Private Blog Network Best Practices

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Are these the best practices for a blog network -

- Buy relevant domains with PR
- Hide registration from whois
- Host the domains on separate hosting providers (no seo hosting)
- Add content to newly acquired domains for a few weeks before adding links to my money site
- give each money site their own private blog network (no foot print)

Am I miss anything?
Am I adding the links from network to my money site to quick?
Do I need to have a separate blog network for each money site?

Thanks,
Seamy
#blog #network #practices #private
  • Profile picture of the author tamo42
    Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

    Are these the best practices for a blog network -

    - Buy relevant domains with PR
    - Hide registration from whois
    - Host the domains on separate hosting providers (no seo hosting)
    - Add content to newly acquired domains for a few weeks before adding links to my money site
    - give each money site their own private blog network (no foot print)

    Am I miss anything?
    Am I adding the links from network to my money site to quick?
    Do I need to have a separate blog network for each money site?

    Thanks,
    Seamy
    -No
    -Yes
    -Yes
    -No
    -If you mean unique themes and such, Yes

    You're missing internal redirects, and trimming of OBLs. A lot of themes have a lot of juice leakage.
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    • Profile picture of the author seamy82
      Originally Posted by tamo42 View Post

      -No
      -Yes
      -Yes
      -No
      -If you mean unique themes and such, Yes

      You're missing internal redirects, and trimming of OBLs. A lot of themes have a lot of juice leakage.
      Never thought about links embedded in the themes.
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  • Profile picture of the author DBMEDIALLC
    ^ Love the "no's" with no explanation of why. So he shouldn't be buying relevant domains with PR? Can you explain that? I would definitely add content (unique content) before linking out to your sites as well. Looks like you've got the basics understood.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    There is no reason to restrict yourself to relevant sites to buy. It's great if you can find them, but you can change the content of any site.

    No idea why you would wait a few weeks to post links to your site. That seems kind of dumb to me. Why not build a 8-10 page site with all the links there on day 1?

    Also, you can overlap your linking some. If I have 10 network sites, I might link out to 2-3 different money sites. I just would not link out to the same 2-3 money sites on each network site. Make sure the OBL profile is fairly different.
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    • Profile picture of the author seamy82
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      There is no reason to restrict yourself to relevant sites to buy. It's great if you can find them, but you can change the content of any site.

      No idea why you would wait a few weeks to post links to your site. That seems kind of dumb to me. Why not build a 8-10 page site with all the links there on day 1?

      Also, you can overlap your linking some. If I have 10 network sites, I might link out to 2-3 different money sites. I just would not link out to the same 2-3 money sites on each network site. Make sure the OBL profile is fairly different.
      For those 2-3 links to my money site, how many random site links should I add.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

        For those 2-3 links to my money site, how many random site links should I add.
        That's up to you really. Probably 4-5. Some people do more. Some people do less.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeffery Moss
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      There is no reason to restrict yourself to relevant sites to buy. It's great if you can find them, but you can change the content of any site.

      No idea why you would wait a few weeks to post links to your site. That seems kind of dumb to me. Why not build a 8-10 page site with all the links there on day 1?

      Also, you can overlap your linking some. If I have 10 network sites, I might link out to 2-3 different money sites. I just would not link out to the same 2-3 money sites on each network site. Make sure the OBL profile is fairly different.
      If you are only linking out to your money site, that would look suspicious. So what other type of sites would you link to in order to keep your site's credibility high with Google?
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    • Profile picture of the author seamy82
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      There is no reason to restrict yourself to relevant sites to buy. It's great if you can find them, but you can change the content of any site.

      No idea why you would wait a few weeks to post links to your site. That seems kind of dumb to me. Why not build a 8-10 page site with all the links there on day 1?

      Also, you can overlap your linking some. If I have 10 network sites, I might link out to 2-3 different money sites. I just would not link out to the same 2-3 money sites on each network site. Make sure the OBL profile is fairly different.
      Have you seen results from buying non-relevant high PR sites and re-branding them to match your niche?
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

        Have you seen results from buying non-relevant high PR sites and re-branding them to match your niche?
        I even see results when I rebrand them to cover a 1000 of different topics.

        What most forget here is that it's mostly about the link juice that it's able to pass on. That's the number 1 importance that most people who start these kind of threads forget.

        Link juice / Authority passing to your website.

        Then why not post a bunch of blog comments at high PR pages you could say.

        Well:

        - they are mostly nofollow which kills passing the juice
        - when they are dofollow you mostly share it with 100's if not 1000's of OBL as they get massively abused with Scrapebox
        - Google devalues blog comments imo, sure they have some value but it's not much
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Waller
    Agreed with the others in that you can pretty much ignore relevancy for now but I tend to maintain just one niche per site rather than nik0's approach of cramming multiple niches onto one site.

