A PBN can help you boost the visibility of your website and drive more traffic to it. In this article, we’ll sum up the main advantages and disadvantages of this method.
To improve your website’s SEO, it’s not enough to regularly post high-quality content that contains niche-specific keywords. To build a solid portfolio of backlinks for your site, you might want to rely on a private blog network (PBN). In this article, we’ll explain what a PBN is and how you can benefit from it. Plus, we’ll list the pros and cons of using a private blog network service in 2022.
What Is a Private Blog Network (PBN)?
A PBN is a network that consists of multiple websites that belong to the same owner — that is, you. Each of these sites regularly publishes high-quality content on a specific topic. Search engines classify these websites as “high-authority” ones. You create content for these websites and add backlinks to your site there. As a result, the visibility of your primary website in search engines will improve.
The term “backlink” is synonymous with “inbound link” (IBL). It’s a hyperlink that leads from another web page to your website. Google considers backlinks as the top-ranking factor for the sites that it indexes.
To create a PBN, you can build multiple websites from scratch. But in this case, it might take you too much time to promote each site and boost its authority. It would be cheaper and easier to purchase expired domains that gained authority when they were relevant and give a second life to them.
Many hosting providers offer PBN hosting. It allows you to conveniently manage all the websites within your network from a single dashboard.
Not any random group of websites that belong to the same owner can be characterized as a PBN. A private blog network was created with the only purpose of promoting your main website. If other websites that feature links to your primary web resource also carry out some other meaningful functions (such as selling goods or providing online education opportunities), that’s not a PBN.
Pros of Using a PBN in 2022
Website owners and SEO experts single out four primary benefits of using PBNs.
Quick Results
PBNs allow you to get a lot of backlinks for your website with minimum effort. As a result, your search engine rankings will improve. Backlinks from high-authority expired domains can help you take your website to the first page of Google faster than any other method.
Cost-Efficiency
To optimize your expenses, you should:
- Purchase cheap expired domains
- Make sure these domains have decent pre-established authority
- Create informative high-quality content for these domains that links back to your website
Using a PBN is not always the cheapest link-building technique but is still one of the most affordable ones.
Revenue
Here is how your PBN will generate a profit for you:
- Your website’s visibility will grow
- You’ll get more traffic
- More people will see your ads, buy your products or perform some other actions that bring money to you
Plus, you can sell backlinks from your PBN to third-party websites that don’t compete with yours.
Opportunity to Control Search Keywords
By using a PBN, you can easily control which keyword searches lead back to your main website. It’s your chance to boost natural, organic traffic.
Cons of Using PBNs
On the flip side, private blog networks have a few disadvantages that you should be ready to cope with.
Your Expenses Might Increase Over Time
This sequence of events explains why you should be ready to pay more over time:
- Your website becomes more popular
- Search engine crawlers begin to scrutinize it more thoroughly
- You’ll need to invest more in the domains you’re using for backlinks
The texts that feature backlinks to your website should be long, informative and helpful for people who read them. You’ll need to hire our outsource experienced writers to create such content.
You’ll Need to Invest More Time into Managing Your PBN
The more extensive your PBN and the longer you’ve been using it, the more time and effort you’ll be required to spend on creating new content for it. However, if you opt for managed PBN hosting, your provider can become in charge of this task.
Google Might Penalize You
Google doesn’t approve of using PBNs. If this search engine finds out that you resort to this technique, it can decrease your website’s visibility or exclude it from its rankings. You won’t be able to use any of the websites from your network anymore. If you like the results that this technique brings and would love to stick to it, you’ll have to build a new PBN from scratch.
The good thing is that you can easily find guidelines on how to avoid Google penalties. We won’t focus on them in this article. You should avoid speaking about the fact of having a PBN, managing several websites within your PBN from the same Google account and so on.
The Most Important Tip on Using PBNs
If you place backlinks to your website in a PBN that belongs to someone else, you’ll face excessive risks. What if that person makes a mistake and Google penalizes them? What if they shut down their PBN because they get bored with this job? In such a situation, all your efforts will go down the drain.
If you decide to promote your website with the help of a PBN, it would be reasonable to build such a network with your own hands. This will give you full control over it. Plus, you can make money by placing third-party backlinks in your PBN.
Final Thoughts
In 2022, a PBN remains a useful tool for building a backlink portfolio for your website. This cost-efficient method allows you to quickly improve your website’s position in search engine results, control your keywords and make a profit. At the same time, your expenses and the effort that you’ll need to invest into managing your PBN might increase over time. Plus, you’ll have to take measures to prevent Google from penalizing you. Take proper care of your PBN and you’ll appreciate the results that it will let you achieve!
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