18 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
18 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

PBN Question -- Linking Out

by MichaelAnthony
16 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a competitor in one of my niches whose PBN I've been analyzing for a bit.

His money site is set up to rank his inner pages, not his home page. He has 3 inner pages ranked #1 in the SERPs.

Let's pretend the site is about knives and that his money pages are: "survival knife reviews", "pocket knife reviews", and "hunting knife reviews" --- and they are all ranked #1.

In looking at his PBN, he is doing something pretty interesting. For each PBN site, he is ONLY linking out to ONE of his money pages, not all three of them. So for one PBN site, he links out to his "survival knife review" page, but NOT to the other two money pages.

My question is --- why would he do this? Why not link to all 3 money pages? Does it really reduce your link juice THAT much by having 3 outbound links, as opposed to 1?

Obviously, it is working extremely well.

The reason I ask is that I'm building out a PBN of my own (12 sites so far), but I'm linking to 4-5 money pages (on 3 different domains) from each PBN site. It makes financial sense for me to do it, but after looking at his PBN, it seems it might be better to devote a separate network for each money page you are targeting.

Thoughts?
#linking #pbn #question
  • Profile picture of the author NathanO
    He is probably doing that so that google wont take his sites down. I have heard alot of bad things with google and PBN's.
    Signature
    Google Reviews from Local Guide Accounts Level 6+
    Guaranteed service. You wont find these anywhere else. We use legitimate accounts
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662241].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Most likely they are doing it that way because if you link to all three pages, that just screams out to Google begging them to deindex the network. It looks anything, but normal.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662314].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MichaelAnthony
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      Most likely they are doing it that way because if you link to all three pages, that just screams out to Google begging them to deindex the network. It looks anything, but normal.
      Do you think it's also more effective/powerful to do it this way? To devote each PBN site to a single money page/site? (Obviously, it is a LOT more expensive).

      Or do you think it's fine to use your PBN sites to link out to multiple money sites in different niches?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662448].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by MichaelAnthony View Post

        Do you think it's also more effective/powerful to do it this way? To devote each PBN site to a single money page/site? (Obviously, it is a LOT more expensive).

        Or do you think it's fine to use your PBN sites to link out to multiple money sites in different niches?
        I would almost never link out to different unrelated niches. That just screams that the site is a PBN site in most cases.

        Multiple money sites I do, but they are all pretty closely related.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662499].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by MichaelAnthony View Post

        Or do you think it's fine to use your PBN sites to link out to multiple money sites in different niches?
        Thats how most people do it but as Mike indicated its not the way to do it. Worse people do it from the same page. At minimum you should link out from other pages but then again I am pretty sure Google has tools to see all you outbound links site wide.
        Signature

        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662655].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author accessted
    SO if you have 3 same niche sites can you use the same PBN to link out to all 3?

    How big of a difference would the link juice be from 1 to 3 sites linking out of the PBN?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662909].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
      Originally Posted by accessted View Post

      SO if you have 3 same niche sites can you use the same PBN to link out to all 3?

      How big of a difference would the link juice be from 1 to 3 sites linking out of the PBN?
      It's sounds more like anti detection over PR sculpting. Hard to really tell without seeing, all things mentioned here are speculative.

      @OP

      It might make better financial sense, to not have to recover from a manual action and re-buy and re-build your entire network every few months, when you make it very easy to detect.

      Google ranks pages, so whatever pages you want to rank should be getting the most juice. So if it's an inner page, so be it.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662952].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        If let's say a dozen domains all link to the same 3 pages on a money site it leaves a hell of a footprint.

        I kind of do the same thing as the guy from the PBN you found, I post a few articles and link to only one page on the same money site.

