Building a Private Blog Network – The Right

Way

You will have heard, seen and even participated in some form of Blog Network as part of your

link building strategy. However what’s working RIGHT NOW is Private Blog Networks.

By private I mean we won’t be selling links for $15 a pop on forums. Private means private, for

your use only.

This guide is all you need to know about building your own private blog network to rank your

sites highly in Google.

Buying Domain Names

Ultimately, this is THE most important step in building your private network. You want domain

names that have an existing link profile, with age and a good Google history too.

That means no spammy links, nothing from questionable foreign sites, no adult or gambling sites

either.

Where to Find Quality Domains?

I use a number of resources to find and aquire high quality domain names, all of which allow us

to search for both expired, expiring and auction domains.

ExpiredDomains.net

I use ExpiredDomains.net because it’s a great source of FREE information and the search/filter

capabilities are very powerful. They have multiple options for finding domains, such as

GoDaddy auctions, free to register expired domains, plus lots of other neat filters such as a

minimum Moz Domain Authority or Majestic Trust Flow.

Applying Filters

There are 3 type of filter you can apply.

– Common Filter,

– Additional Filter

– AdWords & SEO Filter

A quick summary of each is below;

Common Filter

The common filter allows you to define PageRank, Domain Length, with or without hyphens and

numbers etc

As you can see my this search excludes any Fake PR’s and Page Rank -1 (it’s still worth

performing additional checks before you commit to buy however, you can use the Fake PR

Checker here).

Additional Filter

The additional filter allows you, as I have done, to choose only domains that are available to

register. If this was not selected, auction and closeout domains would be returned also.

AdWords & SEO Filter

This is where the tool gets really powerful.

– We have the ability to search on both Majestic Trust Flow and Moz Domain/Page Authority.

– There is also the option to look for domains that include keywords, where those keyword

receive a minimum number of Exact Match Searches.

– A Min and Max CPC function is the icing on the cake.

We have pretty much all we need right here to find some awesome domains.

Register Compass

RegisterCompass is a premium tool that is pretty much unrivalled in the industry. I have yet to

find another piece of software or service that can deliver the volume of data at the speed

RegisterCompass does.

With this tool we can search for Expired Domains, Auction Domains and Domains due to

Expire.

The search box gives us every option you would need to find those hidden gems;

In this example, I’m looking for domains that contain the word “Dog”, that have over 50 Moz

backlinks. The top TLD’s are selected (.com, .net, .org and .info thrown in for fun).

This search brings back the following;

That’s a total of 159 domains we have to go at, now that may not seem like a lot but there is

always something of interest. Let’s take a look at the 53 Expired domains that we can grab for

the price of the reg fee…

Scrolling down the list a few jump out at me, one of the best I see is “cratetrainingdog.net”.

And here are the Moz domain details…

This is a super related domain to the dog niche, with a DA score of 20 and PA score of 33. There

are 60 linking domains and a total of 67 links.

Looking at the anchor text usage we see there is a fairly good split of anchors being used to link

to this site.

You could do a lot worse than pick this domain up for the $8 reg fee

Moonsy.com

Another free tool, this time from Moonsey.com and their expiring domains auction tool. At the

time of writing, their site states:

List of recently expiring domain names in next 24 hours at Godaddy auctions

In this time will finish 6585 auctions with great domains for SEO having Google Pagerank

(PR).

This is live updated list ( several times per each minute ), contains accurate domain auctions

details and seo metrics.

So we have 6,585 GoDaddy auctions that will expire in the next 24 hours. The cool thing about

this tool is the ability to sort your results very quickly; the downside is the lack of filters

available which can make it difficult to find niche specific domains.

However as you will see from the guide below, we don’t have to buy niche specific, as we can

always rebrand the site to make it super relevant to our money site.

Moonsy offers the ability to show both domains at Auction and those available to Buy Now,

along with the ability to sort by many different metrics including;

Current Price

# of Bids

Time Left

Google PR

Moz DA

Age

Moz Backlinks

Linking Sites

EDU/GOV Links

Directory Listed

AdWords CPC

AdWords Search Volume

Alexa Rank

You can also check if the domain is indexed in Google and it’s history using the Way Back

Machine from Archive.org.

Choosing the Right Domain Names?

I will start this section by saying FORGET PAGE RANK right now.

It won’t be around in the very near future and it hasn’t been updated in quite some time.

