SEO Blueprint

(4) High Quality Domains

The Domain Expiration Process

On the surface you might think that when a domain name reaches it’s expiration date, if it’s not renewed anyone can snap it up.

Although it does work like that in some manner, it is actually a bit more complicated than that. In general owners have around 1-75 days to renew a domain once it expires but mostly towards the higher end of that range.

Interestingly around 120,000 domains expire every single day with around 50,000 of those eventually coming up for anyone to register.

The Life Cycle Of A Domain

There are five stages to a domain’s life cycle-

http://prntscr.com/ocyi5d

Stage 1- Active

This means the domain is currently registered and active. You cannot register a domain that is active.

It possible to register domains from 1-10 years and then many domain owners have them set to auto renew at the end of their expiration period.

Stage 2 – Expired Holding Period

Once a domain reaches it’s expiration date it is held by the registrar for anywhere between 1-45 days.

At this point any associated website stops working, but the domain is still available to renew to the original owner.

Stage 3 – Expired Redemption Grace Period

The next stage of the expiration process is the renewal grace period which typically lasts for around 30 days. At this point any Whois data is deleted.

This gives the original owner a last chance to register the domain before it gets moved into the pending deletion queue.

Stage 4 – Pending Delete

Once a domain reaches the pending delete phase it can no longer be renewed by the original owner or anyone else.

During this period the domain is erased entirely from the ICANN database.

Stage 5 – Available To Buy

After the pending delete phase the domain drops entirely and is released back into the general pool.

At this point anyone can register the domain through any registrar.

Types Of Expired Domains

Now you understand the life cycle of a domain when it is expiring, the same life cycle is often used if you are bidding on a domain that hasn’t yet reached stage 5.

http://prntscr.com/od6iqm

Typically this only happens in an auction environment and I will show you the ropes of how to buy expired domains at auction later in this lesson, but for now just understand the lingo.

PreRelease Domain Names

Once a domain reaches it’s expiration date and has not been renewed by the owner it moves into Stage 2 – Expired Holding Period above.

This is what is known as a pre-release auction, where auction market places are trying to find a buyer as soon as possible.

Be careful with pre-release auctions, even if you are the highest bidder the original owner can still renew it at that time.

Closeout Domain Names

A close out domain is a domain that didn’t sell during the prerelease auction. Typically domains are at Stage 2 or stage 3 of the expiration process.

You can typically find these domains for sale at a fixed buy it now price across a range of market places.

http://prntscr.com/od6ju7

However you still have the same potential problem that the original owner can re-register it at the drop of a hat.

Pending Delete Domain Names

Once domains have passed the Stage 3 – Expired Redemption Grace Period and entered the Stage 4 – Pending Delete period they show up as pending delete domain names.

You can either take advantage of a domain back ordering service or be patient as you know it will be available to freely register in the next few days.

Deleted Domain Names

When a domain finally drops into Stage 5 – Available To Buy it can be freely registered at any domain registrar.

This means they are very cheap, for example it costs less than $10 a year to register a .com at most domain registrars.

Understanding Key Domain Metrics

When you are looking to buy a new domain for your private network, there are a few metrics that you need to check to ensure you are going to get as much bang for buck as possible.

You don’t want to splash money on a domain only later to realise that it’s not as powerful as you thought.

Domain Authority (DA)

This is a metric that was developed by Moz as part of their OpenSiteExplorer tool.

It takes a range of metrics into account to give an authority score measuring between 0 and 100.

https://moz.com/link-explorer

Generally look for domains that have a DA of 30 or above.

Page Authority (PA)

This is another Moz metric that comes straight out of OpenSiteExplorer.

It also works on a 0-100 point scale

https://moz.com/link-explorer

Like with DA, Always look for domains with a PA of 30 or above.

Majestic Trust Flow (TF)

Majestic launched the Trust Flow metric to great fanfare and it is a solid indication of how trustworthy the websites that link to you are.

Again this works on a 0-100 scale, the higher the number – the better the Trust Flow.

https://majestic.com/

Always seek out domains with 20 or above. However there is another metric to consider along side TF…

Majestic Citation Flow (CF)

Another metric that was launched at the same time as Majestic Trust Flow was Majestic Citation Flow.

