Promoting with PBN: How to build your own grid?

What is the PBN site grid?

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PBN is a private blog network, a private blog network. In fact, this is a group of sites that link to a promoted web resource, increasing its authority and improving its position in search results. Individual pages on this network are called satellites, or satellites.

The main function of PBN is link building. When creating additional sites, the optimizer places informative articles on them, into which it integrates links to the main web resource. To make such a system work as efficiently as possible, satellites select reputable domains that have been operating in their segment for some time and then were disabled for some reason. In a professional environment, they are called drops.

We honestly warn you that search engines do not approve of PBN-SEO. While this method doesn't directly break the rules, it's always possible to find fault with spam, low-quality content, or excessive link concentration. Its use carries the risk of lowering the rating and even completely banning sites. Satellites are most often sanctioned, but in some cases they may also affect the promoted resource.

So why do SEO professionals continue to use PBN? The reason is simple — sometimes it's almost the only way to quickly increase a site's ranking and get to the top for certain key queries. Such a tool is highly effective in “grey” areas such as iGaming, cryptocurrencies, stock trading, selling dietary supplements, etc. In addition, it is difficult to manage without it in a highly competitive area where the market has long been divided between key players, and beginners have to fight for every client.

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Pros and Cons of PBN: Is the Game Worth the Challenge?

First of all, we would like to reassure those who have heard about the Google search algorithm update in March 2024. PBN links continue to work and benefit thousands of projects on the Internet. The few bans were issued for two reasons: in some cases, the grids were filled with low-quality content, while in others, tech company assessors stepped in and issued manual sanctions. Igor Shulezhko, the author of the SEO SHMEO podcast, put it roughly but very accurately: “You can actively use all the old schemes if you don't talk about it much less.”

By and large, there have been no major changes in the PBN industry. By launching your own satellite network, you can count on the following benefits:

• A significant increase in ratings due to the use of reputable domains. It's hard to find another tool that provides the same results in a limited amount of time. If you do everything right and don't fall under manual sanctions, there is a great chance to reach the top by pushing stronger competitors.

• Significant increase in link mass. As a rule, the PBN satellite grid consists of 10 to 25 sites with 5 to 20 links depending on the number of pages and the amount of content. Dozens or even hundreds of high-quality links are guaranteed. To get the same results using only “white” methods, you will have to spend much more money, time and effort.

• Links from the main pages of the sites. You can imagine how much these valuable links would cost if you bought them from reputable domain owners. It is possible that each of them will cost more than the rest of the link mass. Therefore, PBN is almost the only area where this works.

• Full control over new links. By indirectly owning satellite sites, you can manage their content on your own. No one else can delete, replace, or break the link. The probability that a page will disappear at some point is reduced to zero.

Of course, the mere fact of being in the “twilight zone” should be alarming. And for good reason, because PBN has as many disadvantages as advantages:

• There is a risk of being sanctioned by Google. This usually happens when a competitor files a complaint against the site. We have already said how to avoid this situation: having a PBN should be a trade secret that only the closest trusted people know about.

• Creating a satellite grid requires considerable financial investments. Even the strongest drops with a high level of credibility need to be promoted. Since you will have to work with several sites at the same time, according to the most conservative estimates, budgets will be measured in thousands of dollars.

• Creating a PBN is difficult: searching for domains, creating a technical site platform, drawing a design, filling it with content, administering it. We'll have to form a separate team with its own budget and integrate it into the existing business structure.

Many SEOs believe that it is unethical to use PBN. Everyone decides this for themselves. As well as how appropriate it is to use nets on a case-by-case basis. The rule here is the same: if you are determined to take risks, invest money and effort, you can start right now. If you are in doubt that you are not ready to risk your existing resources and assemble a new team from scratch, it is better to abandon this idea.

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PBN types

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Knowing what PBN sites are, it's easy to guess that the technique is far from new. Its rules and tools have been tested a long time ago. Therefore, it is best to act strictly according to the scheme, choosing one of the following areas.

