Hi everyone,
I joined about year ago, I havent comment much but I learnt few things to improve my SEO skills.
I next weeks I will post few articles from my SEO blog seoowl.net. I'd love to hear your comments. Not going to bored you about my SEO background, all can be found at my website. Here it is, have a good use. Id be really glad if you can place comments on my blog if you like wha tI have to offer.
SEOOWL 2016 PBN Creation Guide
1st Tier Power, Private Blog Network built the right way
Now time for meat, swat, powerful 1st tier backlinks line for your website. Through my SEO life I created 11 separated PBN's for different SEO projects, domains count was around 170 domains in total. These days, I run now 3 PBNs built around health niche. 43 sweet domains, enough power to get most of the health niche I work in. There is much to tell you so lets get to work.
Shortly, what can you do with aged domain ?
There are 4 options:
Use it to build a website dedicated to place links pointing to your money site (Private Blog Network, 1st tier of backlinks)
Try to rank this aged domain for keywords you wish for
Use it for redirecting towards any other website
Mix of point 1 and 2
Lot of options, I will explain my way each of the in further articles. Today we are focusing on the Private Blog Network building process.
Other Guides you can find online,
You will find many PBN guide's telling you how to set it up, where to find domains, how to use them and so on. Im not going to repeat everything as most of those tips are right, at least technical foundations.
While building PBN's you must have in mind some basics:
1. Keeping each PBN website unique in appearance. content, don't link them up.
2. Use reliable hosting servers (more below)
3. Make sure they look natural for Google (more below)
4. Buy and use them my way
Web 2.0's Will Never Be PBN. Period
Web 2.0 blog's are very popularthese days for SEOers. These are blog creation platforms like wordpress.com, mostly for free with limited features. You sign up and you can build an online blog, post articles, videos etc. They are basically without any admin control, you can post articles with outbound link towards any website.
Just an interjection before we move into actual the PBN building process. Sooner or later you will ask about Web 2.0s. Please don't ever think that web 2.0s are strong for 1st tier, these are useful links but wrongly taken by the most of people. Web 2.0s magic is explained in this post > CLICK TO READ
Where to get the old domains from ?
There is a variety of places to buy aged, good domains. First warning now that it isn't easy like it was in the past, many SEOers hunt for them. You need to be patient and know how to spot a good one, know what to look for, be step ahead of other SEOers, that is the reason why I've made this guide. Whether you use tools or go directly to the auctions you will probably end up bidding - so I'd strongly suggest to use convenient online tools. They are easy and helpful, especially domcop.com which is my best shot.
Here is the list of best services I found, I use them whenever I'm about to a add new domain to my PBN;
https://www.domcop.com
http://www.freshdrop.com
http://www.registercompass.org
https://www.expireddomains.net
http://www.yourmaindomain.com
There is more but there is a big chance that most of domains is listed in every tool you find, just pick the one you like the most or meets your wallet. My favourite is domcop.
Why should you use this tools ?
You have most of the domains in one place, they are sorted. You can use handy filters to narrow to the one you want. They will save you lot of time !
Buying Aged Domain, which one ?
That is a tough question. Before you hear the answer you must know some basics.
#1 Index guys !
Firstly, the domain must be indexed. I know some people go deep checking domains health and decide to buy not indexed one. I wouldn't take that risk. There must be a reason why the domain was deindexed. There is a slight chance the website is gone from the machine just because it's not been hosted anywhere from past years. Remeber that website could have been also used for 301/302 redirection, not just to link from it. It does not mean that you should avoid not indexed ones. You can have it but it must be preceded by good domain's diagnosis. If you are sure that the domain is healthy then you shouldn't have any problems to index it back again.
Domain expired or expiring?
Does not matter, index status is all you need to check for the start.
Any penalty hidden ?
Go and type domain name into google search bar and see how it displays.
This is how I check possible domain penalty, please note that it won't 100% guarantee. Put it into search bar, domain MUST show up at the first place !
Good trick I do
Sometimes it's difficult to check a possible penalty. If I'm not sure about domain but its strong in metrics (or any other parameters I'm after) I buy it, set it up at a shared hosting and check if it shows up in SERPs(it will take time !) If website is visible somewhere (probably far from the 1st page) it means the machine still trusts it. I use that kind of domain either for PBN or Money site (yes I do, will show you soon how)
#2 How old PBN domain should be ?