This is based on the strength of the links pointing to your website rather than their trust worthiness.

https://majestic.com/

Always seek out domains that have a CF of 20 or more. But it is critical that you combine TF with CF to come up with…

Majestic Trust Ratio (TR)

This is the ratio between Majestic’s Trust Flow & Citation Flow figures. Majestic analysed the top 1 million domains on the internet and found the top 25% domains had an average CF/TF ratio of 1.09

They found that the median average site had a ratio of 1.81 and spammy domains had ratios upto 9.87

So with that said, you want to make sure that the domains you buy for your network have a Trust Ratio between 0 and 1.81.

To calculate this just follow this simple formula-

Citation Flow/Trust Flow = Trust Ratio

Essentially the closer to zero it is, the less spammed it is.

Any domain that is within the 0-1.81 Trust Ratio range is good to go. Any domain that falls outside of that range should be avoided.

Spammed Domain Examples

Take a look at these two domains via Majestic-

http://prntscr.com/od6qqk

These domains are heavily skewed towards Citation Flow and have a Trust Ratio of 9 and 8.85 respectively.

You do not want to buy these domains as part of your private blog network.

Good Domain Examples

Let’s take a look at another 2 domains via Majestic-

http://prntscr.com/od6r6q

As you can see the graph is much more balanced and is not weighted to one side or the other like in the spammed domain examples.

These domains both have good Trust Ratio’s of 0.86 and 0.66 which would make them ideal to use as part of your network assuming the domains pass all other checks on this page.

Number Of Backlinks (BL)

Another handy metric to check is the number of backlinks a domain has. If a domain only has 4 links but is very authoritative, there is a high risk it could lose a link and in turn, it’s authority.

Although there is no right or wrong number here, you always want to make sure there are a minimum of 50 links pointing to any domain you purchase. However there could be exceptions to this rule if you found a gem of a domain with awesome DA, PA, TF, CF and TR.

https://ahrefs.com/

Number Of Referring Domains (RD)

The number of referring domains is another metric.

This is another good indicator of how stable the link profile is. For example if there are 5,000 BL’s but only 5 RD’s that means that those 5,000 backlinks are spread across just 5 referring domains.

Again there is no right or wrong number here because if you find that golden domain with awesome DA, PA, TF, CF and TR figures this becomes less important.

But when you are starting out try to aim for at least 30 referring domains to ensure the link profile is made up of a diverse range of sources.

Important Metrics

Domain Authority (DA): 30+

Page Authority (PA): 30+

Majestic Trust Flow (TF): 20+

Majestic Citation Flow (CF): 20+

Majestic Trust Ratio (TR): 0-1.81

Less Important Metrics

Ahrefs Number Of Backlinks (BL): 50+

Ahrefs Referring Domains (RD): 30+

Sample

soulyogapractice.com

herbsandyoga.com

tarayoga.net

integralyogalondon.org

Other Things You Need To Check

Once you have found a domain that meets the minimum metric requirements above there are a few final spot checks you need to make manually.

You can get away without taking these into account, but if you are going to invest time and money in building out a network – do it properly.

Domain Relevance

One of the biggest pain points is finding domains that are relevant to the niche you are trying to rank in.

Essentially all we need to do when trying to make a PBN domain relevant to our niche, is to find a way to bridge the topics with content.

Example #1 – Car Parts

Let’s say your money site is about car parts, that means you could find domains from any of these niches-

Example #2 – Raising Quail

If you didn’t know, Quail’s are tiny birds that can be eaten and produce eggs much like chickens.

So if your niche was about raising quails for food then you could find domains from any of these niches-

Animals

Vets

Farming

Food

Environment

Health

Technology

All you need to do is bridge those topic gaps with a piece of content and with the examples I gave you in the car industry above – you should be able to figure out content ideas for this example on your own.

If not – well for the technology you could create content about the technology used in creating quail eggs or in health you could talk about the health benefits of raising your own food.

Example #3 – Treadmills

Perhaps your money site is all about running treadmills which is very specific but also very easy to make relevant to a range of niches such as-

Exercise equipment

Health

Technology

Travel

Shopping

Again some of them are obvious but how could you link an expired travel domain to a website about running treadmills?

