1. Introduction
This is a course that goes into depth on how powerful private blog networks(PBN’s) can be when boosting your website rankings up the ladder whilst staying undetected by google.
Private Blog Networks
This is basically a set of websites and domains you own that you can use to collectively rank any site you want. The process involves buying high authority domains that have expired then creating a unique site and placing a link back to your main site. That’s it.
Although this seems like a simple technique, it is extremely powerful when done correctly. It’s a lengthy process but the long term benefits are worth the time and effort it takes.
Building your first site can be quite a daunting task but after you get the first site built, you’ll begin to understand the process involved and can repeat this.
Private blog networks are set up to be used by you and you alone, you may see people selling posts on private networks but this can easily become what is known as a public blog network. The more links on a website means less linking power to go around, the purpose of a private blog network is to keep all of your linking power to yourself.
Private blog networks consist of a few overall steps that I will summarise below.
Buying an Expired Domain
The prices of domains can vary quite drastically and I will show you the best ways to find high quality domains for reasonable prices. The next point to note down is that any domain you purchase has to be relevant to your niche.
2. Web Hosting
The next stage would be choosing hosting for your new expired domain. I will explain how to do this without leaving a footprint for google to find and penalise.
3. Build The Site
Now all you do is add your preferred CMS, add your content and plugins and place links back to your own website.
That’s the process of building a private blog networks summed up, the course will go into more detail with each of these points but this is just a simple breakdown of what a PBN does.
Now you have a general idea of what a private blog network is and the benefits of having one, it’s time to start planning how you are going to build your own PBN.
2. Where To Begin
When you begin planning a private blog network one of the main parts that you will think about is the cost. It may sound like it will be expensive and there is a lot of people and information out there that will lead you to believe this is the case but it is far cheaper than what you would think.
The costs are split between buying the domain and hosting. Prices can vary but ultimately the average costs won’t be to extreme ranging from £2 to £10 a month. Expired domains on the other hand can be very different. If your lucky it is possible to get high authority domains at the same price as a new one which will only cost you around £5. If you decide to use the many sites that sell expired domains in an auction based marketplace then you could spend anywhere between £20 – £100.
Another expense you could be faced with is content. If you decide to write the content on the site yourself you will save spending any money but it can take some time writing 5-6 articles that all have unique and well written content. On top of this you will want each to contain at least 400 words. There are lots of copywriters out there that will charge £5 per article which means per site you could be spending roughly £35 – £50.
When building a private blog network there isn’t a set amount you have to do, this allows you to work at your own pace, within your own budget. You can begin slowly by just building one site a month or you can build as many you want for faster results. It’s best to start with one site first, this will not only help you fully understand how the process works but it’ll also prevent you from becoming overwhelmed by throwing yourself right in at the deep end.
This section gives you an overview of the costs involved in building a PBN, so now let’s look at hosting companies in more detail.
3. Hosting
Hosting your site(s) is a pretty straight forward process however, it can be quite easy to make the mistake of leaving a footprint for google to find. The whole purpose of a private blog network is to make sure every site within the network is completely unique to each other. This begins with hosting:
IP Address
Every computer connected to the internet has a unique IP Address and so does any site on a server. IP addresses are set up into four different classes, Class A, B, C, D. In a private blog network it’s important that the class C of a sites IP address is different than any others on the same PBN. There are good tools out there that will act as an IP class checker.
All you do here is enter the domain or multiple domains and this will tell you the C class of each of the websites. If you decide to build a bigger network then you can begin to use unique A and B class IPs.
Never use the same IP Address for Multiple Sites
Although there are people out there saying it is okay to use a few websites per IP the risks aren’t worth it. It can be cheaper to cut certain corners but your private blog network can become useless for the sake of saving a bit money. Make sure every site has a unique IP address so your PBN won’t be targeted by Google.
Use Different Hosting Companies
If you have five sites all with different IPs and C classes but they all exist in the same hosting company then you will yet again run the risk of being found out by google. Using only one hosting company is a massive footprint so it’s best to use a couple of different companies just to keep Google guessing.
Nameservers
Any domains you register will have a nameserver, it’s important none of the sites on your network share the same name server. Every hosting company will provide you with a control panel were you can go and change the site’s nameserver.
