The One Type Of Blog Network You Must Avoid

There is one type of blog network you should avoid at all costs and that is public blog networks. Especially public 'private' blog networks that you tend to find advertised in forums like BlackHatWorld.

Let me be clear here, the second you start selling posts on your private blog network it is no longer a private blog network.

It is a regular occurrence to hear news of yet another 'private' blog network getting completely deindexed then you have everyone running around saying 'private' blog networks are dead.
But those networks are not truly private networks and Google actively invest their time & effort into infiltrating these networks and deindexing them.

It has happened countless times starting with AuthorityLinkNetwork (ALN) & Build My Rank (BMR) in 2012 and still happens to this day (Anglo Rank).

Public 'private' blog networks are a false economy. Sure they work in the here and now, but that success is built on a foundation of failure.

Here are some of the other drawbacks of public networks-

1. The sites are usually poor in design
2. They use junky unreadable spun content
3. They sell hundreds of posts per month per site
4. The domains themselves usually have a spammy backlink profile
5. You have zero control

The last point being the most important of all - not having control is a risk and it is critical to manage risk throughout all of your SEO efforts.
You are much better off investing your time & money into business assets that you control.

The Risks Of Private Blog Networks

I want to be very clear with this. If Google catches you using a private blog network, you will be penalised. There are no two ways about it.
In fact, if Google catches you trying to manipulate their algorithm in any way at all they will penalise you for it. Regardless of how you built your links. SEO is risk management plain & simple.
So as with any form of SEO & link building it is important that we approach the planning & execution of our private blog networks in the right way.

It is very easy to leave a footprint behind if you are not careful, so it is critical that you pay attention to every piece of advice and follow every step in this course.
But here are the two worst case scenarios-

#1 - Google Detects The Network 

If Google detects your network a few different things can happen. There is no doubt that you will receive a link penalty, either through failing a manual review (I have a great tip to survive manual reviews later) or an algorithm update.

If this happens your site will lose rankings & traffic and it is possible your private blog network will be partially or fully deindexed depending on what they detect.
Now that is an absolutely worst case scenario, but it is important that you know what that scenario is.
But remember the hidden benefit of private blog networks is control and we can exercise the control in a couple of different ways.

First of all if we build the network correctly and take care not to leave any kind of footprint, we mitigate the risk of detection.
Secondly if all hell breaks lose and we do get penalised, we are still in full control. It is just a case of removing the links from our network and submitting a reconsideration request.

#2 - Competitor Reports You 

The most common way people get penalised when using a private blog network is after going through a manual review that was triggered by a competitor submitting a spam complaint.
This is very common and after dealing with SEO clients for a number of years I can tell you that when people see competitors whizzing past them in the SERPS they have 2 responses-

1. How can we do the same?
2. How can we stop them?

Trust me, if you are in the top 10 for a low-medium competition keyword - your competitors are watching closely. What you do with your site and what you do with your backlinks.
So if you start getting an edge on them and they notice that, then they can put a stop to that in a few clicks by filing a spam report and triggering the manual review.
I always advise my clients against reporting networks because what could happen, is the person that you report figures out it was you that reported them.

They now have a penalised network of sites in their control which might just end up pointing at your site, a power you granted them by submitting a spam request. I believe in karma with things like that, so never snitch on your competitors.

However what you will have that your competitors won't have is my tip to hide your private blog networks from your competitors completely, along with the 1 thing your sites need to survive a manual review.

This protects against both your competitors finding the network in the first place and the manual review as well.

The Hidden Private Blog Network Advantage

SEO is nothing more than risk management and one of the most overlooked benefits of private blog networks is the control of that risk that it gives us.

In fact there is no other type of backlink that can be built that offers the same level of control that a private blog network does. What other type of link gives you full control over everything? And when I say everything I mean-

1. Design/layout
 2. Content topic
 3. Internal links
4. Outbound links
5. Anchor text

Having that level of control allows you to mitigate any risks.
Don't get me wrong, if you get caught you will be penalised and I will teach you about those risks and how to stay undetected later on.
But unlike any other type of link, you have full control to login to your network and instantly clean up your link profile in a few clicks.
Everything you do in SEO is a calculated risk and when it comes to calculated risks, private blog networks make the maths pretty simple.

Revealing The True Power Of Private Blog Networks

Now you have a better understanding of private blog networks and how they work, I want to show you what they actually do.
A lot of people underestimate the true power of a private blog network, however they are the easiest and most cost efficient way to rank any site.
I have used them to rank sites across a number of my own sites and client sites in various niches, here are just a handful of the results.