Well in this example you could create a piece of content that talks about how to maintain your fitness levels while travelling.

Spammy Link Profile

he most important thing to check manually is whether or not the domain has a spammy backlink profile.

This is the first thing I check manually because if it does have a spammy link profile, it doesn’t even get considered for purchase.

Method #1 – Ahrefs

First I check the domain out in Ahrefs and scroll down to the anchor phrases section.

Good - http://prntscr.com/odgqwb

In the example above you can see the domain has a diverse mix of brand, generic, keyword and URL based anchors.

This domain would pass as having a clean backlink profile.

Bad - http://prntscr.com/odgrf2

And it is packed with crude words, obscenity’s or weird Japanese anchor text – then avoid it.

This is a spammy link profile that you do not want as part of your private blog network.

Method #2 – Majestic

You can also use Majestic to check if a link profile is spammy or not and ideally you should cross check it with Ahrefs.

Good - http://prntscr.com/odgrsi

Just scroll down to the Anchor Text section and have a look at the top anchor texts. As you can see this also has the same diversity as it had in Ahrefs making it good to go from a spammy backlink perspective.

Bad - http://prntscr.com/odgsfc

This is why you need to pay close attention. Ahrefs showed some rather undesirable anchor text but Majestic tells a different story.

NOTE: If Ahrefs/Majestic 90% of the link profile is using spammy anchor text I would avoid it, but if its 10% or less – it’s good.

Direct Avoid

Chinese Language

Other Language

Domain History

If your domains pass the spammy link profile check, the next thing you want to check is the history of the domain.

We want to look back at the history of previous sites that were built on the domain and filter out the ones that are spammy or look like they were previously used in someone elses private blog network.

To do that just enter the domain into https://archive.org/web/

Essentially you can jump back in time and look at how sites used to look.

So all you need to do is randomly spot check a few of the snap shots.

Domain Age

Last but not least is to take a look at the domain age

You want to make sure your network is made up of a mix of metrics, everything from the number of backlinks to the Trust Ratio. This also includes the age of the domains in your network.

You want to keep things random, some domains that are only 1-2 years old and others that are older. It is important to note that there is no right or wrong age but it is important you have a mix of ages.

Domain Age - https://www.webconfs.com/web-tools/domain-age-tool/

Reducing Your Networks Domain Footprint

Just like your hosting setup can leave a detectable footprint, so can your domains.

I have 3 tips that will remove any kind of traceable footprint from your domains.

Method #1 – Use Different Registrars

Never have all of the domains in your private network hosted with same registrar. For example if you have 10 domains in your network that are all registered at GoDaddy – that is a footprint.

Instead make sure your network is spread across as many different domain registrars as possible to fly under the radar.

Here are some registrars you can use safely-

JustHost

HostGator

NameCheap

123-Reg

GoDaddy

If you need to find more just do a Google search for domain registrars that allow you to move your domain to them.

Method #2 – Mixup Your Whois Data

When it comes to setting up the Whois data on each of your domains, you have 2 options. Either public whois data or private whois data.

Again you need to have a random mix between private and public whois data – but what is critical is all of the public whois data is 100% unique across your entire network.

You cannot under any circumstances have 2 domains that share even 1 piece of data in the whois record.

https://names.igopaygo.com/people/full_contact

https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

Method #3 – Use Different Email Addresses

You should also make sure every domain uses a different email address that actually works and doesn’t just bounce the mail back.

Outlook.com

Gmail.com (No Need)

Yahoo.com

Inbox.com

iCloud

Mail.com

AOL Mail

Zoho Mail

Yandex Mail

ProtonMail

The Most Important Thing To Remember

Above anything else, the most important thing to remember when building your network is to be completely random. Not just in the hosting you use, but the domains you buy and the sites you build on them.

You always want to be completely random. As long as the domain meets the minimum metrics I have laid out and passes the quality checks – it is good to go.

But you don’t want to have a 10 site network where they all have exactly the same metrics, mix it up as much as possible!