    But then I am maybe a bit more paranoid than the average person and want my efforts to work in the long term no matter what Google try to do.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Steve Waller View Post

      Agreed with the others in that you can pretty much ignore relevancy for now but I tend to maintain just one niche per site rather than nik0's approach of cramming multiple niches onto one site.

      But then I am maybe a bit more paranoid than the average person and want my efforts to work in the long term no matter what Google try to do.
      And that is what you should do. It's okay to go a little broad, like having a finance related website that links out to a real estate site, a estate planning site, etc. Or a healthcare related site that features dental, family practice, eye care, etc.

      But I would never build a site that links out to a legal practice, a flooring contractor, and a women's clothing website.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

        Have you seen results from buying non-relevant high PR sites and re-branding them to match your niche?
        I have been doing it for years. Since long before this whole building a network thing was popular.

        Originally Posted by Jeffery Moss View Post

        If you are only linking out to your money site, that would look suspicious. So what other type of sites would you link to in order to keep your site's credibility high with Google?
        I link to other authorities in the niche or authorities in closely related niches.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by Steve Waller View Post

      Agreed with the others in that you can pretty much ignore relevancy for now but I tend to maintain just one niche per site rather than nik0's approach of cramming multiple niches onto one site.

      But then I am maybe a bit more paranoid than the average person and want my efforts to work in the long term no matter what Google try to do.
      Correct, I used to cram multiple unrelated niches on one site but lately I quit doing that with most of my sites as we never know what Google comes up with in the near future.

      For some sites I think it's still ok to do, look at bookmark sites for example, that's also one huge collection of complete different topics, or news sites, or web directories like Dmoz, Yahoo, you name it.

      So it's definitely not needed, now or in the future, to theme each site for a specific niche (might even look unnatural when you only have such links ).
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by Steve Waller View Post

      Agreed with the others in that you can pretty much ignore relevancy for now but I tend to maintain just one niche per site rather than nik0's approach of cramming multiple niches onto one site.

      But then I am maybe a bit more paranoid
      Its not paranoid. Its the number one footprint to the detection of a network and one of the reasons that people should avoid public link networks. theres no way they can work all those various niche links in on a page or site without looking totally unnatural.
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
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        • Profile picture of the author Steve Waller
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          Its not paranoid. Its the number one footprint to the detection of a network and one of the reasons that people should avoid public link networks. theres no way they can work all those various niche links in on a page or site without looking totally unnatural.
          Yeah that's been my theory too - sure there are bookmarking sites and the likes that link out to every site regardless of niche but these sites are different; they have traffic, they have users, they have everything a large authority site should have.

          Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

          For some sites I think it's still ok to do, look at bookmark sites for example, that's also one huge collection of complete different topics, or news sites, or web directories like Dmoz, Yahoo, you name it.

          So it's definitely not needed, now or in the future, to theme each site for a specific niche (might even look unnatural when you only have such links ).
          An expired domain is not the same as a bookmarking site. It's like comparing apples with oranges.

          As for it looking unnatural - I'd say that a majority of websites out there are generally niche specific (there are only so many personal blogs, directories, bookmarking sites and news sites) so to look "natural" I prefer to keep my sites on one topic.

          Each to his own though.
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          • Profile picture of the author nik0
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Steve Waller View Post

            An expired domain is not the same as a bookmarking site. It's like comparing apples with oranges.

            As for it looking unnatural - I'd say that a majority of websites out there are generally niche specific (there are only so many personal blogs, directories, bookmarking sites and news sites) so to look "natural" I prefer to keep my sites on one topic.

            Each to his own though.
            An expired domain has a very broad meaning.

            I assume you seek expired domains that have a history that are related to your niche? If not then it's just as fake looking as a bookmark site. Traffic doesn't change anything about that.
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        Its not paranoid. Its the number one footprint to the detection of a network and one of the reasons that people should avoid public link networks. theres no way they can work all those various niche links in on a page or site without looking totally unnatural.
        The number one footprint is a link profile that doesn't connect in any way to the content that you post at the site.

        So you can disguise as many footprints as you like but it would never look and feel like a natural website.
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

          The number one footprint is a link profile that doesn't connect in any way to the content that you post at the site.
          Private owned networks specifically crafted to a niche answers that quite easily as well. Plus almost everyone here that has seen a public network site will tell you that the one big giveaway that you see almost instantly is the kind of content on the page and the different subjects that just make no sense to any real blog/site. Its undeniable. The other thing that is a dead giveaway for a network is a link in every article especially if its a short article and just worked in for no reason. You just do not see that in natural sites

          So you can disguise as many footprints as you like but it would never look and feel like a natural website.
          You miss the point. On private networks there is no need to disguise the links themselves. Since the entire site is owned by the blog owner they are in total control of all content and can in fact if they choose make it a real and worthy of visitors site for the subject. In keeping with the thread getting as close to that is best practice when feasible. Reduced OBL also compensates for link juice. A weak PR3 link can outperform a stronger PR4 link with more links and definitely a stronger PR3 link where multiple links must be dropped. Public versus Private is a different dynamic in regard to link strength. OBL cannot be ignored.

