Different Way Of Setting Up a Private Blog Network - This Is How I Do It Now!

by Banned 39 replies
44
I actually do it in three different ways now, perhaps it can inspire some others:

Method 1 - Let's call it grey hat:

Sites that host a whole range of topics.

Theme: Any random theme cleared of footer, author, category links

Site structure:
  • Static Homepage
  • Date archives structure using excerpts (to not show the link on archive level)
  • Post level is where the link to the money site shows

Safe for: Googles Algorithm

Not safe for: Manual reviewers, unless they are sleeping / don't care much about their job.


Method 2 - Let's call this grey/white hat:

Sites that host a whole range of topics

Themes:
  • Web directory theme
  • Bookmark theme
  • Newspaper style theme
  • Press Release theme
  • Video sharing theme
  • Image sharing theme
  • Local Listing theme

For these type of sites it's only natural to host a wide range of topics.

Site structure:
  • Featured posts on homepage
  • Category structure using excerpts
  • Post level is where the link to the money site shows

Safe for Googles algorithm

Could be safe for manual reviewers, though this is very dependant on how you dress up the site so to say, think of:
  • Contact / About Us / TOS / Privacy pages
  • Use non commercial anchor text's (instead use brand / generic / image links)
  • Multi layer category system
  • Custom headers / logo / banner
  • Add a blog or news section
  • In other words mimic existing sites
  • Proper / generic domain name, eg not plumbersincalifornia.com


Method 3 - Let's call this white hat:

Disclaimer:

Building links is obvious never whitehat, especially not when repurposing high PR domains but it gets as close as it can get, that being said:

Sites that host multiple topics in the same (somewhat broad) niche.

Theme: Any theme can do really.

Site structure:
  • Homepage: Doesn't matter really, just don't link with obvious anchors from there
  • Category: Can show full content or excerpts, doesn't matter
  • Post: Link only from some of the posts

These sites we keep niche relevant, eg we build a site about local contractors and add multiple categories like:
  • Electricians
  • Plumbers
  • Roofers
  • Landscapers

Each category receives 4+ posts, dedicated to the site we want to rank.

To increase the relevancy even more we can use dynamic widgets to only show recent posts from that category.

You can also interlink the posts to funnel the juice as efficiently as possible.

As for linking out: I only link from 1 of the 4 posts or in case I have more posts maybe from 2 out of 6 posts.

Because the site is completely relevant and only few posts contain a link this site can look just as real as any other site, and cause there are multiple pages it's very likely the site actually starts to rank for keywords the posts might be optimized for and receives traffic.

Cheer this site up with a custom header, logo, favicon, perhaps even banners in the sidebar that you can link out from as it's unnatural for a banner NOT to link out to somewhere.

Heck you can even attach a shop part to the site depending on the niche and monetize it, add custom quote forms for contractor sites, a street map, phone number, what not.

I can show you some sites right now that you would never suspect of being a PBN site, so real they look and there is nothing but the backlink profile of the domain that reveals it's not as it looks like.

The only thing you have to watch out for are outbound link footprints, eg doing this for a number of sites and linking out to the same money sites from each site but imagine everyone would do it like this then link trading with people in your niche becomes very interesting and completely undetectable.

You know of any networks that only allow 1 link per 4 posts? I don't

Yes it's an investment, but if you spend $200+ on a strong domain then $20-$40 for content is really not much for a link that will last a life time.

Hope it inspires you to take your PBN to the next level, now I'm back to work as I have another 400 domains to prepare :S

ps: Avoid SEO or reseller hostings with multiple IP's at all costs obviously, instead go for either shared, cloud, VPS or Dedicated hosting.
#search engine optimization #blog #network #private #setting
  • In addition to that, keep your PBN private at all time , never reveal to anyone else. If you did that, it's no longer a Private Blog Network , that Public Blog Network already.
  • I'm see that you use excerpts in the home in method 1 and method 2, but by this way you are hiding the links of the homepage. This works well to you?