There are so many PR5 sites out there you can pick up for next to nothing, you may think you

have a steal, however quite often they have already lost their backlinks and they are worthless.

What Makes a Good Domain?

Authority & Relevance

A link from an authority domain that is relevant to your niche is gold for your search engine

ranking. Google loves these kind of links, its a big thumbs up for your site from another trusted

site.

Whilst buying domains with authority is definitely doable, buying relevant domains may prove a

challenge. However what we can do is MAKE THEM RELEVANT.

We can do this by taking the following steps;

Make the Name and Branding of the site relevant

Make the Title Tag Relevant

Change all Meta Tags to make them niche specific and super relevant.

Add posts, images and videos all related to the topic

Backlinks

The only way to buy quality sites is to look at the back links. Stay away from spammy looking

links or anchor text in another language. You’ve seen those domains with 5k backlinks and

Chinese anchor text right? Yeah, so stay away from those.

I follow a 4 step process when choosing domains for my private blog networks.

1 – Use Moz.com Open Site Explorer

I look for Page Authority (PA) over 30, Domain Authority (DA) over 20 and as many referring

domains as possible. The more the better as there is less chance of 100 sites all dropping your

link than say just 10 referring sites.

Also check the backlinks and anchor text split to see if the domain may have been over

optimised in the past.

2 – Use MajesticSEO.com

I look for a Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) over 15 and again as many referring IP’s as

possible. Also check the links in Majestic as it will pull different results than Open Site Explorer.

3 – Use ahrefs.com

4 – Use SEMRush.com

Ahrefs will usually return a more complete backlink profile overview. Look at the quality of the

links pointing to the domain, the more relevant they are the better. Older links are better still.

Also use the Anchor text chart for a great indication of a domain that was previously spammed

or owned by another SEO. A high percentage of keyword rich anchor text is an indication of a

domain to avoid.

5 – Test the history of the domain

Run the domain through the Wayback Machine from Archive.org. Take a look back at the

snapshots to make sure the domain didn’t contain any unwanted content when it was a live site.

How Much to Pay for a Good Domain?

There are various opinions on what you should expect to pay for authority domains. However

most of these are based on PageRank as that is what has driven the market up until very recently.

Those prices and opinions are now out of date.

To be completely honest, prices and valuations are constantly changing. It’s both a buyers and

sellers market and you really need to get a feel for the market buy dipping your toe in. I would

suggest picking up a few expired domains for the reg fee and go from there.

You will quickly get an understanding on how to value a domain and its links.

To give you an example I bought 7x UK domains from a forum member for $480/$68 each.

Now this was when the market was all about PR, so 3 of the sites were PR4’s, 1 is PR3 and the

other’s are PR0, however they have an awesome link profile and I knew I could actually use one

for a niche site and the rest for my blog networks.

The Moz DA of these sites range from 28 to 44, so I have some very good domains for what I

consider a great price.

As a rough guide, domains with a PA of 30+, with a clean link profile (usually PR3) sell for

between $150-$400 depending on the link profile.

Registering and Registrars

This part is important;

You need to use different registrars not just GoDaddy and NameCheap.

By mixing up the registrars you significantly reduce any footprint your site may have and you

make it harder for the powers that be to find your network and de-index it.

Also as an optional layer of protection, I like you use a combination of both Fake registrant

details and privacy protection. This way not all of your domains have private whois, some of

them have real looking people and addresses…even if they are made up!

So mix it up and be different, don’t take the easy road and have all you domains in one account,

all using privacy protection.

Some registrar examples:

GoDaddy

NameCheap (free whois privacy)

Name.com

Bluehost

Hostgator

Fasthosts (UK)

123-Reg (UK)

Hosting

This step is WAY overcomplicated by many. You need to keep it simple or you can get lost in a

maze of usernames and passwords, and more importantly lose focus on the important

stuff….ranking your website.

First up lets understand the key requirement:

Unique Class-C IP’s

Your website needs backlinks from other websites in order to rank high in Google. These links

act as a vote for your website, and generally speaking the more unique votes you have, the higher

you will appear in the SERP’s.

In order to get these unique links from our private blog network, we need to ensure that each

domain we own appears to be a stand-alone website, not linked to any of our other sites. To do

this we ensure that the hosting provider we use offers unique class-c IP’s.

What is a class-c IP?