Doesn't really matter, the older the better but I also see great power in the fresh domains. Rule of a thumb is at least 1 year old.
#3 Domain's history
Archive.org Diagnosis
Apart from the index status call this is the second most important thing to do, archive check. Put the domain name into archive.org and see results, in my opinion it's worth more than checking anchors profile.
You can read many useful information from Archive diagnosis but for now the diagram on top is the most important.
If you don't see any website's presence downtime across time it means you are ok
If you see downtime, the website wasn't accessible for some period of time. Then sound alert and check the last time the website was visible before the gap and right after that.
Seeing two different websites (content) ? Not so good but still might be a valuable domain. Just keep checking its health further. Somebody might bought it in the past not necessarily for the SPAM purpose.
#4 Domain's backlinks and anchors
The amount of live backlinks shows you how strong the domain is. I usually avoid websites having less than 20 referring domains. Don't get excited about the high number of links, remember;
check which one is live (ahrefs.org works best)
how many comes from not indexed websites? (Important !)
how much this big basket of backlinks is actually worth ? check their quality
There is also few other reasons why you shouldn't be so jumpy about the big number of backlinks. Quality over quantity - please remember.
Anchors
This was described by many SEOers and I have nothing much to add here. You can spot easily possibly spammed website by looking at its anchors profile. My rule is:
The more naked URLs the better. My anchors strategy in general is to build naked URL backlinks
Avoid Asia and Russia anchors, If you see some strange anchors then check exactly where this link is comes from, put that page into google translate. Sometimes anchor is ok coming from legitimate page but it was just made by a foreigner author. You can't translate the website url or the brand name but you should translate words like "click here" for your readers, right ?
Please read Anchors 2016 strategy post.
#5 Domain's relevancy
That is something probably you were looking for. That's quite easy. You can start with keyword, fastest way to find the right one. You can also use Majestic Topic help. What I do in general is buying all domains "around" my niche. If I sell diet pills then I look for everything around health, health insurance, healthcare services, vet's etc.
Does it have to be relevant to be good ?
No it doesn't. You still can see good results from the generic domain. I often buy any "news" like websites that were used to publish general information. Look for small local newspapers websites, they show up on auctions. A perfect catch.
Buy one that is "healthy" for search engines in the first place, then see if it is relevant.
#6 What else to look for ?
DA, PA, CF, TF - common parameters
An obvious thing all the people do is to look for high DA or PA value, the higher the better, other looks for a big amount of backlinks. Endless options. It is important - no doubts. Each of this parameters can be manipulated, remember that Moz, Majestic or Ahrefs are just crawlers, machine that collects data and gives you the outcome score.
I'm mostly focused on the Majestic scores along with DA (Moz) Majestic these days gives you a really good website metrics description. Their trust flow high level is really hard to achieve and I take that as a good sign of solidity. Pay attention to website's topic information Majestic displays.
Last 2 tips are:
I set Domcop to display only Cititation Flow 10+ and DA 20+
I also recommend you to buy only TLD domains (com, net etc.)
How much for the aged domain?
A lot, if you really think you get results from $5 domain you are wrong. I had plenty of domains like that and after time I 've spent working on them they turned out to be almost worthless, at least for 2016 standards. There is a reason why a good domain costs so much. Building PBN isn't cheap and you have to accept that. Saying $50-75 for a start per one domain is reasonable.
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You might get lucky at auctions
You always can get lucky bidding at auctions, I have 4 domains now selling diet pills on first page, 3 I bought for around $15 and one for $5, which was big luck but also a technique I use ranking spammy websites. It's not like I was super lucky buying them so cheap, I knew nobody wants that kind of a "crappy" websites so that's why I got them so cheap. Nevertheless, you can get really lucky if you monitor auctions and bid in the right time !
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Technical part of PBN process
Hosting, server
This is very important. Hosting server must be reliable. As you've probably read online your PBN website must have:
unique IP
Content (not duplicated)
Realistic look, constant articles published, few authors (do it), contact page, social presence
I strongly advise you to use fake register info, make one that look like real person or a real company. Better approach than hidding WHOiS information.
