The PBN (Private Blog Network) is a private network of blogs that are all connected to a main website, the money site. The objective of this network of sites is to push the money site through its link network, in order to guarantee a better visibility on Google. Although very tempting for SEOs and their clients, PBN is a manipulation technique forbidden by Google. It should therefore be used with the utmost caution.
How did PBN appear in SEO?
Initially based on “on page” criteria, search engines were easily manipulated by black hat SEOs who did not hesitate to provide them with content with keyword repetitions in their html codes.
Little by little, search engines took more into account backlinks (inbound links) in their ranking criteria, this is the case for Google’s PageRank. This is how spam appeared with the creation of fake links to lure the engines.
Today, the methods of indexing engines are even more elaborate and it is quite naturally that PBNs have entered the scene to promote the key pages of a main site through a network of interconnected satellite sites and thus establish its authority on the web.
What are the different categories of PBN?
Poor content PBNs
These PBNs are the prerogative of black hat referrers who aim for a short term result, the most risky method being that of automatically generated sites. We then speak of industrialized PBN. The objective is to push the money site by increasing traffic, to the detriment of content quality. To do this, the SEO will reserve expired domain names and create sites poor in content but perfectly optimized for Google. They will create a kind of “link juice” to boost the visibility of the money site.
In this category, we can also include generalist blogs, built on expired domain names and which gather all kinds of information on a wide variety of subjects and whose content is quite poor. The idea here is to push several money sites through these blogs filled with press releases. Each article will aim to boost this or that money site. It also happens that SEOs sell sponsored products through this type of blogs to increase their profitability.
Rich conten PBNs
These PBNs provide quality content and are more designed to appeal to users. For example, the SEO will install a blog from a new domain name. He will then provide perfectly written articles that answer specific user questions. A network of several such sites can build one or more money sites with great efficiency. Indeed, the quality of the articles will be valued by the search engines and will de facto improve the visibility of the main sites.
Another type of site that can be used to create a PBN is the news site. Very reactive, because it proposes new articles related to current events at short intervals, it encourages the user to come back often to keep informed. This increases traffic by building visitor loyalty. This approach is therefore very effective, but it requires a lot of time, especially to respond to comments from Internet users. A network of news sites not only increases the visibility of a main site but it will also be very beneficial for its image.
Finally, community sites such as “forums”, “classified ads” or “file sharing” are again “user-oriented”. They allow Internet users from the same group to contribute content to these sites themselves. The content-generating visitor can even become a real ambassateur of the site through social networks. Here again, this technique is particularly effective, but a community manager will be necessary to find new members and to control every day the messages sent by the visitors.