Final Domain Buying Checking List

So to wrap it up, here are the things you need to look out for when buying domains for your network-

Important Metrics

Domain Authority (DA): 30+

Page Authority (PA): 30+

Majestic Trust Flow (TF): 20+

Majestic Citation Flow (CF): 20+

Majestic Trust Ratio (TR): 0-1.81

Less Important Metrics

Ahrefs Number Of Backlinks (BL): 50+

Ahrefs Referring Domains (RD): 30+

Manually Check

Domain relevance

Spammy link profile

History of the site

Age of the domain

Avoid Footprints By

Using a mix of domain registrars

Using a mix of fake public whois data and private whois data

Using a different email address for every domain across a range of hosts

Being completely random with everything

Expired Domain Source

Expired Domain Source #1 (Free Method)

Authority sites like Forbes, NYTimes, CNN, Lifehack, etc. there’s always a chance to make good money from them.

There are some tools you need, Namely

AHREFS

https://urltodomain.com/

https://www.godaddy.com/domains/bulk-domain-search.aspx

http://www.mozcheck.com

http://www.trustflowchecker.com

Step By Step Instructions to scrape golden Domains

Step 1: Login to AHREFS and select Site Explorer

Go to Ahrefs Rank

Choose your required domain & search

http://prntscr.com/odha6v

Step 2: Enter a website from which you need your backlink: nytimes.com/forbes.com/huffingtonpost.com etc.

You just have to put in the website, You will see the stats and various options on the left.

http://prntscr.com/odhaim

Step 3: Find outgoing links section and select broken links:

On the left section, you will find Outgoing Links, just select the broken links. That’s it.

http://prntscr.com/odhazr

Step 4: Export the **** broken links to CSV.

You have to scrape only the links for maximum link juice from Huffington and you have to export only the links. You will find an export button on top right. Use that.

http://prntscr.com/odhbnz

Step 5: Open the above file in excel and copy the URLs of the broken links (Column G)

We will simply open the excel file and copy all the broken links.

Step 6: Go to https://urltodomain.com/ to convert the URLs into root domains. OR https://websiteseochecker.com/extract-url-to-domain/

Paste the URLs from excel into the input box, deselect the “Include Subdomains” option and make sure remove duplicates is selected. You should use the below setting and get the domains.

Now you will get a list of Domain names, Now you have to check the availability of these domain names.

http://prntscr.com/odhdct

Step 7: Go to the Godaddy bulk domain checker and paste the URLs (500 at a time).

Alternatively, https://www.namebright.com/BulkSearch (5000 domains per search) does the job but does not support as many TLDs.

http://prntscr.com/odhdmb

http://prntscr.com/odhe57

Expired Domain Source #2 (Free Method)

https://www.expireddomains.net/

Expired Domain Source #3 (Recommended)

https://domainhuntergatherer.com/

It is one of my favourite tools for finding expired domains because of it’s huge range of features and search methods.

5 Ways To Find Expired Domains:

Hunt From Keywords: Enter some keywords from your niche and the software will find expired domains with links from webpages that are currently ranking for those keywords.

Hunt From Websites: Crawl specific website(s) to find expired domains that they link to. Eg you could find expired domains with links from Wikipedia/The New York Times etc.

Reverse Hunt Domains: Enter a domain and the software will find all of the backlinks to that domain and then scan them to find expired domains. Great for snapping up domains that also link to your competitors.

Auction Hunter: Enter your keywords to search 8 expired domain marketplaces & look up important metrics.

Web 2.0 Hunter: Find relevant expired web 2.0 domains from 20 different web 2.0 platforms.

No 3rd Party Services Required: The software also fetches metrics from Majestic & Moz at no additional cost which saves 100’s of dollars per month. It is an all in one solution.

Filtering/Sorting: You can easily sort and filter by any metric you can imagine including countries and languages. You can even filter to buy expired domains with traffic!

Bonus Feature: You can rebuild entire websites in just 1 click, watch the video below to learn more.

