What is a Private Blog Network?

A Private Blog Network or PBN is a network of websites that are usually built from high authority expired domains.

PBN’s are used for link building to money sites in a controlled manner, as backlinks play the main role in increasing the authority of money sites or main sites, money sites achieve a good ranking in Google if it has a good number of backlinks, more backlinks means good site ranking.

Why are PBNs so Powerful?

PBNs are tremendously powerful for link building because:

1. As PBNs are built on expired domains that have a HIGH authority i.e. high Trust flow, Citation flow, good DA, and PA. Google loves backlinks from high authority websites as more valuable than low authority websites. For example, a link from a high authority website like bbc.com, cnn.com, .gov and .edu have more value in Google’s search algorithm.
2. Another advantage of PBNs is that they allow you to fully control the backlinks to your main site that you would like to rank. You can add links from PBN to your money site whenever you like, you can always increase the power of PBNs by web 2.0 properties, we going to discuss web 2.0 in another article but for now, web 2.0 properties are at third-tier and PBNs are on the 2nd tier, PBN network is built-in three-tier on tier one is the money site that you want to rank, PBNs are in the second tier and web 2.0’s are on the third tier, this approach is adopted to avoid footprints, moreover PBNs are hosted at different hosts to avoid footprints.
3. As you know that there have been a number in Google algorithm over the last few years, and Google can change the search algorithm at any time without any notice which can have a huge impact on your site ranking, moreover the owner of the website from where you are getting links to your money site can remove the backlink to your money site without any reason and in this situation, your site ranking will drop and you have no choice left to get backlink again. If you have the ability to control your backlinks this can be a big advantage.
4. TrustRank is a measure of how much value Google has for your money site, if you have a link from bbc.com or any high authority .govt or .edu site that link is very valuable, people adopt many different methods to get a link from these types of high authority sites like some people to offer educational sponsorships and request educational and govt organizations to place a sponsorship adds with a do-follow link to the sponsoring website.

Risks

There are some risks that you must consider with PBNs.

1. Your network could be detected by Google and if this happens your all network can be deindexed. Then, the authority of the backlinks to your money site will be lost.
2. There are some tools e.g. ahrefs, majestic, Moz, etc by which your competitor can look at the backlinks coming to your money sites. The competitor can also discover your other money sites, although it takes some effort at the competitor’s end to discover your money sites and PBNs there are solutions to avoid this and we will discuss them in more detail in another.
3. Google updates its algorithm to devalue any historical authority for expired domains but Google loves good content and good designs because Google wants that high-value content and good information can reach people.

Other Considerations

There are additional tasks that are related to creating a PBN of your own.

1. Time – It takes a considerable amount of time to start and maintain a PBN, people usually hire virtual assistants to save time and now virtual assistant is easily available on upwork.com, fiver, and other online hiring sites at a very cost.
2. Costs – Similar to the time aspect there are several items to take into account for the cost of purchasing domains, purchasing hosting, and buying good content.
3. Management – Managing a PBN is also not easy, you must be able to keep maintain records about each domain, its hosting, IP address, backlinks, and other details.

What about the Benefits?

There are a number of benefits for maintaining PBNs, we have discussed a few above and we are going to discuss more here.

1. PBNs make your money site ranking very fast.
2. You can control links coming to your money site.
3. You can beat your competitor’s ranking in a few weeks.
4. No outreach relation building, you do not have to spend time asking another website owner to give you backlinks.
5. More high converting traffic