    Another question, how many outbound links you use in the maximum for each PBN site? I use 20 in content, none in sidebar, or in some cases 15 in content, 5 in sidebar.

    I always do a planning of the posts in a spreed sheet before start to building for each PBN site, with date of posting, where goes the links and type of link (post/sidebar).

    DATE / PBN / OUTBOUND LINK / POSITION OF THE LINK
    28/11/2014 / PBN SITE A / random post with 1 link to a relevant site / post
    03/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site A / post
    03/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site A / sidebar
    05/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / random post without links / post
    08/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site B / post
    08/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site B / sidebar
    10/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / random post with 1 link to a relevant site / post
    13/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site C / post
    13/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site C / sidebar
    15/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / random post without links / post
    18/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site D / post
    18/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site D / sidebar
    20/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / random post with 1 link to a relevant site / post
    23/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site E / post
    23/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site E / sidebar
    27/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site F / post
    31/12/2014 / PBN SITE A / money site F / post
    02/01/2015 / PBN SITE A / random post without links / post
    04/01/2015 / PBN SITE A / money site G / post
    04/01/2015 / PBN SITE A / money site G / post
    08/01/2015 / PBN SITE A / random post with 1 link to a relevant site / post
    10/01/2015 / PBN SITE A / money site H / sidebar
    10/01/2015 / PBN SITE A / money site H / post
    12/01/2015 / PBN SITE A / random post with 1 link to a relevant site / post

    What do you think about it?
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      Well this is what happened but let me first say that pre-penguin 3.0 I had 900 pageviews a day combined:

      - 17 Oct Penguin 3.0 launched, most of my affiliate sites tanked
      - 25 Oct I adjusted the whole network to use excerpts
      - 27 Nov Penguin 3.0 refreshes or Penguin 3.1 update
      - Most of my affiliate sites recovered

      Now they bring in a combined 1750 pageviews/day, so that was one heck of a recovery while the links should in fact be weaker now as they are more far from the homepage which has all the juice.

      So overall I'd say yeah it works out pretty well, maybe there was already some other footprint that the regular algorithm picks up that now disappeared and that that caused the increase in traffic, who shall say.


      The network explained in method 1 doesn't have outbound links in the sidebar, there are only links on post level present, some sites have a few dozen posts, others have hundreds of posts. There's no max as it's a budget service so slowly posts end up deeper and deeper on the site and thus they should lose strength over time. I mostly set amount of posts per page between 10 and 20.

      For network one and two I don't keep track of things though I do keep reports in each client / or my own site folder in case I ever need to remove them or something.

      For network three I do keep track of everything with an Excel sheet, though most domains only link out to 1 or 2 websites so it's not so hard to keep track of things.

      As for your schedule, I wouldn't link each money site in a post and from the sidebar, looks quite fabricated of course.

      When you setup a 2nd PBN site do you start with money site J? Or do you keep repeating Site A-H again? You have to be real careful with that, I've seen tons of such networks deindexed. It's very easy for Google to detect. I have one of such networks that I'm busy with taking down while I'm writing this post.
      • [2] replies
  • Good share.

    When building out my own sites I normally go route of trying to create a site that I can use for a long time, delivers real value (ie directory site) and one that could even be monetized with some creativity.

    I try to build them real and then everything seems to work better.

    Nice to see others that do the same.

  • I do. Pretty common for TRULY private networks. Most of the PBNs I build for people end up having very few links - some 2 links or less on a PAGE. When its a truly private network there is no reason to stick a lot of links on a page.

    Plus for people who cannot afford to buy PR4s and up ...they can get nearly the same amount of juice to their home page as they would with a service provider because they are not sharing the page with all the other customers of the PBN service
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      I removed you from ignore cause I was curious what you had to say.

