First of all, PBN is not as mysterious as it sounds. It is a network of websites that is usually made up of expired domain.
PBN is mainly used for link building with the added advantage of having those links under our control.
Advantages:
There are two main reasons that as to why PBNs are effective.
1. The expired domains in a typical PBN are of high authority.
Google gives more value to the backlinks from the high authority websites than the low authority ones.
2. PBNs allow us to control those backlinks we created for our money sites so that we can add or remove those backlinks as per our need.
Disadvantages:
1. Google might detect your PBN and deindex / Penalize it, leading to the loss of authority of the backlinks from the domains in the PBN.
2. Your caring competitor might be able to track down your entire network of money sites and in some cases even your PBNs by checking your backlink profile.
3. The almighty Google might come up with an update to make sure that the domains lose all the authority once it gets expired. (Anything can happen)
Needed resources:
Time
Money
Management
Finding The Purpose Of Building The PBN
The reason to create a PBN will determine what type of PBN you want to build and also what the authority of the domains that you would be needing to create the PBN.
PBNs are mostly created for,
Creating A PBN Service
Determining The PBN Size And Authority Based On Budget
Size Of The PBN:
The size of the PBN and the authority of those expired domains impact the cost and time required to create the PBN.
To understand the power of the PBN, one can start with just 5-10 PBN domains that have good authority.
10 strong backlinks might have more impact than 100s of weak backlinks.
The strength of the backlinks from the PBN is based on the authority of the PBN.
Relevancy:
Relevancy of the backlinks to the money sites is important since it will impact the SERP.
To have a natural link profile to the money site it is better to have a mix of relevant and non- relevant domains in the PBN that gives the backlinks.
I had a hard time finding high authority domains with high relevance. So if you face the same issue I would suggest to go with 10 non-relevant but high authority domains in the beginning, to keep the ball rolling.
Metrics:
The authority of a expired domain can be determined using the following metrics,
Domain Authority (DA)
MozTrust (MT)
Trust Flow (TF)
P.S: Details on what to look for in each of these metrics will follow in the next chapter.
Budget (Per Year):
In terms of money,
Hosting Those Domains at 20 each = $ 200
Content (5 articles per domain) at 6 per articles = $ 300
Total = $ 1400 per year
P.S: A low authority PBN having 10 domains can be built at around $300 per year.
In terms of cost,
Setup Hosting at 45 minutes each = 7.5 hours
Content Publishing at 1.5 hour each = 15 hours
Building the Website at 2 hours each = 20 hours
Total = 52.5 hours per year
Expired Domain Characteristics
The expired domains are most crucial component in the PBNs.
When we search for the expired domains with authority we have check certain characteristics of the domain to make sure that those domains are strong and healthy.
Characteristics to check,
– Existing backlink profile
- [*=1]Need domains with clean backlinks from good websites.
[*=1]Avoid domains with spammy backlink profile.
[*=1]Avoid domains with backlinks that are out of context (backlinks from different language)
– Authority
- [*=1]Based on PA / DA / CF / TF
- [*=1]Old domains are the best for PBN.
Types of Expired Domain Sellers
Aggregator Sites
(Since I am not able to post links, I will just mentioned the domain name without the extension.)
– Expireddomains (domain extension is ‘net’)
- [*=1]This website is one of the well known website that has really good filters for free.
[*=1]Use filters to find the relevant domains.
[*=1]Filter for authority websites using PA, DA and MR values.
- [*=1]Pulls out data of the domains that are to be expired in the next 24 hours from GoDaddy Auctions.
[*=1]Sort the domains by DA and Moz baclinks to get to good domains faster, there are no filters available in this site.
- [*=1]Has domains with country specific TLDs.
[*=1]As the name states, they use PR as the main metric.
[*=1]Can see all the domain names.
- [*=1]This website has lists of expired domains and has the option to view previous drop lists.
- [*=1]This site is all about pending deletion domains. I use it mainly for its PA / DA checking tool.
Brokers
– HeavyDutyNames (domain extension is ‘com’)
- [*=1]As the name suggests, they have some really powerful domains.
[*=1]In all the broker services I have used till they date, they are one of the more expensive brokers but in terms of quality they are really worth the price.
- [*=1]The websites provided by this broker are spam checked and indexed.
[*=1]The amount of websites available are less when compared to other brokers.
Manually Finding Expired Domains
If you are starting out then you would prefer to hunt down the expired domains manually to save some money.
- [*=1]Use Scrapebox to generate a list of seed URL by scraping keywords.
[*=1](If you don’t want to buy scrapebox then you can search for URLs that has many old links and use those URLs. E.g Wikipedia)
[*=1]Export the URL to a tool like Xenu or Integrity.
[*=1]I use integrity (mac for tool), if you have windows then you can try Xenu, to search for broken links (404 error) on the pages that are on the list.
[*=1]Export and Parse the data from the tool.
[*=1]At this stage you will have a list of URL that are candidates to be part of your PBN.
[*=1]Check for the availablity using one of the free bulk whois tools
[*=1] Check the quality of the domains using MOZ OSE and Majestic and register them if you like it.
(If you don’t want to use the tools such as integrity and xenu then there are some online tools that are available to check for broken links on a webpage, google it)
I am sure you can find many tutorials in this forum related to using scrapebox.
Domain PA / DA / CF / TF / PR / Backlinks / Referring Domains Requirements
When searching for a good domain I search for domains with the following metrics,
| PA | 30+ |
| DA | 20+ |
| CF | 15+ |
| TF | 15+ |
| PR | 0+ |
| Backlinks | 25+ |
| Referring Domains | 15+ |
Depending on the situation you can go for domains that are below the above mentioned values. It all depends on what type of PBN you want to build and how much budget you have for building the PBN.
(A post in the Money Making section of this forum: ultimate-guide-building-amazon-affiliate-niche-sites-insanely-profitable)
The price of the expired domains vary depending upon the PA and DA of the domains.
Price Ranges:
| PA | DA | Price |
| 20+ | 10+ | $30 – $60+ |
| 30+ | 20+ | $60 – $170+ |
| 40+ | 30+ | $150 – $320+ |
| 50+ | 40+ | $300 – $650+ |
The Process:
- [*=1]Find the domain using the Aggregate sites or any other source.
[*=1]Check the PA / DA / mT / CF / TF / Backlinks profile / Referring Domains using,
[*=1]MOZ Open Site Explorer Tool
[*=1]Majestic SEO Tool
[*=1]Ahref Tool (If your budget permits)
[*=1] Buy if you are satisfied with the results.