The IP owner
You can check any sites owner buy using a tool called whois. This tool provides you with all the information that can leave a footprint for Google to find. If the domain registrar is the same on all of the sites in a PBN then this can catch Google’s eye. It’s important to vary this up to keep google guessing. Another one to check is your domain’s state of authority. This information may leave footprints as it can show the registrar’s email address. If you have used the same email for every site then Google will yet again catch on quickly.
If you are running a very large private blog network then you can get away with having the same owner on a few of the sites but a small group of sites have to be varied enough to make sure Google doesn’t notice. This all might seem like a lot of work just for the sake of a couple of sites but a PBN is a long term asset so you definitely have to treat in with a lot of effort to see it’s long lasting effects.
Hosting Companies
First of all there are a few things that you should avoid when selecting a hosting company. One is ‘SEO hosting’. These are companies that offer bulk unique C Class IPs for low prices to host all of your sites. Although this might seem like the best option it’s not quite as it seems. This is because hosting companies have designed this specifically for SEO’s which means that the majority of their IP addresses already contain lots of private blog networks. Another massive disadvantage to SEO hosting is that they leave footprints in the IP owner information and state of authority, Google are constantly targeting SEO hosting companies so you should do your best to steer clear of any hosting companies advertising themselves as this.
A few companies to avoid are:
www.seohosting.com
www.seohost.com
cloakhosting.com
The next thing you should be looking to avoid is reseller hosting. This is basically set up to allow shared hosting, again this is one that is highly recommended and looks like a great option. The problem is that yet again it fails to pass the IP owner test.
A few reseller companies to avoid are:
Hostnine.com
bestwebhosting.com
Now that you know what to avoid it’s time to look at hosting companies to use in your network. The best hosting companies I would recommend is shared hosting companies. Using a different hosting company for every site is the best way to ensure your network stays hidden from google. The only problem with doing this is it takes a bit more time and effort than using one of the other methods above. Instead of having all of the sites in one place with one login you will have five different account details you need to store and five control panels to work with. Although it can be tempting to try and save time by using the same hosting company it’s really worth just putting in the extra work and be sure your network is hidden.
The hosting companies that I use all offer hosting within the price range of £1 to £5. There a lots of companies to choose from so you should never have an issue with keeping every site unique. A few options are shown below:
1and1.com
fasthosts.co.uk
tsohost.co.uk
lcn.com
asurahosting.com
There are a couple of methods you can also use to find more hosting companies. There are forums all over the internet discussing new hosting companies that offer cheap hosting. Hosting discussion is a site that can be worth checking out once in a while to see if there are some good deals on the prices of hosting.
Here is a list of a few more cheap hosting companies I recommend you use:
List of Hosting Companies
Now you know everything there is to know about hosting. Before you go out and buy any hosting package you should wait until you have purchased some domains to host your site on. We will go on to discuss how to find high quality domains in the next section of the course but for now it’s important that you understand how to set up your hosting without leaving any footprints for Google to find.
4. Buying Domain Names
Before you purchase any domains you need to understand the expiration process. There are a few steps involved when a domain expires.
Step 1: The domain name expires.
Once a domain expires it is put into to a state of renewal grace period. When a domain is in this state, the original owner has a set amount of days in which they can renew the domain without any extra charges. The time period can vary depending on the registrar, but most will allow you up to about 45 days to renew your domain name.
Step 2: The renewal period ends.
When a domain name is in this state, the owner of the domain name now has between 30-45 days to renew the domain from registrar hold but it comes with a fee(This fee can be anywhere between £50 and £100). At this stage, the domain is placed in an auction which anyone can bid on. The owner of the domain name still has a period of 30-45 days to renew their domain name. If this is the case any bids will be refunded to the bidder and the domain will go back to the original owner. If the domain is not renewed by the owner then the highest bidder will be handed the domain name after the days of registrar hold.
Step 3: Closeout sale
If the domain doesn’t sell within the auction and the original owner doesn’t renew then some registrars will offer closeout sales. This is usually in the form of cheaper ‘buy it now’ option. You have to be quick to grab domains with a good deal ‘buy now’ option and it is also possible for the original owner to renew.
Step 4: Registrar hold Expires
At this stage, the registrar will drop the domain name into a redemption period. In this state the domain name can still be renewed by the original owner for a fee. It cannot be deleted or changed and is left in this stage for another maximum of 30 days. At this point the website and the emails will no longer be working.
Step 5: Pending delete
The domain at this stage cannot be renewed or registered by anyone and all of the files remain deleted. This stage only last for a period of 5 days before being finally being deleted.