Expired Domain Source #4

https://www.freshdrop.com/

Expired Domain Source #5

https://www.spamzilla.io/

Expired Domain Source #6

https://www.registercompass.com/

Expired Domain Source #7 (Free Method)

https://moonsy.com/expired_domains/

Expired Domain Source #8

https://www.domcop.com/

Expired Domain Source #9

https://clickmojo.com/

Expired Domain Source #10

https://serped.net/

Expired Domain Source #11 (Domain Broker)

https://www.tbsolutions.info/

Expired Domain Source #12 (Domain Broker)

http://domains.prnator.com/

Expired Domain Source #13

http://www.scrapebox.com/

Expired Domain Source #14 (Get Authority Backlinks)

https://bluechipbacklinks.com/

Expired Domain Source #15

https://www.pbnpremium.com/

(5) Building Sites

WordPress PBN - The Basics

We are going to use WordPress to build out our network. This makes it easy to manage, update and maintain.

Now if you just thought ‘well if all our sites are built on WordPress that is a footprint in itself’ – then yes you are right.

When it comes to building your websites for your blog network, you have to make sure that every single one is random and different than the other ones so you don’t leave any footprints.

Even try to change platfroms in some cases (Optional)

WordPress

Joomla

HTML

Don’t use the same username and email twice

Wordpress PBN - Hiding Your Network From Competitors

One of the risks of having a private blog network is being found out by your competitors and reported to Google, but there are a couple of steps you can take to prevent that from happening.

If your competitor sees a link that doesn’t look quite right and finds out it’s a blog network link, they can report that to Google and you’ll get penalized.

To keep that from happening, you have to block the bots from checking your blog network sites so they won’t show up when our site goes through a check like this.

Protection Method #1 – Robots.txt

One way to block the bots from coming into our websites is using a file called Robots.txt which sits at the root of our site and gives the robots instructions.

Never use this as your sole layer of protection as it is not a guarantee.

To add our robots.txt file, we need to install a plugin called WP Robots txt. Search for it, install and go into its settings.

Though make it random. Sometimes, you should add Robots txt manually, other time you can use various plugins

Try to block as many tools blocks as possible

Ahrefs

SEMRush

More..

Plugin

https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-robots-txt/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/pc-robotstxt/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-robots-txt/

Sample Robots.txt Code

User-agent: *

Disallow:

User-agent: rogerbot

Disallow: /

User-agent: exabot

Disallow: /

User-agent: MJ12bot

Disallow: /

User-agent: dotbot

Disallow: /

User-agent: gigabot

Disallow: /

User-agent: AhrefsBot

Disallow: /

User-agent: SemrushBot

Disallow: /

User-agent: BLEXBot

Disallow: /

User-agent: xenu

Disallow: /

Protection Method #2 – Htaccess

Only Developer (Don't try yourself if you are not techie)

One other way we can protect our websites against bots is with HTaccess which is a file on the server that is not publicly accessible.

Plugin

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-htaccess-editor/

Protection Method #3 – Spyder Spanker

One more way to protect your blog network is using a premium WordPress plugin SpyderSpanker.

It’s not free but it’s a great investment dedicated to stopping spyders and bots. You can use it in addition to the robots.txt and htaccess protection as well.

http://spyderspanker.com/

Bot Reports

http://www.botreports.com/

WordPress PBN - Essential Settings

Now that we’re done protecting our sites against bots, we can look around our website’s settings to make sure everything is random.

Writing

You can tick or untick the formatting and other settings.

Reading

Change the default settings so you can change it to 5 blog posts shown or however many you want.

Search engine visibility checked = OFF

Discussion

Disable pingbacks and trackbacks and Disable the top two boxes in the default settings and the boxes for getting emailed for every comment.

Manually approve comments and make the avatar settings random.

Permalinks

Change the permalink structure or create your own

Wordpress PBN - Design & Layout

Now we have taken care of the basics we can move onto actually styling our private blog network site.

Your site’s design, look and feel should be 100% unique. Pick a different theme, create a completely different logo, make your homepage random with maybe a right hand side bar, different widgets and things like that.

A lot of people take shortcuts when it comes to this. I always make sure each site has it’s own ‘branding’ and custom logo.

Logo

https://www.onlinelogomaker.com/

http://www.jeta.com/logos/free.php

Wordpress PBN - Plugins

Now we can start to add some plugins to our site. Never use the same set of plugins on more than 1 site – you always want to use a random mix of plugins.

This helps reduce any footprint while maintaining the overall site quality and adding features you would expect to find on genuine sites.

Required Plugins

There are 3 types of plugins each and every single site in your blog network must have.