          Anyway as Steve said - to each his own.

          OP good luck with your network
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          • Profile picture of the author nik0
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            Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

            Private owned networks specifically crafted to a niche answers that quite easily as well. Plus almost everyone here that has seen a public network site will tell you that the one big giveaway that you see almost instantly is the kind of content on the page and the different subjects that just make no sense to any real blog/site. Its undeniable. The other thing that is a dead giveaway for a network is a link in every article especially if its a short article and just worked in for no reason. You just do not see that in natural sites

            You miss the point. On private networks there is no need to disguise the links themselves. Since the entire site is owned by the blog owner they are in total control of all content and can in fact if they choose make it a real and worthy of visitors site for the subject. In keeping with the thread getting as close to that is best practice when feasible. Reduced OBL also compensates for link juice. A weak PR3 link can outperform a stronger PR4 link with more links and definitely a stronger PR3 link where multiple links must be dropped. Public versus Private is a different dynamic in regard to link strength. OBL cannot be ignored.

            Anyway as Steve said - to each his own.

            OP good luck with your network
            There's only one entity you need to disguise your network from and that are Google's manual reviewers, and you won't fool them, simple like that.

            Scared that others might detect your network? Easy just block all crawlers and competitors won't find out why that site is outranking them.

            So who are you disguising for?
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

              There's only one entity you need to disguise your network from and that are Google's manual reviewers, and you won't fool them, simple like that.

              Scared that others might detect your network? Easy just block all crawlers and competitors won't find out why that site is outranking them.
              Point A - Google has been "fooled" every day. Real sites sell links all the time. Closer you get to that the more Golden you are. Will you find those networks to look at. nope not here. Have I seen networks like that? yes. I tell no lie I have yet to build one quite as good as some legal networks I have seen. They rock! and I would have never have noticed if a lawyer client had not known of them and pointed me their way.

              Point B - You can block all you want and I have taught on this board how to do it but most sites get reported after ranking by competitors. You can't hide that unless you don't rank

              SO the answer to your question is easy peasy - competitors. They represent the most common way networks are detected. Block them all and they can't see any links or only crappy links ? LOL then they really know you are up to something. Last time I checked you did not have to cite a specific link to file a report

              BTW. Heres a heads up - Theres a practice people are using now of using the url as a variation for keywords. Saw a lot of that recently looking at a network. You can block like crazy but you put the url in the search box of Google and they are all there. You can use that to trace an entire network out.

              You going to block Google too?

              BTW you pointed out another benefit of a private network. With a public network you have to contend with the other link site owners revealing the URLs or worse sending them to Gooogle in the disavow process.
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              • Profile picture of the author nik0
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                Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                With a public network you have to contend with the other link site owners revealing the URLs or worse sending them to Gooogle in the disavow process.
                Sorry didn't get this part.

                You mean sending out link reports or something?

                About point B, how come I haven't lost a single site to deindexing so far if point B was such a risk.

                That always amazes me about all this, people say there are so many huge risks and all but I never see any of that, not even on a tiny scale.

                Seems Google is a bit busy.

                To get back at my point, about fooling manual reviews after a competitor reports you, don't you think the employees who handle that won't look whether the site is repurposed when they have the tiniest doubt whether the site is legit?

                Cause you can make the site appear as legit as you want, it's always detectable by the human eye, you put that lawyer site as an example and I know who you're talking about as he contacted me before as well asking if it was worth the price of a link. Yes that site looks legit but that site costed many thousands of dollars to develop and everything (and that's one site one niche we're talking about).

                But as said before, private network or niche related network that's shared with more people, they both look just as unnatural cause you know just as well as me that people who buy your domains aren't going to put in the effort to make them look as real as possible so it are still crappy small sites with just a random theme throw'd up, nothing more nothing less.

                Each site on the web that isn't used for rankings are real sites that have a real purpose. Whether it's a local business site, or a very active blogger (the hobby guys just sign up for a free wordpress or tumblr), or ecommerce shops, you name it. So to turn an empty WP installation with a random theme into a real site requires quite some effort that most are not prepared to take.

                Anyway, it doesn't matter that much, Google has their hands full and will never hire the crew that's needed to detective the whole internet for unnatural link sources, they rather have their algorithm take care of that.

                It seriously surprises me if Google would really do something with those sites that get reported by competitors.
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                • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                  Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                  Sorry didn't get this part.

                  You mean sending out link reports or something?

                  About point B, how come I haven't lost a single site to deindexing so far if point B was such a risk.

                  That always amazes me about all this, people say there are so many huge risks and all but I never see any of that, not even on a tiny scale.