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Restored sites

Once you have a domain, you can restore the finished site from the web archive. In this case, there is a chance to get solid benefits:
• a large amount of original content, which is especially appreciated by search engines today;
• a strong brand that gives high authority to the domain, allowing you to get a large amount of traffic and significant links;
• a unique design that will help visually separate satellites, reducing the risk of blocking.
But unfortunately, restored sites are always a lottery. It is possible to get a “dead” resource from the web archive under sanctions, which will have not just zero, but a negative effect. Links from it will be considered spam, which will also draw attention to the promoted resource.

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Social media

A budget option is an SEO grid of sites created on blogging platforms like Tumbler or LiveJournal. It has become very popular due to the following advantages:
• Accessibility. Nothing prevents you from building a website using a free website builder and uploading it to the most affordable hosting.
• Great offer. Such blogs used to be very fashionable, and almost every Internet user had a page on popular platforms. With the advent of major social networks, they were abandoned and are now being sold for nothing.
• The probability of finding a live resource with traffic and regular users. It will cost more to buy it, but it will be much more beneficial.
Again, we remind you that cheese is free only in a mousetrap. The price for a cheap entrance ticket will be a lot of time and effort. Each site will have a specific style, tone of speech and content format. The better you can adapt to them, the more effective your social PBN will be.

Niche sites

Sites with suitable topics that are on sale for a reason. Hence their advantages:
• Minimal risk of blocking. Websites have already worked in this industry, there has just been a change of ownership. Search engines don't find fault with this.
• Minimal effort. Most resources are already filled with content that you just need to insert links into.
• Ready-made link mass. If sites were previously promoted, it means that someone also worked on link building. These domains will be much more authoritative than average drops.
The downside is that you will have to work in the “cheap, fast-efficient” triangle, choosing no more than two points out of three. You can select high-quality sites manually and spend a lot of time on it, or you can buy a ready-made grid for a large sum.
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Steps to create a PBN

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If the decision to create a PBN is made, all that remains is to figure out how to make a grid of sites with your own hands so that it works as efficiently as possible.

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Domain search

Which site to buy for a collection that will later become a treasured PBN depends on individual requirements, goals, and key metrics. This can be the current amount of traffic, the domain authority rating according to various services, the number of backlinks, etc.

Let us dwell in more detail on how to buy a site. If you are interested in how to create a PBN, you should know that there are two main methods: manually selecting expired domains or purchasing them at specialized auctions. Both have advantages and disadvantages, which should be discussed in more detail.

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Expired Domains — Expired

Pau data from Domain Coasters, owners lose rights to 200,000 domains every day. The total number of expired domains is in the hundreds of millions. So there's plenty to choose from. On the other hand, searching for them manually is not easy. If you try hard, you can browse several hundred sites in a day, which is a drop in the bucket. Therefore, when creating a PBN, experienced SEO specialists use specialized catalogs:
• expireddomains.net;
• spamzilla.io;
• bluechipbacklinks.com;
• domcop.com;
• domaincoasters.com et al.
Expired domains can be sold at the registration price or auctioned off. Some services allow you to track thematic resources close to this point and book them in advance — if the rate does not work, the money is returned minus a certain commission.

The main advantage of Expired domains is their low cost and huge variety. Theoretically, with unlimited resources, you can create several dozen PBN grids per month, which is what the largest digital agencies do. The downside is that it is far from certain that you will come across a high-quality site. Most likely, you will have to hastily check its quality and make a decision in a limited time until competitors take advantage of the offer. In addition, not all domains are for sale — in some geographical locations or business segments, you won't be able to buy an expired website.

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Auctions

Specialized exchanges that sell websites usually include expired domains that have not yet been removed from the register, but can no longer be restored. Auctions are one of the few ways to buy them. You can't do this on your own — in some cases, the “window of opportunity” is so narrow that its duration is measured in a few seconds. Popular auctions include:

• auctions.godaddy.com;
• namecheap.com/market;
• namejet.com;
• voodoo.domains.

Each site has its own rules and characteristics. GoDaddy has a fixed end time, while Voodoo resets the timer for each bet, so the winner can only be determined a few days later. Some auctions offer their own website quality control services, while others require the use of third-party applications. Interesting features also include parsers for finding specific content and services for previewing pages from the web archive.

