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 creating online businesses that don’t only depend on SEO traffic.
We’ve gotten a ton of demand for a recording of the webinar – apologies for the delay, but here it is!
If you prefer, you can download an MP3 to listen on your commute or while working out.
Also, as promised, here are links to the goodies we spoke of in the presentation:
We’d love to hear your feedback about the webinar material, so please leave us a comment!
bruno says:
Tx very much for the recomended host list!
Stefan says:
Hey guys,
Thank you very much for posting the replay.
I’m slowly building my network and I’m currently testing S3 static hosting to get as many different IPs as possible at a very affordable price based on actual usage. There’s a very nice tutorial by Chad Thompson on how to set it up. First time may be cumbersome, but once you’ve done it two or three times it’s easy peasy.
I build a WP site on a hidden/blocked dev domain and use the WordPress Static HTML Output plugin to flatten it into basic HTML. I then upload the HTML files to S3. Hopefully this takes a large part of future maintenance and security out of the question. Updating the site simply requires making changes in the dev site, flattening it and uploading the new files to Amazon.
Not too bothered with specific types of sites or niches at the moment. Although services sites are very useful such as webdesign, which is similar to the photography example from the webinar. But I also have an animal rescue site and a (former) fire department site. On one I use the sponsor angle to slip links in there. And the fire department actually had a history of switching CMS systems, allowing for Joomla and WordPress links and links for smoke detectors.
I’m active in a foreign market and my main issue is that I mostly find domains that have 20 to 50 LRDs and 50 to 150 links in total. It’s hard to find clean domains with hundreds of links, not to mention thousands of active links. I already had one or two older sites of my own with some history, so I’m going for a baseline of 25+ DA / 35+ PA and if PR is available one of 4+. But mainly betting on DA and PA.
Even though I’d like more links to the domains, I figure that this first little network will help a bit with niche sites. I’m bootstrapping it now. Hopefully there will be some budget in the future to scale it up a little and also focus on a particular niche. For now I’m happy seeing the data coming in and learning what type of PBN site stats deliver which level of results.
Good luck everyone!
Han says:
Good stuff Stefan, glad to hear you’re progressing well on your network.
Unfortunately we haven’t had good luck using S3 as a static host, in that their IP addresses are very limited. Have you been able to get a substantial (> 10) amount of unique C block IP addresses via S3?
Stefan says:
I’d imagine it may not be suitable if you’re really going all out with expired domains.
I’ve got 5 sites on S3 now. So far each separate region has provided me with a fully unique IP (all blocks). So that should make for at least 8 regions and 8 fully unique IP addresses in total. Just select a different region for each new site’s bucket.
S3 doesn’t cost that much. Route 53 is 50 cents/month for each domain you want to set up. So in the end you’d get at least 8 different IPs for around 5 dollars a month depending on traffic. The advantage is that it’s billed on a monthly basis instead of having to pay in advance. Which is nice if you’re strapped for cash. It may not be an ideal solution, but it gets you several IPs billed monthly for a small amount and you’ve got a wide range of ‘normal’ sites on the same IP.
My current problem is that my PBN sites are ranking way too well on their own. I have a few former domains for organisations that have moved to a different domain and the old domains I restored just shoot right up there for the organisation’s name. Any ideas on how we can put a brake on a PBN’s rankings while keeping juice flowing?
Han says:
Ah, yes for a smaller PBN S3 probably works great. We’re deep into the triple digits and there doesn’t seem to be that many S3 IPs to go around; from what I see each region is load balanced so there’s at most double digit unique C blocks. The cost savings are great though, static hosting is dirt cheap and fast to boot.
Why is the fact that your PBN sites ranking bad? I wouldn’t worry about it unless the domain is a trademark of the original organization.
Blaine says:
I have a quick question if you don’t mind giving a little insight. I have been using your method to try and find expired domains and I have read in other places that it is important to make sure the domain has at least one indexed page. With some of the domains being so old this is probably not always the case. In your experience is this something that would keep you from purchasing the domain, or am I just being paranoid?
Awesome webinar by the way, you provide more value than anyone else and I really appreciate it.
Stefan says:
Hey,
I’m not with NoHatSEO, but I’ve been following several PBN folks. I don’t know where you got the one page indexed thing from, but I believe it does not matter when using the NoHatSeo method.
Fred Owusu says:
This webinar was by far the most educated one that I have ever been to. Why? This relates to exactly what I have been working on and you definitely got my head straight on some (what if) questions. Thank you Hayden. RankHero seems to be the right thing to be in right now. I am glad to be a part of it. I feel this is another beginning. Can not wait to start seeing results!
Rush says:
I have started my Private Blog network. I currently have 4 domains all with DA/PA over 35… PRs 2-4 as well. following the selection practices discussed here (no spam links etc…). I am using this as a test and plan on adding more if I see any positive results.