An IP address is broken up into 4 blocks, below we call them A, B, C and D

AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD

As you can see the “C Block” is the third block along and is where we need to have a range or

variance amongst our PBN sites.

Which Hosting to Use for a Private Blog Network?

I have 1 main rule for hosting a PBN:

Stay away from self proclaimed “SEO Hosting” companies

For some reason many people suggest SEO Hosting as a solution to managing many domains.

Whilst it does make it easier to manage, SEO Hosting is NOT GOOD for a Private Blog

Network.

You want to avoid attention and footprints at all costs. Don’t you think Google with all its PHD

employees they have sitting around, could easily identify these ‘LOOK AT ME I’M AN SEO’

hosting providers? I do.

Option 1 – The Easiest Option

The trick is to use reseller hosting, which will allow us to mange our PBN sites from a single

account, whilst providing the unique IP ranges we need. HostNine provide the exact

functionality we need and you are able to get many different class-c IP’s using just a single

reseller package.

Some of the features we can use from HostNine include;

Data centers all over the world – meaning a more diverse looking PBN

Unique Class-C IP ranges

Host up to 100 PBN Domains Easy to use cPanel – to control all of your domains

The standard reseller package with HostNine starts at $18.95 per month with a 1 year contract. It

has been know for people (including myself) to have over 20 PBN domains on a single reseller

package, which brings the cost of hosting per domain to less than $1. There is nowhere else you

can get hosting for that price, which offers the functionality we need.

You can check out HostNine here.

Option 2 – The Harder Option

We also have the option of using multiple hosting accounts, from many different sources.

However this is much more difficult to track, manage and set-up than HostNine.

If you are super organised and have the time:

Simply go to this forum dedicated to shared hosting offers –

webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4

Sign up with one of the $1-$2 hosting companies – ensure they offer cPanel and one-

click WordPress/Blog Platform install

Add a PBN domain to the account

Create another $1-$2 hosting account with a different host

Rinse and repeat

The downside to this option is that you do have multiple passwords, and you also need to login

to different accounts for each domain. There is a way to track and manage this which I will show

you later on.

Setting up a Site

With 20% of the web running on WordPress and the fact that it’s so easy to mange, you can be

forgiven if you use it on all of your PBN sites.

I would say 80% of my private network runs on WordPress. For the other 20%, I dabble between

Raw HTML, Joomla and Drupal. I believe this adds a little extra security to your network and

helps to hide the footprint left by WordPress somewhat.

The process of setting up these sites is exactly the same as creating any niche site, and can be

broken down into 3 steps;

1. Install your blogging platform

2. Add a theme and plugins (vary these)

3. Add content and OBL’s to your niche site and other authority sites

I would actually recommend doing everything yourself when you first get started, as 5-10 PBN

sites are easy to manage. When you get above 50 it gets…interesting, and you may need a VA to

help you so you can get on with more important stuff.

Doing it yourself initially also gives you the added bonus of knowing the process inside-out, you

can then show your VA exactly how you want things done.

Managing your Network

If you were expecting me to use fancy tools for managing my blog networks, then I am sorry to

disappoint you. I like to keep things simple.

I use an Excel spreadsheet and my VA. That’s it.

I buy a domain, add it to the spreadsheet and my VA does the rest. Below is a list of the tasks I

provided to my VA to get the site up and running.

1. Add Registrar account details to spreadsheet

2. Add the domain to the hosting account (this varies from domain to domain)

3. Add Name Servers with the registrar

4. Install WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, including theme and plugins

5. Add the Username and Password to spreadsheet

6. Create the core pages (About | Contact | Privacy Policy)

7. Remove pre-installed plugins and pre-created pages (Sample Page and Sample Post)

You can get a copy of the spreadsheet I use to manage my Private Blog Network below; a share

would be much appreciated

As you can see the sheet makes it very easy to keep tabs on your domains. The comments

column is used to keep track of the sites development, and the ‘Content Info’ section gives an

indicator when we need to update the sites with fresh content.

What’s more, I use the “link building” section to track the number of links to the site (using

Ahrefs) and also when the last link building campaign was done.

Writing Content

This is a brand new section to this guide as many of you have been asking me questions on how

best to write and add content to your PBN sites. The rules for content are as follows;

1. 300-800 words in length

2. Contain an image, video, opt-in form or some other visual reference

3. Link out to other authority sites within the same niche.

4. Quote facts and figures or statements made by other people.

5. No keyword targeting is to be done.

Ok, first off we need content. The steps I follow are simple;

1. Hire a VA Writer from Elance/UpWork (formally oDesk) – There can be had for less

than $3 per article.