Step 6: Domain is deleted
At this stage the registrar drops the domain name back into the general public for anyone to newly register. This is the cheapest a domain name will be as it will only cost up to £10 to register a domain for the year.
What makes a good domain name
Now that you have an idea of how the domain expiration system works you need to know what makes a good domain name. There are a number of metrics that you can use to determine a good domain name and it’s important that you research any domain before you buy it. The last thing you want is to find out you’ve spent a lot of money on a domain that isn’t anywhere near as powerful as you first thought.
Domain Authority (DA)
This is a metric that measures the root domains authority, you can use the tool Open Site Explorer to find out any domains authority score. This is a 1-100 point score that is measured using a number of different metrics. When looking for domains I usually look for no less than 15 PA. There is a moz bar that you can download and this will tell you the domain authority of any site you visit automatically.
Page Authority (PA)
This again is another Moz tool that acts in the same way as the domain authority but tells you on a 1-100 scale each individual page on a site and not the domain itself.
Citation flow (CF)
Majestic SEO is another place to measure the power of a domain name, one of the metrics is citation flow. This measures the strength of the links pointing to your site.
Again I would be looking for domains with a citation flow of 15 or above.
Trust Flow (TF)
The trust flow measures how trustworthy the links are on the site. Again I would be looking for sites with no less then a 15 trust flow. Whenever you are looking for a domain to buy you need to consider the trust flow to citation flow ratio.
The trust to citation ratio average should be no more than 2:00, the way to calculate your ratio is simply dividing your citation flow by your trust flow.
citation flow/trust flow
The picture above shows a good trust flow with the ratio being 1.45. The graph as you can see is pretty evened out and well balanced.
This graph on the other hand doesn’t have a great ratio. With a ratio of 4.83 this shows the site’s citation flow is a lot bigger than the trust flow so it’s probably best to look for another domain.
Backlinks
The next metric to check is how many backlinks a site has. There are few different sites you can use to check backlinks, such as semrush and ahrefs. I would usually look for domains with about 50 links or above. Although sites can have high authority with only a couple of links, if it loses one of they links it could lose quite a bit of authority as well.
The tool used here is called SEM rush, this can show you a whole array of metrics and as you can see the backlinks on this site is shown above. This isn’t 100% accurate but using this and a few other tools will help you get a good idea of what the site actually has. If you use ahrefs I usually find you get better results for backlink profiles than any other of the tools out there.
Referring Domains
This is another metric that is worth checking when you are checking backlinks.
The referring domains is the amount of domains that the links are coming from, for example say you have 900 backlinks and only 10 referring domains then this means that all of your links are collectively spread across just 10 referring domains. The more sites that are linking to you the better so it’s best to try and get a healthy balance between links and referring domains. You should probably aim for over 20 referring domains when you first begin as it will ensure that your links are spread through a good amount of domains.
Overview
When looking for a domain there isn’t one set way a domain has to be, if the site has really high authority and a good trust ratio then there doesn’t have to be as many links. It’s all about finding a domain that overall has strong linking power that you can use in your private blog network.
The metrics that are most important:
Domain authority
Page authority
Citation flow
Trust Flow
Trust Ratio
Whenever you are looking for a domain you need to just keep the metrics above in mind and you should be on your way to building a powerful private blog network.
Places to Buy a Expired Domains
expireddomains.net
expireddomains.net is a free website that allows you to look for expired domains. The search system here isn’t the greatest as you can only search by ‘page rank’. PR is a metric that hasn’t been used in quite a while so if you decide on a domain you want be sure to check the other important metrics such as trust and citation flow before you buy it.
This tool is connected to a lot of different marketplaces, giving you a good amount of domains to look through. You can also set up email alerts and save domains that you can look back on. If you do use this tool then do the additional research on the other metrics and you should be able to find good domains.
DomCop
DomCop is a good tool you can use that starts at $32 a month. It has a massive auction that you can look through for free however, you should take a look at what is available before paying for the service.
This marketplace provides you with all of the metrics you need to know such as ‘page authority’, ‘trust flow’, ‘citation flow’ etc. You can narrow down your search by using these filters. If you click the ‘show filters’ button at the top of the page will be given a list of metrics you can search. For example you might choose to search for a high trust and citation flow. Now when the results show up a lot of them might look like spam which is why if you filter the results by trust flow, you will see it is much easier to find the ones with a closer ratio.