        I do have some sites that link out to different topics, though I try to keep it matched a bit, not always possible, but not a single OBL profile on any of my sites is the same, eg:

        Site 1 links to:

        - Money site A
        - Money site B
        - Money site C
        - Money site D

        Site 2 links to:

        - Money site A
        - Money site E
        - Money site F
        - Money site G

        And so on....
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662968].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by accessted View Post

      How big of a difference would the link juice be from 1 to 3 sites linking out of the PBN?
      That depends largely on the setup of the network site. Since I do not use homepage links, the difference is minimal. For sites setup using only homepage links the way most people do it, the difference would be much more drastic.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9662981].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        That depends largely on the setup of the network site. Since I do not use homepage links, the difference is minimal. For sites setup using only homepage links the way most people do it, the difference would be much more drastic.
        Why would it be way more drastic.

        If you link to 3 inner pages the homepage juice gets divided by 3.

        If you have 3 homepage links the juice gets divided by 3 as well.

        I don't see how that can lead to drastic differences.

        A PR4 domain might be able to generate 3 PR4 inner pages I know that, but those PR4 inner pages are much weaker then the PR4 homepage, eg homepage PR4.9, inner pages PR4.2 just to put something. PR5 is 5 times stronger then PR4 so that justifies the difference in strength.

        I agree it looks more natural to not have 3 homepage links on your site (especially if you fear some manual review) but in terms of strength...
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9663003].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    I'm not comparing the two setups. I meant that 1 link on an internal page versus 3 links on 3 different internal pages is not going to be a drastic difference. If you have a home page with 1 link versus the same page with 3 links you are going to see a bigger, and likely a much more noticeable difference.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9663068].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      I'm not comparing the two setups. I meant that 1 link on an internal page versus 3 links on 3 different internal pages is not going to be a drastic difference. If you have a home page with 1 link versus the same page with 3 links you are going to see a bigger, and likely a much more noticeable difference.
      Yeah ok, misunderstood you the first time.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9663091].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author accessted
    Ok.. Thanks..

    So if you have home page link you would basically be splitting the juice by 3 if you link out to 3 different sites...

    I know this may not be exact, but kind of a general assumption..

    So that means have 1 PBN for 1 Money site to get the full effect and stay under radar...
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9663141].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Wessex Webs
    Pretend you are Google. You see 10 websites, all in the same niches with reasonably similar content, and they all link to the same three sites. Only those three sites. Would you think it was legit, or a PBN?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9664174].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MichaelAnthony
      Originally Posted by Wessex Webs View Post

      Pretend you are Google. You see 10 websites, all in the same niches with reasonably similar content, and they all link to the same three sites. Only those three sites. Would you think it was legit, or a PBN?
      I agree with this. However .....

      Pretend you are Google and you see 10 websites, all in the same niche, and they all link out to only ONE site.

      Neither approach looks natural, in my opinion.

      There is another guy in the fitness niche who ranks #3 for a VERY competitive term, and his PBN is set up with only ONE post per site. Yes, just one single post on every PBN site. And just one OBL, of course to his money page. He has 200+ PBN sites set up dedicated just to that one money page. And he's been ranking for at least 1 year (as long as I've been tracking it).

      Again, this is working extremely well for him, but this approach hardly seems natural to me IMO.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9664266].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author IMLab
    As a quick note: If his private blog network is decent enough, it will block most known SEO bots including Ahrefs, Moz, MajesticSEO and such. In other words, you can't really be sure what is giving him all those top rankings as many sites on his network might just be hidden. Not to mention that backlinks are not the only signal that Google considers.

    As for building private blog networks, it is advised to keep the outbound links low (less than 5) and never repeat the same keyword over many websites. Diversity is the key here. There are lots of tips and techniques to implement when it comes to PBNs, you can check some guides online or down my signature area. Overall, the more relevant and decent your network is, the better results it gives. Quality of domains is more important than the quantity.

    On a relevant topic, focusing on your brand name while building a proper silo structure tends to preform much better on the long run than aiming to rank each page separately.

    Good luck with your journey!
    Signature
    Our SEO Website: Labinator.com
    Complete Link Building Guide For 2016: Click Here
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9664354].message }}

Trending Topics