Case Study #1 - T-Shirt Ecommerce Store 

This site sells T-Shirts online but organic traffic had been degrading for the past year steadily. A private blog network was deployed at the start of Februrary to drive authority back into the site.

Within 6 months of the campaign starting, organic traffic & business revenue levels grew to the best they have been in over 2 years. This was achieved by securing 92 keywords in the top 5 positions, 221 in positions 6-10 & 213 in positions 11-20. 

Case Study #2 - E-Commerce Pet Store 

Selling products online in the pet niche, this e-commerce store was struggling to gain any real traction in the search results. 

A niche relevant private blog network was deployed which had an immediate impact on rankings-

Not only did traffic double, but the site secured 155 keywords on the top 2 pages with 43 product line keywords that have high commercial intent placed in the top 5. 

Case Study #3 - Diet & Weight Loss 

This site sells digital products in the diet & weight loss niche & got hit with the Penguin 2.1 penalty at the end of 2013. We started to rebuild authority to the penalised site with private blog networks at the start of February 2014. 

Within 2 months organic traffic exploded and continued to grow. 

The site is currently ranking for 9,120 keywords within the top 20 positions. 4,051 of which are on the 1st page and 2,158 of those terms in the top 5. 

This previously Penguin penalised site now enjoys over 500,000 organic visitors per month which has seen other channels like social media explode at the same time. 

Wrapping It Up 

As you can see I have used private blog networks to great effect across a number of niches. Not only that but they have been a fundamental part in recovering from backlink penalties. 

So now I hope you are starting to understand the true power of private blog networks when they are done right. 

I've said it before and I will say it again, once built your private blog network is a true business asset that takes the control out of Google's hands and puts it in yours. 

What Is A Private Blog Network?

A private blog network is simply a collection of authoritative domains & websites that you own. You can then use them to rank whatever site(s) you want.

Basically you are buying a domain that has expired but still has authority, then building a site on it with a link back to your own website(s). It's a very simple approach, but it is a powerful one.
It takes a bit of time to set up but private blog networks should be considered serious long term business assets. Over the next few topics I'm going to show you how powerful they really are.
Building the first site in your network might seem daunting at first, but once you have done it a few times it becomes a very quick & efficient process.

It is also important that you do not get private blog network confused with public blog network. You can find many services offering to sell posts on their private blog networks, but the very nature of selling posts makes it a public blog network.
We are purely focused on building a private blog network that is exclusive to us & under our full control.

A Closer Look At The Private Blog Network Process 
To make things easier to understand, I'm going to briefly break down each step of building a single site in your private blog network.
Don't worry if you get lost at this point, the following lessons & topics will teach you everything you need to know!

1. Buy An Expired Domain With Authority 

The very start of the process is finding an expired domain that still has authority. Ideally we want this domain to be relevant to our niche or at least of general relevancy.
For example www.datingsecrets.com would only be relevant to the dating niche, but we could get away with using www./ive/ove/augh.comfor niches like dating, travel, lifestyle, humour etc.
Prices for domains vary but I'm going to show you a ton of different methods to find the best domains at the best prices.

2. Setup Web Hosting 

Once you have the domain you need to set it up with some web hosting. I will cover the specifics of hosting in more detail later in the course.
For now just understand we have registered an expired domain (much like registering a new domain) and then set up hosting.

3. Build The Site 

The final step is to build out a site on our newly hosted highly authoritative domain.
This is as simple as installing WordPress, adding some content, adding some plugins and inserting links to the sites you are trying to rank of course.

Voila! 

That is really all there is to it, once you have done that you now have the first site in your private blog network.
Obviously there is a bit more to it than that along with some best practices & guidelines to follow, but in a nutshell it is as easy as 1,2,3!
I'm going to guide you through every single step over my shoulder so don't worry about that!

Defining The Perfect Backlink

Before we get into the meat of the course its important we cover some foundation knowledge first.
Regardless of whether you're an experienced or new SEO please pay attention to all of the topics in the introduction.
The first thing we need to understand before building our private blog network is what truly makes a perfect backlink?

The Perfect Backlink 

We can break down the perfect backlink into a number of elements-

1. Site Authority 
One of the strongest signals to look at is the authority of the site & page a link is coming from.
So for example a link from Wikipedia or a leading blog in your niche is far more powerful than a link from a newly registered domain.
The perfect backlink always comes from an an authoritative domain.

2. Relevance 
The second most important thing to consider when defining the perfect backlinks is relevance.
For example if your site is about dog training, you want links from sites & pages that talk about dogs, pets or animals in general. You certainly don't want a link from the make money online niche.
Relevancy is becoming more and more important and the perfect backlink comes from a relevant page and/or domain.