An auction is a chance to buy a high-quality domain to create a grid of sites, down to three-letter names in top registration zones. Hence its disadvantages: you can't get anything for nothing. The average cost of websites here hovers around $1,000, and individual domains go under the hammer for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

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Contractor services

You can not bother with auctions and catalogs yourself, but entrust the selection of resources to specialists. And this is the very case when you should start with the minuses. Firstly, it is expensive: you will have to add 30-100% to the site price, depending on the chosen domain. Secondly, this is not always of high quality — there is a risk of running into fraudsters who will appropriate funds for themselves. Thirdly, it is far from certain that contractors will do their job quickly and well.

On the plus side, you don't have to think too much about how to build a PBN network, but take control of a ready-made group of sites. But in practice, SEO specialists will still have to double-check and “finish” the satellites received from contractors for the future grid. Therefore, we do not recommend using this method — it only enhances the disadvantages of PBN without providing any special advantages in return.

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Website development

For a satellite to launch and be useful, it must be a full-fledged website, not just an abstract domain. Therefore, when building a PBN, you will have to devote time to development. Of course, you can always archive the old version of a web resource, but we talked about the risks of such a decision above: there is a possibility of getting a “zombie” that will pull the entire grid down.

So it's best to put in a little effort. Fortunately, today there are many simple designers that allow you to choose a web page template and refine it by dragging ready-made modules onto the screen. An important note about the design: it should be different on all grid sites. It is even desirable to use different constructors. This is more reliable — it is less likely that competitors will complain about the site or pay attention to Google assessors. Another option is to build a static site on one of the popular CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento). This is slightly more complicated but less risky, especially if you use different themes and change the HTML code a little bit.

The next step in promoting through the PBN satellite network is to fill it with content. Here you will have to show a little more imagination and remember Google's rule: for a link to be considered high-quality, the topics of the promoted resource and its satellites must match. All you have to do is add some original content, expertise, and links to other reputable resources — and the recipe for success is ready!

But it is also important to understand that content is not just text optimized for the semantic core. These could be:
• to promote an online store — video reviews of goods, photo albums, scanned copies of quality certificates;
• for an iGaming provider — source code snippets, links to authorized organizations;
• for a SaaS service — screenshots, tariff plan comparisons, pros and cons tables, social media widgets, etc.

Another caveat: when thinking about how to make a PBN network yourself, don't trust artificial intelligence too much. And the problem isn't that Google is banning AI content. Recent experiments show that he doesn't really care about the authorship of a text. It's just that artificial intelligence in its current form is not able to generate high-quality content.

This mainly concerns texts that are excessively watery and contain hundredfold chewed material that is of no value. They often fall under both automatic and manual sanctions, lowering the site's rating or even excluding it from indexing. If the company operates in a highly specialized niche where expertise is important, it is better to hire professional copywriters — as part of a team or outsource.

However, none of this means that you should remove ChatGPT and other similar services from your bookmarks by canceling subscriptions. Artificial intelligence is actively used in PBN Marketing, but in less obvious ways than generating all content from scratch.

You can easily entrust artificial intelligence to research keywords and clustering queries, as well as collecting information, generating drafts and creating the structure of articles. At the same time, you should experiment with prompts — tips for AI. Experts say that the input for writing a good article can be up to 500 words long. They include keys, style requirements, and even sample texts.

At the same time, you should never publish automatically generated texts without revision. Experimentally, we were able to find out what is the best way to create a grid of sites in conjunction with AI+copywriter+editor. Artificial intelligence generates a draft, the copywriter adds expertise and personal opinion to it, and the editor corrects errors and adjusts the text to the tone of speech on the site.

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Management

It would seem that the job is done, we can rest on our laurels. But no — there are many nuances in managing a PBN grid. Let's start with the hosting services that are used to host websites. It is advisable to take your own provider for each resource, and you should specify in advance whether the content will be close to competing networks that can incur Google's anger.

By understanding what a PBN site is, you can create a complete list of works, which will include:

• site administration;
• regular uploading of new content;
• analysis of the effectiveness of promotion;
• easy redesign to simulate the natural life cycle of a resource;
• storing content for reuse;
• financial accounting, analysis of investment performance;
• working with technical support services, etc.