I have placed 1 link leading back to my money site on each domain. I have 3 articles on each domain and they are all quality articles with customized WP templates.
All sites are now indexed by google.
how long do I have to wait to see any improvement in traffic/ranking. Are 4 sites as described above enough to see any change in the SERPs?
thanks!
Han says:
Congrats, glad to see you getting started! Whether or not you see movement in the SERPs depends on how competitive your keyword is, so it’s hard to tell with the info you’ve given. That said, we normally see SERP movements within 3-4 days for low/medium competition terms. Best of luck!
Rush says:
thanks for the message back… as for keywords, for the 4 blogs I have up, I am using the following anchors.
blog 1. log tail keyword
blog 2. naked url
blog 3. “Here”
blog 4. exact match keyword.
not sure how effective is this in targeting a specific keyword… my onsite is done properly for my desired keyword though.
is this okay for anchors? any suggestions on how to judge if any of this making an impact?
Shogo says:
Thank you for the information, Han and Hayden.
From your PBN, do you only link to the top page of your money site to concentrate the juice there?
Or do you also link to certain articles or blog posts on your money site to make it look somewhat more natural?
Han says:
Hi Shogo, it depends – we do whatever seems more relevant. If the link makes more sense to go to the homepage, we’ll link there; if it makes more sense to link to specific articles, then we’ll do that. I’d say that the majority of the time though we link to the home page due to the relevancy. It is pretty unnatural for a site to only have links to the homepage and none to the subpages though, so don’t overdo it.
Shogo says:
Awesome, thanks for the reply!
You guys have been the biggest help!!
but I have another question.
What do you think of having multiple money sites on one IP? (without any interlinking)
Would that make the links from the PBR less effective even if the PBR sites are each on a different IP and not interlinking to each other?
Han says:
We’re okay with having multiple money sites on one IP, as long as the backlinks are distributed and preferably there is no interlinking (where multiple PBN sites are linking to multiple money sites on the same host). That said, sometimes our money sites are in different geographic areas so it lessens the risk. It really depends on how much risk and how much effort you’re willing to accept.
Murga says:
Hi, This video is such a great wealth of resource. I thank you for sharing the same. The spreadsheet you showed is a fantastic idea to maintain different information about the different web properties one owns. I wonder if you could share a template of any kind even if it is scaled down, that would be great.
Once again, thanks for the great work.
Murga
Han says:
Thanks for the kind words, it really means a lot to us!
That’s a good idea – we’ll look into creating a nice spreadsheet of the items we recommend keeping track of for your private network.
Mark says:
Just noticed…
Why you mayde a discount for Spencer readers, but not for YOUR readers? It’s pretty strange..
Will you repeate the discount?
Han says:
That’s a great question Mark – we weren’t planning on reducing the price point at the beginning, but realized that Spencer’s audience likely didn’t have the same level of trust in us as our audience and figured it might be better to reduce their risk to get them to try RankHero.
As a result, we actually gave our original buyers a higher discount retroactively in gratitude for their early adoption of the platform.
In terms of the discount, that’s over for now, but we’re considering other pricing options in the future (free signup and pay as you go credits) so stay tuned!
Mark says:
When you realized that I think you should make the discount for your readers too (public discount not some secret retro discount).
I think it would be fair and some of your readers missed this opportunity because the regular price looks too high.
BTW I like the free signup idea. The simpler, the better.
Jacob says:
Hey guys.
I have a question. I’ve set a PBN of about 10 expired domains. These domains have DA of 25+, PA of 30-40, with significant LRDs and total links. I’ve setup these sites perfectly, which means the way that should make them effective.
Most of these sites have PPR of 3-4. As per your own guidelines, these domains should pack significant linkjuice. I’ve done everything right, redirecting all of the linkjuice to the homepage, ect ect.
I would consider myself an expert at checking expired domains for any signs of spam or previous SEO use, so I know that is not a problem. It’s been about 20 days since I set all of the sites up. All sites are indexed and the homepages with link to money site is cached. All of the links to money site are cached, and I saw SERP movement, so I know they’re being counted.
However, something must’ve changed recently. Google must somehow be devaluing the linkjuice from expired domains unless they have toolbar pagerank. That might explain why the TBPR hasn’t been updated for nearly a year. With 10 links from domains that should be passing massive linkjuice, the analytics for my money site show an increase of about one or two organic visitors a day.
Some days, the website receives NO visitors. It’s as if Google is counting these 10 links as 10 links from brand new domains. Since they were setup about 20 days ago, they’re obviously all PR N/A or 0. I believe any expired domains that have TBPR are passing the linkjuice that they should while newly-setup expired domains are passing almost zero linkjuice.