SEO plugin

Yoast SEO

All in one SEO

Rank Math

SEO Ultimate

Sitemap plugin

Social sharing plugin

Optional Plugins

After you have taken care of the 3 types of required plugins you need to install, you can then mix things up even further with some optional plugins.

Terms of service page Plugin

Contact page Plugin

Privacy page Plugin

Link Juice Keeper (404 redirect) Plugin

More ...

WordPress PBN - Content, Comments & Pages

Now let’s move onto actual content which I break down into 4 categories-

Actual content like blog posts

Most of your content will come in the form of blogs. Remember you will need 4-8 pages of content that are around 400-800 words at random.

There are a couple of things you should note about adding articles as a general rule of thumb.

Add 0-2 images at random

Add 0-2 contextual relevant links

Add 0-1 random internal links

Embed a video randomly

Remember to also categorize it and enter the SEO information for your plugin.

Static content on pages

To help make the site look even more genuine we will also add a range of static pages like contact, privacy, terms and an about me page at random.

When it comes to pages, you should have at least a couple such as a contact or privacy page.

There are plugins that can do it for you or if you don’t want to use a plugin, you can easily make your own.

The one page I suggest to have for each site is an about page around 200-300 words so it looks more authentic and is more like a real blog.

Content displayed in widgets & menus

It is important that you change the default options of the sidebar, widgets and any menus that are included in your theme.

Blog comments

Having a comment section allows for more randomness, less of a footprint and gives the website a more authentic feel.

Let’s add a couple of comments to a post on our website, so open your blog on a private window, go into a post and leave some comments.

You can put in a name, a fake email which won’t show anyway and leave the website blank. The comment can be something pretty general and always random.

Add 0-3 comments for every article and when that’s done, head into the Comments section of your WordPress dashboard to see all the comments we left that need to be approved.

Wordpress PBN - Sprinkling The Magic Fairy Dust

At this point many people would consider the sites in their private blog network complete.

But there is some additional fairy dust that we can sprinkle on our efforts to add even more authenticity to our sites.

Not many people bother to take these extra steps but this is where the magic really happens and allows you to fly under the radar.

MORE TO ADD

It gives each site in our network that little bit more authenticity. Apply these tips at random!

Social Media

You need to set up social profiles like Facebook, Twitter and the sorts. After you set those up, you need to get active and then get some new followers.

Post on regular basis and collect engagement

Banner Adverts

Next thing I like to do is to include banners on the blog so we can go to Google Images and find a banner to upload.

Add custom banner in sidebar, inline content, or header of website.

The banner makes the website look more real so these are a couple of the basic things you can do for the websites in your blog network to give it more authenticity.

Also remember, if you do put ads, don’t put your own affiliate link since it does leave a footprint and that can trace back to you. Just put a direct link.

Hide My WP

https://codecanyon.net/item/hide-my-wp-amazing-security-plugin-for-wordpress/4177158

About Me

Make our websites in blog network more authentic and escape the scrutiny of Google, let’s add an image in about me section on the sidebar.

Personal Profile (Fake)

Wordpress PBN - Congratulations

You’ve set up your posts, pages, comments and all the backend stuff so there’s just a couple of things left to do.

The first thing is to make sure your site is indexable by search index spiders.

Click on Settings and Reading and untick the box that says “discourage search engines from indexing this site.”

Wordpress PBN Site Building Hack (SMILE PLEASE)

Expired Domain Content

For PBN

For Event Blogging

For Web 2.0

For Client

Unique Content for Free

This is a nice way to get content for your private blog network.

This is a nice shortcut and I know people that do this that have experienced and don’t have any problems.

Steps To Follow

1) You need to find a website that lists Expired domains or domains that are for sale and are going to be expired soon.

2) Now open https://web.archive.org/

3) Go & search for all the websites on https://web.archive.org/ to get contents.

4) Now when you've found a website with articles that are worth saving, you need to check if the articles are unique and not have duplicate content. I use https://www.copyscape.com/

BOOM! Move on!!!

Tool

http://expiredarticlehunter.com/

(6) PBN Linking Strategies

Timing Is Everything

What everyone does-

Build out the PBN site with new content

Wait for Google to reindex the new site and new content

Check that Google cache has updated with the new site and content

Then add links to money site

After a while Google will naturally come back to the site, pick up new links and pass link juice accordingly.