When it comes to one grid for 10-15 sites, these tasks can be assigned to the company's existing employees. If the number of satellites exceeds several dozen, you will have to assemble a separate team, train it, supervise the work of specialists and resolve related personnel issues.

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A few more words about risks

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Back to the fact that the PBN grid is one of the “grey” methods of website promotion that is not officially approved by Google and other search engines. When creating it, you should include the following risks in your business plan:

1. Sudden discovery by search engines
As a rule, this is due to poor disguise of satellites and the inability to keep secrets. A complete fall in the grid is rare — usually several resources drop out of it. Sanctions are even less common for the promoted site. And yet, in this case, part of the budget is wasted—it's unpleasant.
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2. Low efficiency of one of the satellites
Sometimes, despite the time and money spent filling the entire site, only a few pages are indexed. The reasons can range from poor content quality to Google's distrust of the restored domain.
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3. Drop loss
It also happens that the previous owner manages to get his site back or at least ban SEOs from using it. As a rule, this happens when a brand, including one embedded in the URL, is illegally exploited.

4. Deterioration of reputation
Some SEOs agree with Google, disapprove of the use of blog grids and are therefore constantly looking for them. That is why it is so important to “confuse the tracks” when ordering all the necessary services from dozens of different accounts.

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findings

If you have a clear idea of what PBN links are, have experience in quickly getting websites up and are not afraid to take risks, you can achieve great success! Blog grids are doing great after all Google updates and continue to benefit their owners.

If you can't cope with the risks and there is no clear understanding of how to create the appearance of an ordinary average site, it is better to entrust the task of promoting a web resource to professionals. We will select optimal optimization methods taking into account your segment, the peculiarities of the company's business model and the preferences of the target audience.

One of the powerful Off Page SEO techniques for increasing authority and ranking in search engine results. The most secure PBN networks will give you the best results. Here are 10 important steps for creating a PBN in a secure manner.

1. Expired domains
Find high-quality expired domains, as lots of domain names expire every day. You should consider important factors like backlink history, domain niche, domain authority, Space score, and backlink ratio.
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2. Domain registration
Register domains with trusted registrars. If you bought a domain name at another registrar's auction, it's best to transfer it to a reliable registrar. This will make it easier to manage and keep it safe.
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3. Hosting without traces
Web hosting providers usually provide custom server names and one IP address, which leaves a mark if you host multiple PBN domains on the same package. There are many hosting packages that are configured by IP class, such as A Class IP Hosting, B Class IP Hosting, and C Class IP Hosting.
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4. The most secure hosting package
PBN A Class IP Hosting is the most secure package as you'll get a different A-Class IP address for each domain. If you can get A-class multi-location hosting from SeekaHost, it will be even better and more secure. You can also use B-class and C-class hosting, which is also secure, but it is recommended to use Class A or B for premium blogs.
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5. CMS for Private Blog Network WordPress
CMS is very easy to integrate and takes much less time compared to other CMS. There are also plenty of free themes and plugins that help make the site unique. An easily managed CMS is more preferable for better performance and time savings.
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6. Creating a website without traces
Footprints don't just depend on hosting, but also on how you build the site and structure content. Don't use the same plugins and themes as this will leave traces. You should also strictly avoid the same content to make the site look natural.
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7. Show naturalness
Do things the way you would do for your own blog. Don't consider PBN only as a link source. Build it right and show Google's trust so that PBN's strength increases and ultimately helps your main site. The more natural it looks, the more effect you'll get from it.
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8. Structure and indexing
You must maintain the right structure for linking to the main sites. The proper structure and indexing of blogs are important when creating a Private Blog Network. Keep everything structured and don't show it as an artificial link process.
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9. Regular updates
Regular updates should be made to PBN networks to show Google that the domain is active and natural. Simply filling it with content at once can undermine domain credibility. You can also block bots used by competitors to check domain status.
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10. Monitor spam levels and backlinks
You should monitor the level of spam and backlinks on the PBN network, as this indirectly affects the link directed to your main site. Proper monitoring and maintenance help increase PBN's credibility and credibility, making it more powerful.