3. Placement 
The placement of the backlink also plays a critical role in obtaining the perfect backlink.
Google understands where links are placed and links that are placed inline of editorial context are far stronger than any other.
Sure you could get a link from a comment, in the sidebar or footer - but nothing will beat the power of a contextual link inline with relevant content.

4. Anchor Text 
Anchor text can be tricky as there is no one size fits all glove recommendation.
But as a general rule you want all of your exact match/phrase match anchor text backlinks to be coming from authoritative domains.
Then diversify your anchor text ratio with branded & generic anchors with lower authority link sources.
Basically, save the big guns for the big keywords.

5. Outbound Links 
Last but not least is the number of outbound links on a page. The more outbound links there are, the more 'link juice' you have to share.
There is a common myth that Google can only read the first 100 outbound links on a page, which used to be true but they have updated since.
However, the perfect backlink would not have more than 10 outbound links on the page. In general though, the less outbound links - the better.

In Summary 

So to summarise you can define the perfect backlink as-IAn in context link from an authoritative domain surrounded by relevant content That is the Perfect Backlink & private blog networks allow us to create as many of those as we want.

How to build a Private Blog Network

In this article, we will show you how to build a Private Blog Network or a PBN. First we will talk about the definition of a PBN and the reason why it is powerful. We will talk about some important things that you should be aware of. We will show you what you need to consider when planning to build a PBN. This article will give you great tips on how to source domains for your PBN and what type of hosing works better for your Private Blog Network . At the end of the article we will talk about what is left after building a PBN.

Introduction to PBN The definition of A Private Blog Network : A network of websites that typically made of expired domain names . we give these PBN those domain names to link build to our business website in fully control environment .

Why PBN is so powerful?

Usually , expired domain names has higher authority. Having a backlink from those websites, increases the chances of viewing your business website on the first page of Google search results. PBN is under your control, because you add those backlinks whenever you like.

By using a PBN, we can quickly adopt to the algorithm changes by Google at any time. Algorithm changes can have huge impact on your rankings for your business website. So, being able to control your backlinks give you a very good advantage.

There are some risks of using PBN that you should be aware of:

Google could detect your network. There is a chance when the domains in your network can be discovered, the ending result could be that your entire PBN would be de-indexed.

Google algorithm updates, devalues the expired domain names. Other important things you should be aware of: Building and maintaining a PBN takes a huge amount of time.

Costs — this is another thing to consider when looking at building a PBN. So there are many aspects to this. it could be purchasing domain names from a broker. Hosting of course. Each one of the domain will need to have a content. So , in most cases you are probably not going to write it by yourself.

Management — you need to keep records of each one of your domains, its hosting, IP addresses and the overall status. Proper management helps you to know how much each domain is costing you, when the hosting is up for renewal and when the domain name is about to expire. You need to plan these in a head of time.

To show you how to build a private blog network, it is important to talk first about planning. Planning What are your goals? Are you trying to improve the ranking for your website? Or are you providing PBN service? Answering the following questions will help you decide on some goals: How much are you willing to invest in your PBN? What is the size of your PBN? Will you outsource? Or do you have time to invest? Sourcing Domains

You need to build your PBN on strong foundation. Here are some tips on what to seek and avoid when searching for domain names:

The kind of domain names we need to seek out are those with: An existing backlink profile Have some age

With high authority . This high authority comes from the existing back link profile itself from the originating domain names.

There are some kinds of domains you need to avoid: Those with spammy backlinks Anything with a foreign language that is different from the original website. Anything that have evidence of spam like adult sites, pharmaceuticals , or gambling .

You need clean domains. We are looking for expired domains for your PBN that have a clean backlink profile. What we mean by that, is backlinks from reputable websites. These kind of domains are not easy to find. So we are going to need to use some tools.

To find expired domains, you have to select between: Trying to find the domain name manually . Or, to deal with a broker. Finding the domain manually is the most time consuming way to find domains. It is also the cheapest. You only pay for domain registration and there is no after market price added on. We suggest dealing with a broker. For high quality expired domains, you can visit: Expireddomains.net

OR

Get Cheap PBN Domains

Setting Up Your Pillar Keywords

Imagine two different people have identical niche sites. They both target the same keywords and they both decide to write an article optimized for it. They both build identical links.

But one of them ranks for more sets of keywords, pulls in more long-tad traffic, and gets 5x more traffic than the other.