DON'T DO THIS

What you must not do is build the PBN site with links to your money site from day 1!

I know it can be tempting to start filtering off that link juice as soon as possible but do not do it!

NOTE: Please add links to your money site 40-45 days after Google has indexed your new expired domain.

Check If Google Has Re-Indexed?

site:example.com

Check If Google Has Updated The Cache?

cache:example.com

Place Your Links Carefully

Make sure everything is completely random

Common Mistakes

Before we look at link placement though, I want to cover some of the most common mistakes people make when deploying links to their niche sites.

Linking More Than Once

The most common mistake I see people make is to build a PBN site and then link to their niche site multiple times from that same PBN site.

For example they will have a link from the homepage and an internal page to their niche site.

There is no practical benefit to linking your niche site more than once from each site in your network.

Stay Under Cover

Quite often I see that people have placed links that are quite clearly ‘forced’ and don’t really fit with the surrounding content nor provide any contextual relevance.

When you place your links don’t force it

Just remember that the link to your niche site should appear as natural as possible and be relevant to the surrounding content.

Link Placement Opportunities

When it comes to where you actually place your link you have quite a few different choices.

Just like with everything else you should always mix up where you place your link – you don’t want 100% of your private blog network to use the same link placement.

Homepage

Placing your link on the home page itself will pass the most authority over to your niche site, but it’s easy to get trigger happy with this.

If you choose to place your link on the homepage, make sure you have setup your site to show a page as the homepage

http://prntscr.com/odlxhu

Then just build a natural looking homepage with relevant content with internal links to the other areas of your site.

Inner Blog Post

You can also add a link to a new post on the blog.

You should do this

Add 0-2 images at random

Add 0-2 contextual relevant links

Add 0-1 random internal links

Embed a video randomly

Add 1 link to your niche site

Text Link

The most obvious choice is to deploy a text link with your desired anchor text within the content of the post.

You can do it at the start of a post, half way through a post, at the end of a post in context with the content.

Add 0-1 random internal links

Embed a video randomly

Add 1 link to your niche site

Image Link

You can also choose to use an image link to your niche site. This is a great way to stay undercover but also provides a few different options.

For example as the genuine site owner of a domain in your PBN, you might source an image from your niche site and then link that image to the niche site.

It is perfectly natural for webmasters to link images to their source, so take advantage of that to blend in.

Equally, your PBN site might source your niche site for an expert quote and you could add an image link to a logo or something similar.

Resource

You might add a ‘more resources’ section which links to your niche sites along with 1 or 2 other relevant sites in your niche.

http://prntscr.com/odm1tr

Never Take Links

Footer

Sidebar

Control Your Anchors To Avoid Detection

The power of private blog networks and the effectiveness of exact match anchor text often leads people straight into the Penguin trap.

Types Of Anchor Text

First of all let’s go over the different types of anchor text and then how you should go about distributing those types across your network.

Exact Match Anchors

An exact match anchor is as it says on the tin. It is the exact search term you want to rank for.

If you want to rank your site http://www.leatherphonecases.com for “leather phone cases” you would use that exact anchor text in your links

While this is highly effective it also carries the highest risk and if you want to play it safe, you should never use an exact match anchor in your network.

However it is also the most powerful anchor type so if you had a network of 20 sites you could deploy 1 exact match to measure what happens.

Phrase Match Anchors

Phrase match anchors are much longer but incorporate your exact match keyword in one way or another.

Here are some examples building on the above-

the best leather phone cases

you can buy cheap leather phone cases

leather phone cases offer the best protection

Using much longer anchor texts like this that incorporate your exact match term allows you to harness the power of exact match while reducing risk significantly.

If you look at the bold words in the examples above you can see that you can get creative by incorporating other relevant keywords you could also rank for-

best leather phone cases

cheap leather phone cases

buy leather phone cases

buy cheap leather phone cases

best cheap leather phone cases

As you increase your rankings across those longer tail keywords by mixing up your anchor texts, that will in inherently raise the rank of your main target term.

Brand Match Anchors

A brand match anchor incorporates either an exact match or phrase match anchor along with your brand.