There is an option at the top if you click ‘search’ at the top and then ‘simple’. This allows you to search through a more accurate filter which you lets you search for both the minimum and maximum as well different listing types. They even have an ‘advanced’ option that gives you SEM rush data and social sharing so you can really narrow the search down to what you need.
The archived section is where you can buy domains that have expired within the year. The great thing about these is you can buy them at the standard price of registering a new domain with no extra costs.
Overall DomCop is one of the best ways to save you the time looking through all of the metrics manually but it does come with a cost.
DomCop also offers is a 7 day free trial you should take advantage of if you aren’t entirely sure.
Moonsy
This is another 100% free tool called moonsy that takes all of it’s domains from the GoDaddy marketplace.
This tool will tell you the price of the domain in the GoDaddy auction and how much time is left on every domain. The tool actually has some pretty good filtering as well, with you being able to set the minimum and maximums for metrics such as trust and citation flow, domain authority, backlinks, price etc. You can also search by keyword to really narrow down your search.
The one problem with this tool is that it will only take domains from the GoDaddy marketplace which can leave it a bit limited but for a free tool it’s definitely worth checking out.
Fresh Drop
This is a free tool with a pro version available also. Fresh drop will give you a good amount of results and has quite a detailed search filter. It gives you metrics such as trust flow, citation flow and Moz rank which can come in handy for getting rid of all the useless domains.
The only problem with the free version of this site is if you try to organise the list of domains using one of the metrics you’ll be asked to pay for the premium features. This tool offers you a 60 day free trial that will cost $32.95 a month afterwards.
Click Mojo
Click Mojo lets you search domain names using the traffic metric and it’s all free. This shows you the site’s traffic on a US monthly search. They have called this metric ‘traffic score’ here which basically means high traffic score = high traffic for the site.
If you find a site that is similar to you niche then you could buy that domain and direct the traffic to your money site or you can just use it for your PBN.
Another tool available on Click Mojo is ‘keyword popularity’. This tool gives you a list of domains that are pending delete and shows you the search volume on each keyword.
For example you might see a site like the one above called ‘treedesign.org’. The domain is about to expire and there is a monthly search on the keyword tree design of 60,000. If you happen to own a company relating to design then you could buy this domain and direct it to yours.
Overall it is a good tool for searching for sites with high traffic but it does lack having any other metrics so be sure to research this information elsewhere.
Expire.biz
This is a very basic site that will give you a text file listing all of the sites expired on that date.
Once you visit Expire.biz you’ll be presented with the screen above. Click on any of the dates on the calendar to see a list of domains that have expired. A couple of disadvantages include:
It doesn’t show you any metrics so you need to do that research somewhere else.
this list is only taken from the GoDaddy auction.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a massive domain marketplace but it doesn’t show you enough metrics to know if the sites are any good. There is a DomCop extension that you can download for chrome or Firefox. This gives you the metrics such as trust and citation flow, domain authority etc that you need to get a better idea of how good a domain is.
Once you visit Expire.biz you’ll be presented with the screen above. Click on any of the dates on the calendar to see a list of domains that have expired. A couple of disadvantages include:
It doesn’t show you any metrics so you need to do that research somewhere else.
This list is only taken from the GoDaddy auction.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a massive domain marketplace but it doesn’t show you enough metrics to know if the sites are any good. There is a DomCop extension that you can download for chrome or Firefox. This gives you the metrics such as trust and citation flow, domain authority etc that you need to get a better idea of how good a domain is.
You’ll probably notice that a lot of the prices are pretty high so you can click on the ‘price’ tab to organise the list from low to high. If you find a site you like the look of you can also click on the ‘+’ button. This gives you even more information like the alexa rank and number of backlinks.
Netpeak Checker
This tool doesn’t actually search for domains but Netpeak Checker is great for finding out all the necessary metrics you need to know about a domain, it’s also has a 14 day free trial for you to use.
First of all this is what the layout looks like. On the left hand side you’ll see all of the metrics the tool can search for, you can un-tick any you don’t need and now head into the settings. The settings page is where you need to put in your Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic information. If you don’t do this nothing will show for these metrics so just make sure you add it for the tools you are paying for.
The next step is adding your domains. To do this click on the ‘load’ button at the top and open up any text file that you’ve saved your domains. Now that your domains are ready, set the amount of threads to whatever you want(for example 10 threads means 10 site’s at the same time).