I setup a small PBN of about five sites back in February, and I linked to a website that I own, which has about two years of age and base of links. The result was pathetic, and organic search visitors was increased by maybe one or two per day. Strangely, once a money site is linked, I see SERP movement, but it’s like Google is treating the links like they’re from brand new domains that have no authority or juice, and in both cases, these expired domains should be passing enough linkjuice to increase daily organic search traffic by at least 50-100 visitors per day.
I don’t understand why this is happening. If I go and buy some links from a linkbroker, which has websites that actually have a TBPR metric, I’m sure the links will pass the expected amount of linkjuice. Also, you guys should announce that it basically does require a personal domain crawler to find expired domains that haven’t been spammed by the Chinese. Please give me your thoughts on the issue.
Jacob says:
Oh, I also wanted to mention that I’ve checked the backlinks to this newest batch of 10 PBN sites, they’re all still live, and almost all of the pages that link to each PBN site have been crawled and recently cached. I just don’t understand why it seems as if almost zero linkjuice is being passed to my money site. It’s an affiliate site for amazon, has plenty of pages, everything done right.
There’s no penalty or anything like that, and it’s in a very non-competitive vertical. It’s in the ‘razor blades’ niche. I know what kind of linkjuice these sites should be passing because I have extensive experience with linkbrokers, so I’ve purchased hundreds of links from hundreds of different linkbroker websites, and I’ve analyzed these websites and their metrics. I just can’t explain it. With the first PBN of five sites, they were up and running for probably a month and a half or so, and still passed almost zero linkjuice.
This first PBN of sites were also all PR N/A or 0, but that was all the way back in feb. Please give me your opinion. Thanks guys!
Han says:
Hi Jacob, thanks for your detailed explanation. That’s definitely an interesting issue – there are some factors that you haven’t mentioned which could be affecting the effectiveness of your PBN. One huge factor we’ve noticed is whether or not the expired domains’ contact information are hidden through WhoisGuard; there seems to be significant penalties for sites using WhoisGuard now. Another one is whether or not your PBN sites are hosted on unique C class IP addresses. It might also be suspicious if you’re linking to the same Amazon page repeatedly on almost every post. Lastly, are you sure that your posts are showing on the homepage? I assume that the homepage has the highest PA, so if your posts are rolling off the homepage fairly quickly that could also explain the lack of link juice being passed.
pmc says:
Google has slapped some link brokers (confirmed TLA but they said they are slapping others too). Your money site may have been slapped in turn if they detected paid links going to it. Did you try ranking other money sites?
Jacob says:
Thanks for replying, Han.
Sorry, when I see your name I can’t help but think of the movie ‘Mulan’. Anyway. Could you elaborate on the ‘whoisguard penalties’? What sort of penalty and why do you guys think that is what is going on. All of the sites are on a completely different C IP. In fact, since each site is with a different hosting company, they have extremely diverse IPs. The A B and C blocks are different for every site.
Each PBN site has anywhere from 3-5 pages of unique content. Each as only a single linke to my money site, from one post, and the homepage is set to show the full version of the latest posts, so no issue there. Most of the PBN sites have whoisprotection, but a few don’t.
Han says:
I’d try removing the WhoisGuard for one domain and seeing if there is any movement. We’ve found that whois protected domains aren’t as trusted by Google and there does seem to be less link juice passed from domains that hide their registrar data. Everything else sounds like you’ve got your bases covered – we’d love to hear your results so please keep us updated!
maxime sincerny says:
What do you do to use domains without whoisguard? You use hundreds of accounts?
Robert says:
Hey Jacob – did you end up removing whoisguard protection? Curious to hear your results. (Thanks for that info Han)
Pierre says:
I’m facing a very similar issue. I’d really like to hear more about that Jacob.
Stefan says:
Good to read your view/results on the WHOIS Guard. Begs the question whether it’s better to have WHOIS guard or all the same domain name information. Obviously, having different WHOIS for every domain is ideal, but that might be hard to realize for us beginners?
Travis Jamison also takes unique nameservers into account in (some of) his SEO services. What’s your take on the importance of this?
Han says:
We drop WhoisGuard and use a different pen name for our contact info in the registrar, that should work for everyone. :)
As for nameservers, definitely switching them up is good, especially if they’re smaller / less reputable ones. I feel more confident about using a ton of Namecheap name servers though, along with other larger hosts. It really depends on your network’s architecture though, but we do vary it up quite a bit. That said, it comes naturally for the most part since we have so many registrar and hosting accounts.
Ben says:
Interesting about the WhoisGuard. You guys are sure about this? Sounds crazy that Google would devalue a website based on private Whois.
Do you think removing the protection and setting up pen names would boost my PBN? (bear in mind many of my domains have been registered over 1 year).