How is this possible? In the next few units, I'm going to go over one of the most important strategies in this article. They're called pillar traffic and pillar posts

They're the essential components that form the difference between a site that gets thousands of visitors per month - and a site that gets hundreds of thousands or even millions of visitors per month

It’s  an SEO tactic that I use that allows my pages to generate tons more traffic than a competitors. The best part is: everything is strategically planned. Nothing happens by accident.

It doesn't mailer it you have a blog, business website, niche site, or e-commerce site. By incorporating Pillar Keywords and Pillar Posts into your content strategy, you can significantly magnify your traffic

What's the different between. Pillar Keywords Pillar Keywords happen during your keyword research phase. It’s  essentially a keyword research strategy Pillar Posts are the actual articles that you create using your Pillar Keywords. This might sound a little confusing now, but bear with me. It'll all make sense in a minute when I go through them both.

What is a Pillar Keyword?

Essentially, it’s the process of intentionally ranking for every variation of your keyword through proper planning.

This is one of the biggest areas where I do things differently with my niche site building and SEO

I remember when I first stayed my niche site, I learned from really well known bloggers in the space

One of the times I had my “aha”  moment was when even they were surprised by how they started ranking for things they never even targeted.

Their main keyword jumped to the first page, and they would say, What's interesting is that I'm also ranking for X, Y, and Z and wasn't even targeting them.

They ranked for these terms by accident

By targeting a major keyword, creating a high quality resource around 4, and building a bunch of good links, they got to #1 for their main keyword.

However, because it was a high quality resource with a lot of good links, they started ranking for other keywords. By having some of the words in their title, headings, or body of the post, they were targeting them without even knowing 4

And they probably could have done it for even more keywords had they done the appropriate research

That's what Mar Keyword setup is

Even today, people are taught to target a single keyword and build their page around it. They ignore the fact that if they build up enough authority to the page to rank for their keyword, they probably could have ranked for a handful of others in the process it they just targeted them in some way

A powerful strategy

After seeing that, I started experimenting with it. And now… it’s a MAJOR part of my niche site and SEO strategy In fact, I would NEVER create a site where I don't use Pillar Keywords and Pillar Posts as my main content strategy

It literally multiplies your overall traffic potential with the same amount of work.

This is the mason my main niche site jumped up in traffic all of a sudden.

Gaining enough authority that your site jumps to Ti for the biggest keyword is a big boost in traffic. If you're targeting pretty much every keyword with that post, they'll all rise to the first page and the traffic boost is ENORMOUS.

Your page will get so much more traffic without having had to do any extra work for it. It’s all just a result of smart planning. And I'm going to show you exactly how it’s done.

Here's how to create your pillar keywords

I'm going to use Petty Training for this example again because there are a lot of keywords I can work with to illustrate the steps.

I'll go step-by-step through this because this process is very important for you to learn

 If you master this strategy, your niche sites will grow to a whole different level than it used to.

Traffic is multiple times greater in the long run than if you did the same amount of work without utilizing this strategy, so make sure you read through it and understand it entirely It all starts during your keyword research phase.

If you remember just a minute ago, we inputted some seed keywords into the Keyword Planner.

 First, let’s take a look at the keywords brought back from Google's Keyword Planner. So here's the first page of results. Below are the seed keywords than we searched for

And here are some of the suggestions that Google Keyword Planner brought back.

There are 800 results in total, and I can't post them all hem so I'll do my best to forge an example with whets on the first page.

It should be more than enough. I'll usually only go through 3-5 pages.

So let’s go ahead and start forming our first Pillar Keyword.

Organize the list

First, I'll take the biggest keyword I want to target and list out all the relevant keywords that am DIRECTLY related to it.

What do I mean by this

I'll list all the keywords that are related to each other where ranking for one of them will pretty much mean I can rank for the others.

They're just warded slightly differently

For example, tips for potty training, potty training, and how to start potty training all fall under the same topic.

They ALL mean the same thing. Remember when we learned about search intent?

They all have the same search intent. Anyone who searches for any of those keywords are ALL looking for the same information.

The only difference is the wording. Each individual keyword gets a good amount of searches per month. Th., from the fist that aren't related are potty training pants and potty training toilet seat They fall under the same topic of potty training, but they don't have the some meaning. Someone who types in potty training pants isn't looking for a tutorial on how to potty train their child.