Dom Recovery
This is a great tool to help you get any archived sites back from the Wayback machine. This will take all of the site’s content and images etc which you can then install back onto the expired domain. This can save you a lot of time in building the website side of things.
With all of these tools at your disposal, you need to find domains that are relevant to your niche, the next topic explains what makes a relevant domain.
5. Domain Relevance
Getting a powerful domain won’t really matter if it isn’t relevant to your niche. So many people fall down on finding powerful relevant domains, but it is a lot easier to find these than it seems. If for example your niche is a window company then you can find domains in:
construction
home improvement
home security
shopping
All you have to do is make a connection between the two sites. So if you got a domain for home improvement you can discuss, ‘windows design’ and with home safety you can write articles about ‘safety windows’.
Spammy Link Profiles
If a site’s backlink’s appear to be spammy then there is absolutely no point in buying it. This is one thing you should always check, yet again you can use tools such as semrush or ahrefs.
The area you go to here is the backlink profile which will look something like this.
As you can see from the picture above, the link profile has plenty of sites relevant and don’t appear to spam. If you find that the majority of backlinks for a domain are spammy links such as dating sites and gambling then you should definitely steer clear.
Whenever you do check a backlink profile make sure to use a few different tools for the best results. For example, when you check a backlink profile on majestic SEO you may find that the backlinks look pretty powerful but when you check on ahrefs you may find it’s a completely different situation.
Wayback Machine
This is a great tool you can use which will show you copies of a website on the domain since it was first registered. It’s important to make sure any domain you buy has always ran a legitimate site and has not been used for any other private blog networks or spam purposes in the past.
As you can see below this image shows the same site with one copy in 2008 and the other in 2016. The one on the left is a pretty basic site and a few features that won’t load such as images but looking at the content you can see it has always been a legit site. Everything on the most recent corresponds with what’s being said on the previous versions so this domain is ideal for a private blog network.
Below is an example of a site that should be avoided. Looking at the image on the left you can see the images of the cars at the top looks very similar to the one on the right about ‘car games’. However when you take a look at the text on the left you can clearly see the content is completely irrelevant and considered spammy. This is a domain you should definitely avoid.
Another factor to consider is when you search through the Wayback Machine database and the bot has been blocked, you should be wary of the domain. This is a bad sign that the site has something to hide that most likely isn’t relevant to what was recently on the domain.
Age of the Domain
Although this isn’t as important as any of the other metrics I have mentioned before, it is still something to consider when building a PBN. It isn’t the easiest metric to track due to the fact that websites registered ten years ago might not have gone live with a site until a couple of years later. Also if a domain is registered in 2005 and then expires in 2009, it could be then newly registered in 2011.
When building a private blog network you should try and vary the age of the sites just to help keep everything looking natural but there isn’t one set way in which this should be done.
There are a few tools available that you can use to check domain ages listed below:
Domain Age Checker
Domain Age Tool
Now that you know what to look for in a domain, you can’t leave any footprints for google when you finally decide to buy one. The next section will detail what is needed to stay hidden.
6. Reducing Domains Footprints
When you purchase any domains, it’s very possible to leave footprints for google to find. It’s important to keep everything random from the very beginning to make sure you don’t waste end up wasting your time on a private blog network that has been spotted before you’ve even made it.
Whois Data
Your domains whois data can be either private or public. It’s important to vary this up with any domains on your private blog network and try and keep any of the public data 100% unique. This means using fake names and emails when registering each domain. There are tools available that will help you carry out this process faster, I’ve listed a few below:
Fake Name Generator
Full contact info Generator
Data Fake Generator
2. Email Address
Whenever you use a new domain you should always use a different real email address. You can do this by just creating them yourself making sure you change up the providers such as Gmail and Hotmail. There are also a couple of places you can go to buy in bulk working email addresses if you want to save some time.
The tools I would recommend are – buybulkaccount.com or buyaccs.com
3. Registrars
When registering a domain make sure you don’t use the same registrar for all domains in your network. This is an easy mistake to make so be sure to use as many different registrars as possible. There are plenty of good options out there such as:
fasthosts
tsohost
123reg
godaddy
There are many more registrars out there, you should never find yourself short of options when trying to hide a footprint from google.
7. Your site Design
Now that all of your site’s settings are done it’s time to move onto the design of the site. This part is crucial when building your private blog network. Every site you build should have a unique design and a logo. This can easily be overlooked by quite a lot of people but when you want to make Google believe your site is a real business then you should definitely have these points covered.