As a note I have also noticed that domains I have registered in the last month or so have not had much impact on the rankings of my money sites. These are premium domains as well (DA 30+, PA~40, CF & TF >25 and no spam).
Hayden says:
I’ve noticed some correlation yes, it may not be the cause though. Changing it after the fact may help, it’s worth a try.
Rush says:
still a little confused how you can use different Pen names for your registrar information.
so to understand it correctly you are creating a completely fake persona for the account information (address, name etc…) when purchasing the domain. But to actually pay for the domain you are using the same credit card/paypal account info you use for all the domains in your PBN?
is that right?
Hayden says:
Correct. Only the purchasing registrar can see payment details associated with a domain.
Alex says:
Hi, thanks for the webinar, very helpful.
I have a question regarding analytics :
For your money sites, do you use Google Analytics or another tool ? In case of GA, do you use 1 account per site ?
Thanks again !
Hayden says:
GA and 1 account per site.
Kristjan says:
Interesting, so for the nameservers to be properly varied they need unique IP’s? I am using hostnine but hoped I was creating sufficient variation by setting up ns1.insertyourdomainhere.com on every other domain or so.
Scott Davis says:
Yes correct, unique IP’s for sure.
Steve says:
I have a kw that I used to rank for which was very profitable. I used the exercise in the Thirst video to determine the average PA for the definite wins.
According to Hayden, I would need 45+ links for a kw with an average PA of 43.6.
Since RankHero only provides 25 sites in the network, would buying two subscriptions work in my case?
Hayden says:
Yes. As of writing there are 3 networks.
shaun says:
Hey Guys,
I’ve been mining expired domains and have run across a bunch of domains with PA 39+ and DA 30+, but all of the back links are in an Asian languages – Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, etc. Any thoughts on domains like this? Should I stick with domains that have English back links, so I can understand the anchor text?
Thanks for the help!
Hayden says:
Don’t touch them – they were owned by spammers.
Jilu says:
Thank you for the advice regarding WhoisGuard. But regarding pen name, do we need to have a different pen name for Registrant Name, Admin Name and Tech Name? Or Can I use different Registrant Name but the same Admin and Tech Name?
Thanks Again
Hayden says:
I always just use the same admin, registrant and tech for each domain. Just vary that contact up constantly.
Mat Turcotte says:
This method looks very interesting, but I have to ask: instead of spending that much time researching expired domains, paying for the hosts, the domain registration… Why not purchase pr4 and 5 back links from fiverr gigs?
I understand I won’t have complete control on the links and they might be that “permanent” , but I’m just curious to hear your thoughts. 5$ per link is a lot less expensive.
And thanks for all the great info!
Hayden says:
Like you said, no control. But also if you have hundreds of money sites, you are paying a lot less than $5 /link…
lin says:
Hayden, thanks so much for all the information you have shared.
You mentioned in a previous comment that you have a separate Google Analytics account for each money site. Is there any point in doing that if all of my money sites link to the same Adsense account?
And with the link sites, do you also have a separate GA account for each one?
Thanks again
Marbles says:
Any post launch Rank Hero success stories that you can share?
Steve says:
Hey Guys, great video really informative and educational.
I’m just in the process of setting up my own PBN but had a question for you. If I buy the expired domains and don’t do anything with them for a while will they start losing their authority ie DA PA. PR. Or is it best to set up the new WP blog/site straight away with the new content.
Many thanks guys and keep up the great work.
Hayden says:
Not a big deal, they’ve already been inactive for a couple months at least anyway due to the process of expiration.
Jared says:
I’m in the process of building out my PBN and I had a question about how soon to start posting articles with links to a money site? My plan is to post 5 articles establishing the voice of the site and then post an article with some money links. Is there any time frame that works best? Posting once a day, once a week, etc? Thanks!
GregNunan says:
You can start posting with links as soon as you’ve set it up like you have outlined (3-5 articles to establish voice is fine). And then you can post to the PBN once every 3 days, with your home page set to display 10-12 posts, which means posts will stay on the home page for at least 30 days. The longer posts stay on the home page though the better.
Doril says:
Hi
Very nice website,full from value information!!!
I publish my first pbn with 4 posts.Just some days after a change permalinks from all the posts.Now just i site:mysite.com in google i see the posts with old permalinks to drive with 404 to homepage.
The question is.
Is that a problem?
How long time needed from google to index my posts with new permalinks?
thanks in advance
GregNunan says:
That’s no problem Doril. It can take close to a week.
Steffan says:
I find the PBN concept and selling links very interesting, but I have a hard time fully understanding how it works… In the interviews with Spencer, Hayden talks about selling links from your expired domains at around 20-30 USD/link from PR3 domains and now your are talking about selling 2 USD links. What’s the difference? Guess I am missing something here…
GregNunan says:
The $2 USD links are probably from crappy sites. You get what you pay for.