So here's the organized list of all keywords directly related to "potty training".

potty training -74,000

 potty training tips - 14,800

how to potty train- 8,100

 tips for potty training - 880

tips on potty training – 720

 how to start potty training -2,400

when to start potty training -8,100

when to potty train- 3,600

potty training boys - 18,100

potty training tips for boys - 2,900

potty training girls - 9,900

 potty training tips for girls 1,600

potty training for boys - 1,600

 tips for potty training girls -720

tips for potty training boys - 390

how to potty tram a boy - 9,900

how to potty tram a girl - 6,600

toddler potty training - 720

potty training toddlers - 480

baby potty training - 1,000

TOTAL SEARCH VOLUME PBR MONTH = 166,510

All of these keywords are related searches that have the same MEANING tips about potty training Everything else from the list that means something else, I didn't add it in. We can target all of these through a SINGLE PAGE, and Chats 166,510 searches per month.

That is just calculating using the keywords presented on the first page.

If we were to add up every hole keyword, it would get doser to 200,000 searches per month. REMEMBER: This is only counting the keywords listed in Google's Keyword Planner. It's not considering ANY long tail traffic, so the actual traffic numbers will be MUCH higher.

Results of using this strategy

 People today are trained to look at that list and choose one keyword. Maybe they'll choose a keyword based around potty training girls. Its a good keyword that gets around 20,000 searches per month if you add up all the variables. But look at what we did here By taking the biggest keywords and combining them together, we put our page in position to rank for ALL OF THEM instead of just one of them.

This magnifies the results of your link building efforts.

 Instead of… “Hey I'm finally ranking #1 for my keyword. That's a pleasant bump in traffic”

It’s more like “OMG I'm ranking for EVERYIHING I've become the authority for this topic no matter how you input your search query, and my traffic Just exploded to a whole new level”

And that's not an exaggeration. That's literally the difference I've experienced between sites where I've used Pillar Keywords and sites where I didn't.

In addition, our page is going to so much more jam-packed with information and provide value to our readers.  It’s a monster and we'll team how to create content for these types of post in the next unit in what I like to call Pillar Posts.

Pillar Keywords are the pillars of my authority site strategy - hence the name

This is what I mean when I say authority sites don't rely on single keywords to determine their success. I say that a lot, and people always look at me with confused looks

Even if it takes a long time to rank #1 for a competitive keyword like "potty training° this article wilt bring in a TON of long-tail traffic long before you even reach the first page.

Remember, we're creating a valuable long-tear authority site. It may not rank for all of these right away, but as we continue to build out our sites and do proper link building, 4 will.

And when it does, it will be more traffic than you've ever seen from any of your older niche sites.

Formatting the meta around our Pillar Keywords

You're probably wondering How do we even target all of them? Are we mentioning them in our content? Are we creating a massive 100 word title?,

It sorts wattle title and descirption elements

Title tags and descriptions are often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page, and are important both for SEO and social sharing

Title tags are one of the most crucial components of SET and is given a lot of weight by Google in terms of how you rank, and for which keywords you rank for

Now let’s learn how to create one with the Pillar Keyword strategy.

Writing Our Title and Description for this Monster Post

So now comes the part of smartly targeting all of these keywords so that ranking for one of them = ranking for all of them.

What we're trying to do is make sure that we targeting every single one of those keywords in the list we made within our site's Title and Description.

Here's what I came up with

Again, here is the list of keywords we had selected earlier.

Try and find one keyword from our list where that title isn't relevant. They're all targeted in one way or another. This as easier than it might look.  All it takes is some creativity and a bit of practice. You'll have to play around with the title and descriptions a bit to get it just right I'm pretty happy with this one.

Let's move onto Pillar Posts

So now you saw how I do keyword research for my biggest keywords.

They're the only ones I pay this much attention to because they're the ones that have the ability to drive substantial amounts of traffic to our site I normally try to create at least 2-3 of these Pillar Posts at the start of a site

Meaning … when I start a new site, I'll always start things off by crafting 2 or 3 Pillar Keywords, and then creating the Pillar Posts for them

Only 2 or 3

Yes. As you can see, we're targeting a large number of keywords here. And the MINIMUM total search volume I'm looking for out of these Pillar Keywords is 50,000

2 or 3 pieces of content might seem like a really small number, but in reality, they're targeting hundreds of thousands in search volume.

The content for these types of posts also take a long time to put together (which we'll get into next)

2 to 3 is enough for the beginning. You can do more if you prefer, but I like to add in smaller posts (what I like to call inner pages and will be discussed later) targeting long-tail keywords after I get just 2 to 3 of these published.

Follow along

Dunne your keyword research stage, put together 2 of these posts first. We're not going to write the content just yet. Just do what I did above. List out the related keywords and try to target all of them within your site's tide and description.