Why The Paranoia Regarding Personal Blog Networks?

I am not an expert in this area but I can tell you why the paranoia exists.
A couple years ago Google basically wiped out backlinks build from many blog networks making them worthless. I was about to join one when this took place.

Many blog networks were being marketed as great ways to build back links ansd improve SEO and than all of a sudden they were worthless. I do not know exactly what the current situation is but I expect others will chime in with some info.

The SEO Forum, I think, which is where the discussion belongs: Search Engine Optimization

If you just spent $10,000 building out a small private network, no matter the quality, would you want to take any chances with how Google feels about it?

It only costs a few more bucks to do all those thing you listed, so why not do it?

PBNs can be costly to setup, so it's about protecting your investment. People are probably more paranoid than they have to be but why risk getting your whole network deindexed when a few precautions can prevent that from happening?

Why Google cares? Because PBNs (Private Blog Networks) are used to manipulate the rankings of sites in Google and they fill the SERPs with junk content (applies only to those who publish garbage on their PBN blogs).

So many networks take shortcuts that jeopardize the integrity of that network. Then they are shocked to find out they got penalized and cannot fathom why.

You get what you pay for. These mass $2 PER HIGH PR link networks are a joke. Do not jeopardize your site by saving a few bucks on an already discounted link. Most of the time these networks are already inflated by fake PR domains with spam backlink profiles.

Heck, check out backlinks.com when you get a chance. They do exactly this and own their whole network. All sites are interconnected, all sites have spam links after they acquire the site, just amazing really.

In my opinion it`s too time consuming and too risky.
Web 2.0 blog networks works also very very well, especially boosted by GSA SER (:

You can save a lot of money and be safer than in case your PBN based on your own domains.

I guess it's mostly if you want to get the most link juice from your PBN.

Surely, Google does not mind if you own 2 properties and you interlink between them, but they won't pass much or any link juice from one to another, if they figure out it's you placing the links.

But if what they consider to be a third party independently links to you - which is what PBNs try to emulate by diversifying and hiding identities - they will consider that link more valuable, if they are tricked into believing it was editorially placed and not paid or influenced by you.

So if you want to set up a PBN properly and conceal your identity, use diff servers, etc... It seems like that would be expensive as hell. What would be the best route to take?

What is the most cost effective way to get all your sites on different servers? Is the only possibility buying another hosting account? Is there anyway to use a reseller account to put your sites on diff servers or is everything on the same server?
I can't imagine having a PBN of even a few hundred sites and having them all on different hosting accounts. The fees alone would not be worth it unless you were making some serious money selling links.

The whole point of a private blog network is to give high quality backlinks. You lose a lot of credibility if you are sending links to a bunch of sites that you own because they look like they are self serving links. Whether your website is a quality site or not, it doesn't look natural to send links to strictly your own websites.

ICANN rules require you to provide accurate information to the registrar. If you give fake information and they ask you to provide proof of identity, you can lose the domain.

nadavs

Its probably been mentioned but what the OP is missing is that PBN sites aren't used for their traffic potential but for their link juice potential for your money sites.

PBN work.

They worked for the 20 Million dollar year company I used to work for.

I am good friends with the SEO guy, and the center piece of the strategy is a HUGE network of expired domains. Iv've seen the lists, and the sites. Its awesome.

We got Negative SEOed, and got a MANUAL penalty by Google. We eventually got rid of it after a few months. None of the links we had to remove were from the massive PBN.

So yes, even under manual review our PBN past the test.

Our rankings are back up.

The strategies he uses are the ones you've seen before: Source Wave's, Dori friends.

PBN work for a simple reason: There is only so much algorithms can detect.

Google works in broad strokes: How can we cut the maximum number of junk sites without affecting legit sites (or a minimum of them): Panda, Penguin, etc.

PBNs done well will keep on working because they are indistinguishable, even under manual review, from "real" sites.