Dedicated Hosting for PBN's
I would avoid that as you don't find one that is really strong and still off Google's radar. Best if you can buy hosting individually for each domain (!) and make fake registration data.
You can find many online offers selling hosting with 10, 20 diffrent IP's package and later you can assign them to all your PBN domains. That's just seller saying "host your PBN here"
If I find any dedicated hosting for Private Blog Network I check their servers. Check IP's or DNS's they have with whois.domaintools.com, go to the Reverse IP option and if you see many affiliate, spammy website hosted at this server then it's rather a red light.
Recentlly for part of my PBN I use ip-networx.com and they seem to hold fine. Google hasn't probably spot them out yet 
That's lot of work !!
Yes it is, I never said Private Blog Networks are cheap or effortless to make either. It's all about numbers, if they can help you rank website that makes you $50k per year then I guess it's worth it ? You need to ask yourself what to expect from SEO, how much you are willing to spent etc.
PBN wesbites content
Here you have two options. You can either download its old content from the archive.org or make a new one. If you decide to restore the old one then I advise you to use the last available one from archive.org.
Building the new content means some work but I have it all done with WAC and its fine. Question is how serious you are about your PBN, the better quality you make for PBNs the better. Remember that those sites often show up in SERP and they have some organic traffic, you can even make additional money from them - I hope you see how important it is to have website that looks "regular" for random visitors
Buying PBNs ready to use
As you probably found there are many services selling aged domains that were previously SEO checked (at least according to the seller) and are ready to use for PBN. I leave the decision to you, soon I will publish articles how to buy SEO services. If somebody offers you the domain and it was checked by methods I mentioned above then its a safe domain, if it's worth it dependings on your wallet.
PBN SEOOWL strategies
Buying ideas
#1 Buy one with the traffic (love this one)
While sorting for the domains with traffic- use SEMrush filter. What happens here is that you find domains that for sure are indexed and have constant traffic (visitors). See if you can have copy of this website with this magic tool https://www.httrack.com. Sometimes you can find it still accessible in the internet, otherwise try to use cache:domain.com in Google. Launch HTTrack and see if you can download copy of it. No need to copy the whole website but the best if you could. If the website can't be downloaded with the HTTrack use http://waybackdownloader.com/ - they will do it for you from archive.org. You can also copy the website manually from archive.org. Got the domain ? Put it on the server and link from it, don't change its content. To build links I advise you a few methods:
See if it has resources page and put links there + blast it with links. Can't find that page ? make one just make sure it looks natural and legitimate for this website.
Make subpage, put article and blast it with links. Very often you can rank this subpage high for good keywords as it has domain authority (Yes, you can !)
you can always put link on the homepage, this is risky if the website is not relevant to your money site.
#2 Buy one within your niche
Use Majestic data and Domcop to narrow into the niche you like. Remember that Majestic is just a machine and websites' topic environment can be easily manipulated. Always type the website into archive.org and review its content in time.
#3 Hunt for auction
Sort the domains for the ones that auctions expires soon and fight at the auction. You will be surprised how often you can acquire a good domain.
#4 Buy one with targeted keyword in its name
I use it very often as my understanding of Google''s relevancy is explained in the article I wrote.
Last steps
let it be alone..
You have the domain all ready with a few pages of the content. Now wait, give it 2-3 weeks before you place any articles with the links. Observe SERP, see if the website displays properly. If you have the access to few strong links you can hit that domain to see SERP changes.
My way to build external links
I will make an article soon how I approach building link in content but let me tell you one major rule I do now. I rarely link out from the homepage. This method is well known for Google, in last years people made thousands of websites that are simply blogs based on aged domains with 40+ outbound links from the homepage. Be always one step ahead. I often use RESOURCES page to place links on with the short text. That subpage is later blasted with 2nd tier backlinks. That's my way, sometimes it is better to build new resources like page and link for it then have 50+ external links just to have PA illusion. Be smart...
Final words
Is this method 100% safe ? It is not, nothing is in SEO. Remember that buying aged domain and usinge it for SPAM (let's be honest) is a very gentle matter. If you go the way I've just shown you and have enough patience then you are almost sure to succeed.
Thanks for reading and leave your comment if you have any questions, Wojciech