Following on from our examples above this could be things like-

leatherphonecases.com have a range of phone cases

I bought my case from leatherphonecases.com

the leather phone cases team

Happyskin.com / Happy Skin

BestSkinProducts.com / Best Skin Products

All of those anchors incorporate the brand in one way or another but still allow us to fly under the radar incorporating a combination of brand, exact and phrase match anchors.

Generic Anchor Texts

Last but not least we have generic anchor text.

These are anchor texts like-

check it out

find out here

his site

pop over here

see this pageAs you can see they never contain an exact, phrase or brand related keyword.

They are 100% generic and natural in appearance which really lets us mix things up and fly under cover while still passing relevant authority from the surrounding content in which we place the link.

URL Match Anchors

A URL match anchor is as simple as using the URL you are linking to as the anchor text.

If the URL of your niche site is http://www.leatherphonecases.com you would create a link like this-

http://www.leatherphonecases.com/inner-page-1

URL match links are very natural and while they don’t target a specific keyword in the anchor text, they do pass authority that lifts everything else.

Anchor Text Distribution

So now you are aware of the different types of anchor text, we can take a look at how this should be distributed across your site.

Which anchor text type you use will depend on the existing backlink profile of your niche site.

For example your niche site might have a high percentage of exact match anchor text that you need to reduce – that would mean you would focus on building more generic anchors from your network.

I use the following anchor text distribution to my site as a guideline-

Exact – 10%

Phrase – 20%

Generic – 25%

Brand – 25%

URL – 20%

Again this isn’t an exact science – don’t worry about being 100% precise just use this as a guideline for what you should be aiming for and monitor your sites progress accordingly.

Check Your Competitors Anchor Text Distribution

It is also critical to note that not every niche is the same when it comes to ranking in Google.

So instead of taking the guidelines above as gospel which I do not recommend you do, you should look at your competitors anchor text distribution.

If you plug the top 3-5 sites of your target keyword into tools like Ahrefs & Majestic you can get a quick overview of their anchor text distribution-

Ahrefs

http://prntscr.com/ohwinn

Majestic

http://prntscr.com/ohwir6

Create Your Own Anchor Text Guidelines

Based on what you have found by observing your competitors anchor text distribution, you can now compare that against your own.

This will allow you to build your own guidelines and workout which type of anchor text you need to deploy across your private blog network.

How To Avoid Leaving A Linking Footprint

We always need to be paying attention to footprints and linking is no different.

As long as you pay attention to the linking rules below you will not leave any kind of footprint that can be automatically detected by the big G.

Be sure to double check all of this, footprints kill blog networks!

Mix Link Placements

We took a close look at the different link placements you can take advantage of earlier.

When you start building a few sites out at a time it can be easy to get lazy and not mix up your link placements, but make sure you take that extra bit of time to do so!

Control Your Anchor Text

You need to control the anchor text across your network to make sure you don’t accidentally trip a Penguin penalty.

Equally you need to look at your competitors anchor text profiles to get a rough idea of what you need to aim for as a whole.

Never Use The Same Anchor Text Twice

When you add the link to your money site you want to be sure that you don’t use the same anchor text twice.

I am going to show you how to keep track of and manage your network in the next chapter.

Never Interlink

If you have built 2 or 3 PBN sites, it can be tempting to interlink them in order to stack their authority.

While this does work it does also introduce a huge footprint that isn’t worth the risk.

Never Link From The Sidebar

I explained why you never link to your niche site from the sidebar of any site in your private blog network.

This is a reminder never to do that – that is a one way street to trouble!

Don’t Link More Than Once

One of the reasons we don’t link from the sidebar is the huge amount of extra links it generates for no additional benefit.

The same applies no matter which link placement you choose.

Never link to your niche site more than once from any 1 PBN site.

Don’t Forget Internal & Authority Links

Adding internal links and authority links to your content as we covered earlier is absolutely essential.

These links help you to fly under Google’s radar and keep things undercover.

Don’t forget to add them across your private blog network sites where relevant – don’t always link to things on the front page of Google.

Linking Strategies Wrap Up

It might seem complicated but linking to your niche safely is pretty easy once you have done it a few times.

Be sure to go over the pr