                  Seems Google is a bit busy.
                  Well BMR went for quite some time as well and you are no doubt vastly smaller than they were but really you own a network and don't know networks have been deindexed? When has - "I have never been pulled over for speeding" worked as an argument that speeding does not entail a risk of being pulled over?

                  Google is probably not concerned about you but question? Why are you even disputing B under blocking crawlers. Just as a heads up if you are saying you block all of them Spyglass is showing ton loads of them so you are doing it wrong. So as far as being deindexed I'd be thankful not making an argument they are under little threat

                  Cause you can make the site appear as legit as you want, it's always detectable by the human eye, you put that lawyer site as an example and I know who you're talking about
                  You have no way of knowing who I talked to as I said nothing about him being from here.

                  But as said before, private network or niche related network that's shared with more people, they both look just as unnatural cause you know just as well as me that people who buy your domains aren't going to put in the effort to make them look as real as possible so it are still crappy small sites with just a random theme throw'd up, nothing more nothing less.
                  Well this thread is about private network practices so I really don't know why you are trying (scratch that - thats a lie - I do know why)......so it doesnt serve any purpose to talk about "shared with more people" networks. This isn't a thread about public network so please don't start. Most people here know that a private network is more secure than one shared with the public and its pretty futile to those with common sense to convince them otherwise.

                  Each site on the web that isn't used for rankings are real sites that have a real purpose. Whether it's a local business site, or a very active blogger (the hobby guys just sign up for a free wordpress or tumblr), or ecommerce shops, you name it. So to turn an empty WP installation with a random theme into a real site requires quite some effort that most are not prepared to take.
                  So what? the Op is asking about best practices not for your evaluation of whether he will follow them

                  Anyway, it doesn't matter that much, Google has their hands full and will never hire the crew that's needed to detective the whole internet for unnatural link sources, they rather have their algorithm take care of that.
                  I would advise the OP not to take this advice seriously. With a copy of Inspyder Insite or screaming frog and then copying and pasting into Spyglass I can and have been able to locate entire networks in minutes. It takes no great feat or crew. IF anyone wants to volunteer their network I can do a video demonstrating how easy it is. You want to volunteer Nik0? All it means when you have not ben hit is that yu have not been hit. Means not a lick that the threat is not there.

                  Everyone said Google would never get around to punishing spam - and they did. People said that Google couldn't take out BMR and they did. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to come into a thread where the OP is asking for best practices and then argue that its all good never mind invest and build up your network and forget about best practices

                  Not unless you are not really here to share best practices.
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                  • Profile picture of the author HeadStartSEO
                    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                    I would advise the OP not to take this advice seriously. With a copy of Inspyder Insite or screaming frog and then copying and pasting into Spyglass I can and have been able to locate entire networks in minutes. It takes no great feat or crew. IF anyone wants to volunteer their network I can do a video demonstrating how easy it is. You want to volunteer Nik0? All it means when you have not ben hit is that yu have not been hit. Means not a lick that the threat is not there.

                    Everyone said Google would never get around to punishing spam - and they did. People said that Google couldn't take out BMR and they did. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to come into a thread where the OP is asking for best practices and then argue that its all good never mind invest and build up your network and forget about best practices

                    Not unless you are not really here to share best practices.
                    Hhahaa, I don't think anyone that said BMR couldn't get hit. Everyone I knew, always said when will they get hit.

                    You can find shitty network sites, yes. Crazy good networks, I bet you anything you couldn't find them. No one is going to show you their network, that would be dumb. Do you have a network we can look at?

                    Anyone can find really crappy network sites without even looking at the site. Just look at number of words per article, how many articles have links, and then confirm it with private Whois.

                    Real network sites, even make up whois with different peoples name. They are real sites that get traffic daily with different affiliate offers, and even ads from different networks(not using the same affiliate ID number). They real sites for real people. Those you won't be able to tell. However, people that know this aren't going to blast it public, since they want these networks to last.

                    Throughout my time, I would say 99% of people, don't know how to build real network sites. Since their only goal is links. There stuff out there, that large SEO firms are doing that would blow your mind. Look at Germany, there are SEO companies recreating the algorithm from data they gather and running 4,000 site networks and ranking clients like crazy.

                    __________

                    Google is too busy to find the small time guy, "The Indexed Web contains at least 1.68 billion pages (Wednesday, 23 October, 2013)"(1) there too many sites to police. Network sites have been around for 10 + years, wouldn't they been old news if they were easy to fix.

                    However, if you get lazy they will find your network. Make real sites that add value, and not just network sites.

                    Here what Google could do, but won't.

                    Kill links once a domain is name transferred? Well, this happens all the time to common non-tech or SEO type people. Sites sell, and businesses changes hands often. Would hurt too many people for a small problem.

                    Google could check every domain for drops? Maybe sometime, but what about those domains that don't drop?