2. Come up with a list of topics/article titles that will fit my niche and links I am building.

3. Send the VA the instructions along with a deadline. (if possible have the VA upload the

articles direct into your WordPress dashboard as a draft)

4. The last step is to add your links to your money site into the articles. Be sure to vary the

anchor text, link out to other authority sites and add images/video where possible.

That’s it in a nutshell however I will also answer another questions that is often asked;

Should I allow the articles with links to roll off the homepage?

My answer is YES. Do what seems natural and that any normal website would do, don’t just

leave a one page article on there if you want to continue to add links then do so using additional

content.

Link Building

Linking to Your Niche Site

The key to linking to your money site is not to overdo it.

1 link to your own website on the homepage is enough. I recommend doing the following

keyword anchor text variations on your PBN sites to stay ahead of the game where Google

Algorithm updates are concerned;

Avoid exact match keyword anchor text links – e.g “Dog Training”

Utlize URL/Brand anchor text – e.g www.mydogtraining.com

Use longer tail related anchor text – “best place for puppy dog training”

Use different anchor text for each link – this is the latest method to avoid over

optimisation

If you follow the above you can avoid anything that looks spammy, and we we can avoid

reducing the impact of our links, and possible over optimisation. I also place links to other

relevant websites to further improve on the sites ‘natural looking’ articles and links.

You may think the anchor text “best place for puppy dog training” is too long, but time and time

again, I have sites ranking very well, with minimal backlinks, because they have a more natural

looking anchor text profile.

Update

Recent testing has proven that there is little to no impact of linking to your site more than once

from a PBN domain. Also using keyword related anchor text is much better for long term

success than using exact match anchor text.

For example, we should be using the anchor text “best place for puppy dog training” instead or

“dog training”.

This related anchor text will help you to avoid any future Google algorithm updates as your

backlink profile will look much more natural. In addition you PBN sites outbound link profiles

will also look more natural and less spammy.

Increasing the Power of your Blog Network Sites

N.B This section has been updated to reflect my recent thoughts and findings.

Previously I explained how I would use GSA Search Engine Ranker to build backlinks to these

PBN sites to increase the number of links pointing to our sites and increase the authority/power

of them.

Well from testing I have completely removed this step and no longer recommend using GSA to

build backlinks. There is a better alternative, which saves a ton of time and offers better quality

links for your PBN domains.

The Hoth

I now spend zero time adding extra links, I simply purchase the odd Hoth package here and there

for domains that need a boost. Here are some of the benefits of using The Hoth:

Content creation

Tier 1 & Tier 2 backlinks

Private PBN posts

Web 2.0 Links

Social Bookmarks

I reinvest the time saved into finding more aged domains with quality backlink profiles, to

increase the power and the size of my PBN. The beauty of this is that the hard work has already

been done and these sites that have a super clean link profile will give us all the juice we need.

You can check out The Hoth here

This is a optional step and should be used on PBN domains that require an extra boost or those

that have lost their backlinks.

How To Avoid a Blog Network Footprint

Footprints are the reason many of the larger blog networks were taken down by Google, PBN’s

such as Build My Rank, ALN and LinkVana to name a few.

If you want to ensure your network stands the test of time and continues to be a valuable

business asset for years to come there are specific steps you must take to avoid leaving a

footprint with your private blog network sites.

As this section is such an important part of building a blog network, I have given it it`s own

guide which can be found here – Private Blog Network Footprint Checklist

The 5 Golden Rules

If you follow these 5 golden rules when building your Private Blog Network, you will be well on

your way to building a very powerful resource.

1. Never Interlink your network sites (this means don’t link one PBN site to another).

2. Only link out to your site a maximum of 3 times on the homepage and use varied anchor

text (Keyword, raw URL and keyword variation)

3. Don’t use spun content for your PBN sites (unique content of 300-600 words is plenty,

add an image and video and your golden)

4. Add other authority outbound links (OBL) to your articles (wiki, youtube etc)

5. DO NOT sell links on your sites – keep all that lovely link juice for yourself

So there you have it, my complete guide to building a private blog network the right way. If you

have your own tips for reducing footprints or a specific way you manage your sites, please let me

know in the comments.