5 min read

More than a decade ago when SEO was in its very nascent stage, people figured out that optimizing and getting results from their first site was a lot more difficult compared to their second site. The simple reason was the fact that people can easily inter-link their sites once they have more than one website. Link building isn’t difficult if you have time and resources. But the process becomes easier if you have more than one website – that way you won’t have to rely on external factors, you can simply link your sites and rank them. This process of creating more than one site or blog is known as a private blog network or PBN.

In time, the search engines got smarter and understood that people were making way too many sites just for the benefit of linking them together. They came up with filters that discredit and penalize such activities. This in turn meant that websites that are being created for running a PBN need to be well maintained, they should have good content, and most of all, they should have minimum footprints.

Private Blog Network: PBN Introduction

Here’s an SEO basic if you are new to everything – if you link to an online resource (article, image, PDF, video, etc. ) it ranks well in search engines. If you link using an anchor text – then the resource ranks well for that term. If the site from where you are linking is relevant to the site that is getting that link – then it is even better. There are way too many factors here that determine the results but one thing that comes out is that Links are important for SEO.

If you try to build this link online then there are several ways you can do it. Most of these links will come from sources that are out of your control – for example, Guest Blogging, which requires that you post an article on a blog that is maintained by someone else. You have to check the stats and content of the site and determine if that site is a good fit. What if at a later stage, your link got removed, or worse if they start linking to questionable sites?

This is where a Private Blog Network is effective because you are the one who is in control of your network and you can opt. for better content and links for it.

How To Start a Private Blog Network That Works

Starting a PBN is pretty much the same as starting any other website. You need a domain, a web host, and some content. The difference is in the intent as with a PBN your priority is to make it look natural and have a minimum footprint.

If all of your websites from the private blog network are hosted on the same web host or the domains are registered by the same registrar, or you use services like Google Analytics or AdSense that can be traced for the ownership of the domains – the search engines or your competitors will track down your network and you will get exposed. Best to spread out and use as many web hosts and domain registration services as you can manage.

Start with a Domain

Registering a new domain name isn’t a bad idea. If you are planning on the long term then register a fresh domain and start working on it. In a year or so, it will be a strong site with plenty of SEO power for linking use.

Alternatively, you can do, what most other people do – search for a domain that is expired and get it registered. Once done, start working on it. We will cover this point in detail in another article where we will explain how to best use a dropped or expired domain. With an expired domain, you will be able to speed up your progress as the domain already has an age, it has links pointing to it and if all goes well, the search engines will quickly pick it up and start valuing it again.

Once the domains are registered, the next step is the Web Hosting. For starting a PBN the first thing that you need is a good web host. Feel free to use multiple web hosts to minimize your footprint.

Private Blog Network Content – Must be Cheap Yet High Quality

When it comes to determining what content is best for your PBN network – it is always good to go for a mix. Buy some high-quality articles, preferably longer too, and keep them on the sidebar of your blog’s homepage as a display of quality. Next, you need regular content, preferably around $5 to $10 an article – must be unique though. This is the type of content that will be posted on the site every week. Best to get a freelance author and do a long-term content contract – so that he logs into your blog, adds some content, and keeps the schedule queue longer.

The idea is to keep the things on auto-pilot so that it takes very minimum maintenance time, yet from the outside, it should look organic and natural.

Along with adding the articles it is also important to keep sharing your content on social media. There are tons of social sites where content can be easily shared – you can take out a few minutes every day for sharing of content or you can put the sharing part too in the job description of the freelance writer.

The Last Step: Linking

Once your Private Blog Network is live and kicking, the thing that you need to worry about is the maintenance. A network that is made to link, needs to be taken well care of. This is where your SEO expertise will come into play. You need to link to your main website but you need to keep the linking normal and organic too – the idea here is to make your PBN site look as much as any other site.

The difference between most Private Blog Network sites and normal sites is that normal sites get a lot of content while PBN is almost always never updated, or people use cheap and spun content to keep the PBN sites going. If you can set up a weekly content schedule – at least once a week, then your PBN sites will act like any other organic website.