                    Couldn't Google check all the expired domain sites? Yes, I guess they could, but those site owners will get smart and create a login behind them. Will Google, bot sites by logging into them, and then scrapping their data.. Highly unlikely plus they could get sued if site owners put that is against their TOS.

                    List can go on, it's going to be hard to end this problem. People can email other sites owners and buy domains from them directly. People will always find a way to break Google. Plus, Networks are such a small part of the game. They will only go after the big guys and not the small fish.

                    Any business goes after the big fish, and tends to leave the small ones alone due to lack of man power.

                    point of this, don't just think of networks as linking tools. Think of them as website networks. I think that's what Mike Anthony is suggesting here.
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                    • Profile picture of the author Trent Brownrigg
                      Just follow what Alex Becker @ Source-Wave does. He's the master at building private networks!
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                      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                        Originally Posted by Trent Brownrigg View Post

                        Just follow what Alex Becker @ Source-Wave does. He's the master at building private networks!
                        Was that sarcasm or were you being serious? I honestly could not tell.
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                      • Profile picture of the author HeadStartSEO
                        Originally Posted by Trent Brownrigg View Post

                        Just follow what Alex Becker @ Source-Wave does. He's the master at building private networks!
                        I would say today, you need to take it a step further than what he suggest.
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                        • Profile picture of the author Trent Brownrigg
                          Originally Posted by HeadStartSEO View Post

                          I would say today, you need to take it a step further than what he suggest.
                          Yeah it's always a good idea to find your own twist to improve upon anything. It's tough to get far by strictly copying someone else. But you can definitely take the advice as your foundation to build upon.
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                          • Profile picture of the author HeadStartSEO
                            Originally Posted by Trent Brownrigg View Post

                            Yeah it's always a good idea to find your own twist to improve upon anything. It's tough to get far by strictly copying someone else. But you can definitely take the advice as your foundation to build upon.
                            Not just that, We love Becker. Also, you have to understand that he is going after a generally newbie or newer SEO'ers. The information is from basic to middle of the line.

                            There much more advance stuff out there. He a good foundation, but you need to gather more after starting with him.
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                            • Profile picture of the author alrikvincent
                              Originally Posted by HeadStartSEO View Post

                              Not just that, We love Becker. Also, you have to understand that he is going after a generally newbie or newer SEO'ers. The information is from basic to middle of the line.

                              There much more advance stuff out there. He a good foundation, but you need to gather more after starting with him.
                              I am looking to learn some of the advanced stuff when it comes to blog networks. What course do you guys recommend?
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                              • Profile picture of the author seamy82
                                Why should Google care if people are using their own private blog networks that are niche related? You can guarantee for the high yield search terms, if someone has went to the expense of building a high PR blog network strong enough to push them to the top of the rankings, the money site being pushed will be of high quality. The owner will want to make all his money back, with a considerable profit on top, so the chances are the site is one of the best in the niche. It's public blog networks, where you pay £100 a month to push crap to the top of the SERPs is what Google is concerned about. It makes logical sense to have that approach.
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                                • Profile picture of the author nik0
                                  Banned
                                  Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

                                  Why should Google care if people are using their own private blog networks that are niche related? You can guarantee for the high yield search terms, if someone has went to the expense of building a high PR blog network strong enough to push them to the top of the rankings, the money site being pushed will be of high quality. The owner will want to make all his money back, with a considerable profit on top, so the chances are the site is one of the best in the niche. It's public blog networks, where you pay £100 a month to push crap to the top of the SERPs is what Google is concerned about. It makes logical sense to have that approach.
                                  That's one way to look at it indeed.
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                              • Profile picture of the author HeadStartSEO
                                Originally Posted by alrikvincent View Post

                                I am looking to learn some of the advanced stuff when it comes to blog networks. What course do you guys recommend?
                                Really, the things we use and others that we know aren't too much in the public light right now. I don't think you will really find a course right now detailing you this. Most of the stuff out right now are tricks that people used a few years ago, the new stuff in the SEO world isn't really out in the public( this is kind of a rule of thumb). People want to protect their ideas, and tactics to profit.

                                Sorry, I couldn't be more helpful right now. We're going to be coming out with some stuff, but if you want to message us. We can keep in touch with you.

                                To answer your question, testing, thinking, testing some more, rethink things, and testing. It's a never ending cycle.
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                                • Profile picture of the author alrikvincent
                                  Originally Posted by HeadStartSEO View Post

                                  Really, the things we use and others that we know aren't too much in the public light right now. I don't think you will really find a course right now detailing you this. Most of the stuff out right now are tricks that people used a few years ago, the new stuff in the SEO world isn't really out in the public( this is kind of a rule of thumb). People want to protect their ideas, and tactics to profit.

                                  Sorry, I couldn't be more helpful right now. We're going to be coming out with some stuff, but if you want to message us. We can keep in touch with you.

