When it comes to boosting your website’s visibility, the topic of Private Blog Networks (PBNs) is hard to ignore. Promising quick results and improved rankings, PBN links have become a hot topic in the world of SEO.
But are they the shortcut to success or a risky strategy that could backfire?
In this article, we’ll dig into the specifics of PBN links – weighing the pros, cons, and essential factors to help you make an informed decision for your SEO strategy.
What are PBN Links?
Getting quality PBN links can significantly boost how well your website appears in search results.
A PBN (Private Blog Network) is a network of websites held by one owner and created to manipulate search engine algorithms by generating backlinks to a target website. The primary goal is to improve this website’s search engine rankings, ultimately increasing its visibility and traffic.
When reputable websites in your niche link to your site, search engines view your website as more trustworthy and authoritative. This boost in credibility results in improved rankings, increasing your visibility in search results and driving more organic traffic to your site.
For example, if a major media platform like TheGuardian links to your site, it helps build trust with the search engines. But big sites like this also link to over 370k other domains. That’s why you should know that links from such sites will most likely not move the ranking for a specific query by a lot.
On the other hand, PBNs can have 100-200 links to their home page and refer only one to your site.
Getting links from URLs with few external links but many backlinks can boost your Ahrefs DR and provide indirect SEO benefits. This includes enhancing the site’s value for potential sales, helping with link selling, and making it easier to gain more backlinks.
The impact of Private Blog Network links can vary between different types of websites. Some websites might see better rankings with just a few links, but in highly competitive industries and sensitive niches like gambling, where competitors have lots of links, using PBNs becomes crucial to keep up.
From our experience, we’ve found PBN links to be especially useful in areas where Google might not fully understand the language, like in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines).
In these places, PBN links play a key role in ensuring your website does well in search results.
Benefits of Using PBN Links
Using PBN links in your SEO strategy can offer several potential benefits:
Improved Search Engine Ranking
As mentioned above, the main purpose of PBNs is to boost a website’s position in search engine results. By creating a network of high-quality backlinks, PBNs can move a website up in the rankings, making it more visible to potential visitors. This is especially helpful for new websites looking to attract attention.
Managing Backlinks
With a PBN, you have control over the backlinks pointing to your website. These links originate from private blogs under your ownership, allowing you to choose their quantity, quality, and the frequency of their addition. Just remember that PBNs are mainly used for homepage links.
Strong Homepage Links
Securing strong homepage links is a unique strength of PBNs. By using well-established websites with a history of numerous links and authority, PBNs create notably stronger links that are typically hard to get elsewhere.
Monetization Potential
If you have a strong PBN, you can monetize it by selling links and helping other websites. You could reach out to websites on the second or third pages of search results and offer to help them move up.
Cost-Effective Solutions
PBN links offer a budget-friendly choice compared to other link-building methods. A quality PBN homepage link usually falls within the $150-$200 range, making it a more economical option than guest posts, which can start at $400-$500.
Getting a Large Volume of Links
Websites in sensitive niches (gambling, forex, health, CBD, dating, etc.) often struggle to attract natural links, as many sites are hesitant to link to them, even with payment. Based on our experience, we’ve found PBNs to be highly effective for this kind of site to get a large volume of links, overcoming the challenge of building natural link profiles.
Links from Different Locations and Languages
In some countries and languages, PBNs are almost the only option for getting links. Especially if you are not local and there is a language barrier.
You can monetize your PBNs
If you have a strong PBN, you can use it to help other websites climb higher in search results by selling them links. You could reach out to websites on the second or third pages of search results and offer to help them move up.
Drawbacks of Using PBN Links
Using PBN links for SEO purposes comes with several drawbacks and risks.
- Google penalties: PBN links go against Google’s quality guidelines and may result in penalties, including a significant drop in search engine rankings or even the complete removal of a website from search results.
- Low-quality content: PBNs may contain low-quality content, which can negatively impact a website’s search engine rankings.
- Expensive setup: Building and maintaining a PBN network can be a time-consuming and expensive process that requires ongoing investment in content creation, hosting, and management.
- Privacy and security issues: PBNs, if not done right, can leave a trace, and multiple money or client sites can be found, which raises privacy and security issues from potentially aggressive competitors.
- Impact on Credibility: Using PBNs in your SEO strategy can harm your website’s credibility and reputation since it’s seen as a black hat SEO tactic.
How to Find PBN Backlinks?
There are two ways to get PBN backlinks:
Building Your PBN
Building a PBN yourself and using it to support your main site can have some pros and cons:
- Pros: personal PBNs are more effective in the long run and offer monetization opportunities by selling links. Additionally, one network can serve multiple projects.
- Cons: Building your personal PBN is a task that takes time and requires a substantial initial investment.
Buying PBN links
When buying PBN links, you should consider the quality of the links as well as the reputation of the provider.
These are the places we usually use in our work:
- SEO.Domains: SEO.Domains manages a network of 4000 PBN sites designed to look like regular websites. This diverse network includes sites in languages and countries that are typically hard to find. Additionally, the company provides a unique opportunity to preview the sites before making a purchase.
- blackhatworld.com: BlackHatWorld is an online forum dedicated to discussing black-hat SEO techniques. The platform provides a range of site services, including a marketplace where users can explore and acquire PBN links.
What to Avoid When Buying PBN Links
Based on our extensive experience in the buying and selling of various types of links, these are the critical factors we consider before making any purchase of PBN links:
- We prioritize links from sites that have a genuine look, avoiding those that immediately suggest they were created only for the purpose of selling links.
- It’s essential for a PBN to avoid any indications of being part of a network. The sites within the PBN should showcase diversity, using different templates, being on separate IP addresses and hosting services (more about PBN hosting read here), each with distinct Whois information.
- We regularly look into whether the PBN website has sold way too many links directly from its homepage. When a site sells too many links from there, those links tend to become less effective.
How To Detect Private Blog Networks
Detecting Private Blog Networks can be tricky, but with useful SEO tools like Ahrefs, you can easily analyze the backlinks.
Watch out for these indicators:
- Suspicious anchor text
- Low organic traffic
- A lot of backlinks come from home pages
- High spam score
- Notable spikes in organic traffic
- Redirects from different domains
- Poor content quality
- Bad web design
- Websites lacking “About” information or contact details
Quirk.Biz Expert Tips for Using PBN Links
Over the years, we’ve tested numerous techniques for using PBNs.
Here’s what has given us the best results:
- Integrate PBNs into Your Overall Growth Strategy: Including PBN links in your strategy is a smart move for your site’s growth. Align your link-building efforts with your long-term plan for developing your website.
- Expand Your Range of Links: Achieving the best results involves mixing PBN links with other sources like guest posts, directory submissions, and PR campaigns. Strengthen your SEO outcomes by expanding the variety of links in your portfolio.
- Create Content Consistency: It’s crucial to keep publishing new content on the site when getting a large number of links. If you have only one article per week but acquire 20 new links in the same period, it can raise suspicions.
- Use a Variety of Anchor Texts: In our PBN links, we make sure to use a variety of anchor texts. This diversity can make your link-building strategy more credible and effective.
Conclusion
The use of PBN links requires careful consideration. While they can improve search rankings and offer control over backlinks, the potential risks, such as penalties from search engines, should not be ignored. Balancing ethical concerns and including diverse link-building strategies is essential for a successful and sustainable SEO approach. While PBN links can be useful, a clear understanding of their limitations and a wide SEO strategy are crucial for optimal results.
