy says:
Based off the podcast and comments, it looks like when evaluating a domain on the metrics of PR vs DA that DA is more important than PageRank? Separating just those two against each other considering that there’s no spammy profile etc…does TrustFlow and/or CitationFlow have any base level? Just asking since I recently started using Freshdrop and didn’t hear any mention of TF or CF in the podcast and everyone is obsessed with PageRank (while I still believe is important, but not merely as it was a year or two ago since Goog stopped update PR).
GregNunan says:
We don’t use PR at all and we don’t use TF or CF. We use DA combined with checking for spammy links because obviously DA can be inflated by tons of links.