      I changed my service completely btw, we don't use the PR3-PR4 network in our monthly service anymore, though it's still used as I have one huge client there that places tons of orders so I keep it available just for him and to test some niches for myself. I also cancelled the 5 OBL network.

      Now the service mainly consists of PR3-PR4 domains dedicated to clients, the service fee is kind of changed to rent, as an extra we do some posts at my diverse networks but not more then a dozen, it's good for some additional anchor diversity as we only use generic / brand anchors there from now on.

      I'm thinking to start renting out PR3 domains as well, where people can rent as little as 1 domain, we do the setup and take care of content + hosting, completely hands free, people can expand when they need more strength and perhaps we add a buy now function after x months, though I'm not so sure about that as I want to build each site out, eg if a client cancels the rent we remove the links but not the content, that way we get sites full of content with even fewer outbound links.

      Great concept for me, and great for clients as well that look for a totally hands free solution without having to worry about anything like most of my clients appreciate as they are service providers their selves and can't be bothered with all the details, they just want something that works.

      Received positive responses from my largest clients after I showed them some sites that I already transformed so I'm pretty excited about it.

      A bit less excited about turning 400+ sites into real sites.
      • [1] reply
  • I have sure that is a penalty, because occurred in 17 october, same time for 3 sites, all the pages fall, one site have 40 pages, all fall, but for many kw I was the #1 result, and with the penalty I went to #8, #10, the kws that I was #50-70 just disappeared.
  • Thre was an algo change on that date. Generally you can recover from those the next Penguin update. Actual penalties are something else
  • I'm not a big fan of blog networks, I really don't see the point in spending money to keep them going at a risk. If your blog network gets took down, your whole business goes at the same time.

    It's like putting all your eggs in one basket. To me , the risk isn't worth the money or time.

    I would hate to risk my business using a blog network, having to wake up every morning worried in case my business goes down the pan.

    Fair play to you all who use them and are seeing success but it's just time till Google finds your network and take you down and then your back to the drawing board.

    All said with full respect to each and everyone's business strategies.

    I'm seeing some good success with white hat SEO and using guest blogging as my main link building strategy.

    Regards
    Larry
    • [2] replies
    • I'm not a big fan of guest blogging, I really don't see the point in spending the time to outreach to potential link partners. If your unsuccessfully able to convince enough webmasters to link to you, your business never gets off the ground.

      It's like putting all your eggs in one basket. To me, the risk isn't worth the money or time.

      I would hate to risk my business using guest blogging, having to wake up every morning worried in case my business goes down the pan.

      Fair play to you all who use it and are seeing success but it's just time till Google cracks down harder on guest blogging and takes you down and then your back to the drawing board.

      All said with full respect to each and everyone's business strategies.

      I'm seeing some good success with private networks as my main link building strategy.

      Regards,
      Mike


      Not much different really.
    • You might have gotten away with the whole PBN thing is dangerous (at least to the newbies) but wups had to go talking about guest blogging as an alternative

      https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/

      5 SEO Techniques You Should Stop Using Immediately
      • [1] reply
  • and appeared the lovers of Google:



    do this, build 300 guest posting as is White Hat, and see what happens.
  • I'm a PBN novice (yes, I accept this moniker) so what I'm doing is putting a variety of sites (blogs, Q&A, one-pagers, etc) on simmer and letting them marinate. I build them, vary the styles, post content...and cook.

    In 6 months or so, I bet the CF, TF and DA rise to a decent (link-to-client) level.
    • [1] reply
    • So you are just letting them sit and you think that will build up their authority in 6 months?

      Or you are doing something else with them?

      Personally, I have never seen a reason to wait when building links.
      • [2] replies
  • I only send 1 link to my money site home page and one to inner page from one of the blog post. I don't add any outbound link to other post.

    And I never experience any problem from google
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      Good, I don't waste link juice on other sites either like some do by linking out to authority sites. All well!
      • [1] reply
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