                                  To answer your question, testing, thinking, testing some more, rethink things, and testing. It's a never ending cycle.
                                  The reason I was looking for a state of the art course was because one of my websites took a hit. Its traffic dropped by 500% from the search engines. The web pages are still indexed but my website appears less in the search results. My website's traffic goes through a wave where I see an increase in one month and a drop in another month from the search engines. It sucks because I don't really do much in terms of link building.
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                        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                          Originally Posted by HeadStartSEO View Post

                          I would say today, you need to take it a step further than what he suggest.
                          I would say about 10 steps further, but to each their own.
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                  • Profile picture of the author nik0
                    Banned
                    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                    Well BMR went for quite some time as well and you are no doubt vastly smaller than they were but really you own a network and don't know networks have been deindexed? When has - "I have never been pulled over for speeding" worked as an argument that speeding does not entail a risk of being pulled over?
                    You don't have to ask me that question, but you're comparing a whalefish to some tiny gold fish here. And that was more done to make a statement towards the IM folks.


                    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                    Google is probably not concerned about you but question? Why are you even disputing B under blocking crawlers. Just as a heads up if you are saying you block all of them Spyglass is showing ton loads of them so you are doing it wrong. So as far as being deindexed I'd be thankful not making an argument they are under little threat
                    I only started to block them recently, all the new sites won't show up in Spyglass and over time the old ones should also disappear when the databases update I suppose.


                    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                    You have no way of knowing who I talked to as I said nothing about him being from here.
                    Sorry?


                    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                    I would advise the OP not to take this advice seriously. With a copy of Inspyder Insite or screaming frog and then copying and pasting into Spyglass I can and have been able to locate entire networks in minutes. It takes no great feat or crew. IF anyone wants to volunteer their network I can do a video demonstrating how easy it is. You want to volunteer Nik0? All it means when you have not ben hit is that yu have not been hit. Means not a lick that the threat is not there.
                    There's always a threat when doing SEO, otherwise all the large companies would guarantee results, most don't.

                    Obvious I ain't going to volunteer, you have some people who contacted you same like I get contacted by clients from other sellers at this forum on regular base. So it wouldn't be very hard for you to uncover a fairly large part of my network.

                    Although with the recent split up it would be a lot harder. But yeah where a will is is a way, when you throw in reverse IP engineering and filtering on multiple CMS and manually going through the sites (assuming you wouldn't know any previous clients).
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                    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                      Softalicious, QuickInstall, Fantastico, just whatever the cpanel supplies
                      For anyone installing Wordpress, whether it is for a network site or not, I would highly recommend you avoid any kind of auto-install scripts, Fantastico especially. They leave footprints for hackers and are much more vulnerable to being hacked. Install it manually instead.

                      It is extremely easy to install it manually. A little more of a pain if your hosting doesn't have cPanel, but still pretty easy.


                      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                      I only started to block them recently, all the new sites won't show up in Spyglass and over time the old ones should also disappear when the databases update I suppose.
                      How did you block Spyglass's spider? They have never publicly released the name of their spider (or spiders), and from what I have found, nobody has figured out what it is.
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                      • Profile picture of the author nik0
                        Banned
                        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                        For anyone installing Wordpress, whether it is for a network site or not, I would highly recommend you avoid any kind of auto-install scripts, Fantastico especially. They leave footprints for hackers and are much more vulnerable to being hacked. Install it manually instead.

                        It is extremely easy to install it manually. A little more of a pain if your hosting doesn't have cPanel, but still pretty easy.

                        How did you block Spyglass's spider? They have never publicly released the name of their spider (or spiders), and from what I have found, nobody has figured out what it is.
                        What would such footprint be that you mention?

                        I don't know if I blocked Spyglass, I got a list of about 200 spiders from someone with a network of 1000's of domains. We block them all in the robots.txt and .htaccess file.

                        I heard rumors that Spyglass doesn't release their spider bot, although they pull most of their data from external sites isn't it?
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                        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                          Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                          What would such footprint be that you mention?
                          For example, Fantastico creates a file called fantversion.php, which can be fairly easily hacked. There are about 5 other things that Fantastico does wrong.

                          Trust me. Wordpress is a giant target for hackers as it is. You will get hacked a lot less often with manual installs and using Better WP Security.

                          Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                          I don't know if I blocked Spyglass, I got a list of about 200 spiders from someone with a network of 1000's of domains. We block them all in the robots.txt and .htaccess file.

                          I heard rumors that Spyglass doesn't release their spider bot, although they pull most of their data from external sites isn't it?
                          They actually have developed a pretty big database of their own.
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                      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                        How did you block Spyglass's spider? They have never publicly released the name of their spider (or spiders), and from what I have found, nobody has figured out what it is.
                        Yep....for all the time people have asked I think its clear now they do that purposefully. Anyway he really can't answer you. Like he said he is just now beginning to use blocking. he's assuming a level of protection that he has no experience in yet.