Customisation
This is where the benefits come in when working with WordPress. There are lots and lots of themes available straight from WordPress that all look very unique and can give each of your site’s the differences that they need to stay unique.
Every theme on WordPress has a deep level of customisation you can work with which is really ideal in keeping your site completely original. Once you click on the ‘customisation’ tab you will see all of the changes that can be made, go through the list and start choosing any settings and designs you want. This section just like everything else is just about choosing random things.
Logo
There are quite a few easy ways to make logos. Keep in mind that any logos you make for your sites don’t have to be great designs, just having a unique logo on a site is at great at making your site look real. A few logo makers i’d recommend are:
http://www.freelogodesign.org/
https://logomakr.com/
Here is an example of one I created on logomakr.com, It’s just a simple design with a computer template that I added a few shapes to make it look a little different and a space to stick a company name. Remember that the logo doesn’t have to look great it just has to be there for Google’s sake.
These design tools have some decent features that you can use to build some basic designs. Now that the logo is designed you upload it onto your WordPress site and place it in the customisation section of the website.
Ultimately the main thing to remember is the site has to look like someone is using it for a real business. When you feel like you’ve finished your design, take a look and move a few widgets around to make sure that your site is completely unique from any others out there and you’ll now be ready to begin adding some plugins to your site.
8. Adding Plugins
There are a few plugins you’ll need to install on your WordPress site. You should never use the exact same plugins on every one of your sites, you need to make sure that you use a wide variety so no two sites are the same. This will help keep your site looking natural, leaving no footprints for Google to pick up on.
Necessary Plugins
The first plugins to add are the ones you’ll need to make your site useful in a private blog network. You need an SEO plugin, a XML sitemap and a social sharing plugin. There are lots of different options for each, go into the plugins tab on the left hand side and type into the search bar ‘SEO’ this will throw up a list of available plugins.
You can choose anyone you want, a good few I recommend are ‘all in one SEO’, ‘yoast SEO’, ‘SEO ultimate’. Once this is added you can go through the settings making any changes you think are necessary. Some SEO plugins also come with a sitemap, if this isn’t the case then you have to find a sitemap plugin. Again all you do is enter ‘XML sitemap’ into the Google search bar and choose any that catches your eye.
Finally add your social sharing plugin, once you add this just head into the plugins settings and select which of the buttons you want to show on your site. (You might find that some themes come with a social feature, if this is the case then you don’t have to worry about adding one.)
Optional plugins
This is the area where you can get a little creative which will help get each of your sites look original. One plugin you can add to your site is a contact form, whenever you build a site it’s best to have a few pages such as a privacy page, policy page and also a contact page.
Following the same process as the last plugins just type in ‘contact form’ into the search bar. A couple of good ones to lookout for is ‘contact form’ and ‘contact form 7’. With contact form 7 for example it has a line of shortcode that you paste on to your page keeping it nice and simple. When you add a contact page be sure to use different names for it every time. You might use ‘contact us’ on one site and then ‘get in touch’ on the other, same would apply to a policy and privacy page.
As you can see from the picture above you can customise the contact form to say what you’d like, this is an extra way to help keep the site unique.
Next thing to add is a policy page. With this again you can just look for a plugin that provides you with a template to work with. It’s also possible to make this page on the site without a plugin, so use whatever method you’d prefer. Fill in the necessary information and paste the shortcode onto your site.
The plugin I am using here provides you with both a ‘privacy policy page and a terms of service page’. With this all you do is add in your information like name, location, domain and the plugin generates your policy page. You can separate them into two pages or you can put them both on one, there’s not a correct way to set it up so work in any way you’d like.
With every site you build not all of these pages have to be added, you might choose to have all of them or just the contact form etc.
9. Site Settings
When you enter the settings menu you want to try and make everything completely unplanned as possible, this means you don’t have to put too much thought into any of the site’s settings.
General
First place to start is general, the key is to make sure all of your sites on the PBN has different settings. In here will be things like your site title, timezone, date and time formats etc. Just pick random settings with no real thought put into it.
Writing
The writing stage again you can just tick and untick any of the settings here.
Reading
In here will let you change the amount of blog posts that are shown on the site’s page at one time. Just choose any amount you like and it’s up to you if it shows a summary of the post or the full thing. The robots.txt is in this section as well so always remember to keep this different on every one of your sites. One point to make sure of is the search engine visibility box is ticked otherwise the search engines won’t be able to see your content which you will need to be indexed.