                        I've known some people to try and use some kind of universal blocking with specifying then only Googlebot allowed but haven't seen it as effective plus it can have some nasty consequences.

                        Still SEOs for your competition are not all dumb. IF you have nothing in your link profile and are ranking they can smell a rat and still do a report (or search for the url in the Google). You just can't look at bot blocking as a total solution to ignore other best practices.
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                    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                      Obvious I ain't going to volunteer, you have some people who contacted you same like I get contacted by clients from other sellers at this forum on regular base. So it wouldn't be very hard for you to uncover a fairly large part of my network.
                      No it wasn't hard at all. Already did it. I wasn't really asking about doing it I was more asking for the video aspect.I would not have shown the sites. I just don't think network owners appreciate how drop down easy it is until they see it being done. Thats yet another reason private networks are safer.

                      P.S. Although public networks can get exposed to other SEOs thats hardly the only way. Those that sell on forums can be tracked down by customer sigs and testimonials. Not hard because for some reason people will talk about SEO done to their site with it right in their sig.

                      and manually going through the sites (assuming you wouldn't know any previous clients).
                      Nope no reason to. Thats what I was explaining to you. programs out there will crawl and detect outgoing links automatically. You then put backlink checkers on those sites and then detect outgoing links on the sites linking to that. Rinse and repeat. You overestimate what it takes. Shucks you can use macro tools and automate the mapping out of a network. Google merely has not got around to some networks yet.

                      The small fish argument works until you realize Google must know what we all know - Add all the smaller networks together and they are a ten time bigger problem for the serps. As a matter of fact someone was opening multiple threads on Cutts at the Pub Con but failed to mention this summary on what he said about networks

                      Spam Networks They’ve got a pretty good list, just working their way down them. Matt joked that he should talk a poll to determine who to axe next.
                      But once again this thread is about private networks. Best practice for private networks is to stay away from the public network model because IT IS inherently inferior for very obvious reasons.
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                      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                        Nope no reason to. Thats what I was explaining to you. programs out there will crawl and detect outgoing links automatically. You then put backlink checkers on those sites and then detect outgoing links on the sites linking to that. Rinse and repeat. You overestimate what it takes. Shucks you can use macro tools and automate the mapping out of a network. Google merely has not got around to some networks yet.
                        Yep. It is extremely easy. A few years ago, I had a list of about 3000 PR 0 .info sites that took me all of 45 minutes to put together.
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                        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                          Yep. It is extremely easy. A few years ago, I had a list of about 3000 PR 0 .info sites that took me all of 45 minutes to put together.
                          ROFL...thats cheating. You see the .infos and you are off to the races but its still easy and fast with no TLD giveaway. I am thinking of doing a video showing it because it really drives home some points to people doing networks. Major hassle having to block out the URLs all the way through the video. People misunderstood about the video thing I mentioned . I would never ever reveal the urls of a network unless an owner was really trying hard to mess with me.
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  • Profile picture of the author clean99
    Also, try to use different platforms other than WordPress for building your blogs. If you have a lot of WP sites linking back to you, it might look a little suspicious. At least learn how to create websites on 1 additional platform for variation.

    I heard that putting some monetization on your blog network is also good to create variety but never ever use Adsense.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Russerg View Post

      Also, try to use different platforms other than WordPress for building your blogs. If you have a lot of WP sites linking back to you, it might look a little suspicious. At least learn how to create websites on 1 additional platform for variation.

      I heard that putting some monetization on your blog network is also good to create variety but never ever use Adsense.
      That's what I do now, use a dozen different CMS systems as well as Wiki sites, video sites, you name it, the whole thing.
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      • Profile picture of the author clean99
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        That's what I do now, use a dozen different CMS systems as well as Wiki sites, video sites, you name it, the whole thing.
        How do you instal these CMS on your hosting account? I always have problems doing that
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
          Banned
          Originally Posted by Russerg View Post

          How do you instal these CMS on your hosting account? I always have problems doing that
          Softalicious, QuickInstall, Fantastico, just whatever the cpanel supplies
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  • Profile picture of the author HeadStartSEO
    Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

    Are these the best practices for a blog network -

    - Buy relevant domains with PR
    - Hide registration from whois
    - Host the domains on separate hosting providers (no seo hosting)
    - Add content to newly acquired domains for a few weeks before adding links to my money site
    - give each money site their own private blog network (no foot print)

    Am I miss anything?
    Am I adding the links from network to my money site to quick?
    Do I need to have a separate blog network for each money site?

    Thanks,
    Seamy

    Hey Seamy,

    I know you got a good amount of suggestions here, and I'm going to be honest I didn't read them all. Here’s why, we (Head Start SEO) have been running a private blog network for a few years now. We have some big clients (shoutout to all the "whitehat" SEO providers we provide links for), and we have been running our own for clients and personal uses.

    We have really high standards for our network, and tend to out rank other networks. Now, I'm not tooting my own horn here, I'm just trying to give you some groundwork here to the things I'm about to explain.