Discussion
The discussion settings is the area that controls anything to do with comments. Pingbacks and trackbacks should be disabled and you can also disable email alerts for every comment posted on your site which is pretty ideal as you will most likely be hit with quite a lot of spam.
To factor into disguising your private blog network you should have comments enabled on some sites and have them disabled on others. Later in the course I will show how it’s possible to create fake comments to help the legitimacy of your site.
If you choose to allow comments on your site just tick a few of the options changing any of them you want. Always make sure that you do choose the option that moderates comments. If you don’t then your site will be open to spam hitting your website.
Lastly you’ll want to choose any avatar.
Media
The media section doesn’t really have much in terms of changes but you can set the default sizes for an images on the site.
Permalinks
Finally permalinks is a section where you control the site’s structure, this area again you can just choose any options you want.
This is everything you need when working through the settings and next up is the site’s design. When you repeat the process again with your next site just make sure you work in an unplanned way again so all sites are unique.
10. Keeping Your PBN Hidden
The best way to build your sites in using WordPress. This is an easy platform to keep updated and is very easy to mix up the design to keep google from noticing any similarities.
When you first add a site to the domain you might think that the best thing to do is add lots and lots of articles and content. This straight away is leaving a mark on google’s radar. It’s crucial that any site you build on your PBN looks exactly like a legitimate company.
Here are a few things that you should be aware of whenever you plan on building your sites:
Username and Password – From the very beginning you need to be thinking about footprints. Every site should use different usernames and passwords that you should store in a spreadsheet somewhere to easily keep track of.
Email Address – Don’t set up all of your sites with the same email address. Another obvious footprint.
Templates – Always use a different template for any sites you build, it leaves a massive footprint if google finds two or more sites linking together that not only have the exact same theme but will inevitability look very similar
Plugins – Every site should have a wide variety of plugins that isn’t the same as a site you build before.
Logos – Every site you build should have it’s own unique logo
Forget about using one set formula for your sites. Everything you do in each shouldn’t have any kind of similarities to the other sites in your PBN. Once you first install your WordPress site, make sure that all of the default content and comments are removed. You do this by entering the comments and page section at the sidebar and simply deleting any existing content.
Blocking Bots
Once this is done it’s time to block any spider bots from crawling your site. As you know by now there are lots of tools you can use that will check a competitors backlink profile. The problem with this is if you have a link on there that looks suspicious anyone can click on it and might discover that there is a private blog network. As soon as this happens you’ll most likely get reported to google and your site will be blacklisted.
To work your way around this you have to change your robots.txt, this is a publicly accessible file that can be seen by simply typing it into the URL. If you block bots from accessing the robots.txt when the bot comes round to your site it should ignore your data which means no one can see your backlinks.
Again keeping a footprint in mind you can’t have one set way you have your robots.txt. There is a plugin you can download called ‘wp robots txt’. Once you download this you will find it in the settings menu. You now have the ability to edit the robots.txt file adding your own custom code to stop bots from crawling your site.
Below is a the piece of code that you can add to your site which will block most bots from crawling your site (there may still be some bots out there that will ignore this request).
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Again when adding this code you don’t want 2 sites in your network to use the exact same code so you should always use a variety. You can change the code you are using by replacing the ‘*’ in the code and replacing it with the name of the bots you know exists, for example:
User-agent: AhrefsBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: SemrushBot
Disallow: /
Here is a robot.txt file you can use.
Mix it up with different bots on every site on your PBN, you also shouldn’t use this method on every site you make. You might decide to completely ignore the robots.txt on a site just to keep network that bit harder for google to spot.
Htaccess File
Another method you can use to keep your site hidden from bots is to edit the htaccess file. This is a file that you should definitely take care when editing otherwise your site could come down. Again there is a plugin you can use called ‘wp htaccess editor’, once downloaded you can add the appropriate code in this plugins settings page.
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (googlebot|semrushbot|ahrefsbot) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [R=403,L]
The code above will block any bots from crawling your site and show a 403 error to the bots that crawl the page. To add any more bots type them into the brackets by putting a ‘|’ in between each bot.
11. Content & Comments
Any content on your site has to be completely original and there has to be enough of it to be sure it will be valuable in the long run. Content on the site is split into sections
Static content(content on your pages)
Blog posts
Widget content
Comments<