    Let’s break this down by groups. I'm going to skip over the relative niche aspects, since that's common sense, and a few other basic things as well. If this gets better maybe we should do a thread of this by itself.

    Domains, sites themselves, and how to link to them:

    1) Domains

    Ok, let’s break this down even more (Metrics, link check, SEO check, and brandability)

    - Metrics

    First, let’s kick off this debate right. I know you hear PR this, PR that.... Forget about PR because it doesn't matter. PR is the worst thing you can look at when looking at a domain in general. So what do you do?

    Grab yourself a Moz account and run it through Then, open Site Explore check Mozrank and MozTrust. However, when you're in the "Compare Link Metrics" tab don't look at the first one, go to the "Root Domain Metrics" section to get the domain trust level.

    Now, there some debate among people of Moz and MajesticSEO. MajesticSEO is clearly going to have more links in their database. However, some believe that Moz shows all the links that matter, and tends not to look at more spammy parts of the web. I don't know how true this is, however there are people that stand by Moz for looking at Trust rankings.

    All our domains have at least Moz Trust and Moz Rank of 3.

    We also run them through MajesticSEO to check for their Citation Flow and Trust Flow. Sometimes you have to use your brain and see what your getting from both these tools (We don't use Ahrefs besides a lot of good things we hear about them, in our testing we don't think it matches up to Majestic SEO).

    To cut this short, make sure Moz Trust is somewhere around 3+ and Majestic Citation Flow and Trust Flow is around 10+.

    Finally, see if the domain is brandable. You might be thinking... who cares. Most likely if it is not brandable, like an EMD, it might have been used by a marketer before. We're looking for natural links here, like something that looks like great-cool-things-online.com. These aren't natural, but something like steelnews.com looks more natural.


    2) Backlinks

    Here is the most important part, if you get this wrong your f***ed. For our cases, we want domains that weren't SEO'ed. Here why, we want it to look super natural. We're looking for old, local, small businesses with expired business for whatever reason.

    If you see the domain was SEO'ed then this could cause a few problems
    1) You don't know if the domain has a penalty
    2) Might have crappy links

    Links from SEO a few years ago are crappy. If you see article marketing, or directories, just throw the domain away.

    Now look at the anchor text, make sure they are relevant for your money site. If they fall within the range you're fine. Let’s say your niche is small brown dogs, you don't have to find something about small brown dogs. Anything dog-related will be ok.

    Finally, look at some of the backlinks. Are the sites legitimate or are they crappy. If most of the links are crappy then get rid of them. Make sure these are links that won't be removed either, so you want to make sure there are a few good links that won't hurt the domain if you lose a few. Most likely, you will lose a few here and now, so if the domain has like 10 links don't bother with it (maybe buy it and resell it) hint hint).

    Also, look for other pages that have link power. Don’t redirect them to the home page, just make new pages and redirect to there. Redirect to the home page Google has said they look at those differently, and plus foot print hello!

    3) The site

    This is another key for a network: each site has to be better than the last one. Get a logo on fiverr, get a new theme for each site. Buy Themedy.com, and maybe even Genesis themes (they have a lot there). Just don’t do all free themes, it looks cheap and is a give away.

    Set up a social media presents like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Through some fans at it via fiverr.

    Get the basics (ie) contact us page, about is page, and terms (make sure to use different terms on each site).

    Make the site look real, even put up some fake affiliate banners on there with no clear links to the affiliate, since you don’t want them to track your affiliate id.

    Just make the site look really really really real! If someone finds it, they shouldn’t be able to see it’s a link network.

    (Pro Tip, use the robot.txt to block moz, Majestic SEO, and the other link databases to hide your links for others. I know some people say this is dumb, but really it's the best thing to do. You can't report on what you can't find. However, don't use these on all the sites.)


    This was a lot, I could go on for hours, but I'm going to leave it at that. Let me know if you have any questions.

    There a lot of gaps here, but you can shot. I'll answer
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  • Profile picture of the author Trent Brownrigg
    Dead serious! I've been doing SEO for more than a decade and have never come across someone more open and honest about strategies that truly work, and actually last.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Really? The stuff I have seen from him would never work for anything the least bit competitive. All I have seen though is him trying 'wow' newbies by ranking nearly blank pages for stuff nobody is trying to rank for using high PR links. Nothing really amazing there.

    Maybe I missed the good stuff. I don't know.

    He's good at marketing himself though. I'll give him that.
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    • Profile picture of the author Trent Brownrigg
      Yeah, definitely a lot of that, no doubt, but there are a lot of gems in there too. I've use a lot of his stuff with great success. Not on the hardest keywords in the world, but not the easiest either. I think his methods of building blog networks are as solid as they can be in this current state of highly unpredictable SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author seamy82
    I take it your shouldn't have all your money sites on one hosting provider?
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