The topic of PBNs or Private Blog Networks is quite a grey area in the domain of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO analysts and experts often find themselves in a dilemma when they are asked to place PBNs in any one watertight compartment of a Search Engine Optimization strategy. Is it a white hat technique, a black hat technique or something between the lines? These are some of the questions that plague the realm of SEO even to this day. Truth be told, PBNs Private Blog Networks are not white hat SEO techniques. But that does not, by default, place them within the brackets of a black hat technique. In all honesty, PBNs are essentially grey hat SEO strategies that come real handy in the ranking of your website, if you know how to use them appropriately.
By now, you might have already internalized that PBN stands for Private Blog Network and it is an SEO strategy that almost every Search Engine Optimization agency all over the work seeks refuge in. It is obviously not approved by Google or any other search engine for that matter. But, the point is that this technique is so smooth and subtle (if you know the right ways to go about it) that even Google does not understand the hack behind it.
To understand the logic behind how PBN helps in tweaking your rank on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), you need to understand that everything in SEO (or at least a major part of it) boils down to acquiring quality backlinks for your website. Acquiring backlinks from high authority websites in a short span of time is clearly no joke. This is where PBNs come to the rescue. It has a network of several websites that you can build from scratch, something akin to WordPress sites, and then use their links for your main website, or money website. The art of acquiring a good ranking from PBN is by keeping this network of sites in the PBN as real and credible as possible. A normal user would not even be able to tell a real website from a PBN site. That is how real you can make it look and feel like.
It works like magic if you know the art well. There is a reason why agencies all across the world take up the risk of going against the prescribed standards of Google in a bid to enhance their ranking. The risks associated with PBN might be quite a bit, but all of that is worth it, given the results it promises. Google is smart, and that is why there is no other search engine that has been able to best it. But, skilled SEO experts would always know the ways to master the technique and reap the best out of it.
Now, do not assume that you can fool Google all that easily. It always has a weather-eye on all your moves. Therefore, you need to tread carefully. In case Google finds out what you have been up to, your site can be penalized forever. You will lose your rankings not just for your money website, but all your websites; money websites and the ones you have linked to it. That is quite something to think about. Therefore, proceed with PBNs only when you have acquired all the knowledge that there is. When you are navigating through some of the grey hat SEO techniques, it is essential that you learn all you can about the risks associated with it. Only then can you play it safe with them.
You need to take some time and then build these PBN sites. Like we already know, Google is extremely smart. It will become extremely suspicious if your main website acquires all these brilliant backlinks overnight. It normally does not happen organically. Therefore, to avoid the ‘sandbox effect’ of Google, you need to take it one step at a time, and only then link your websites in the PBN to the main website.
Also, another safety tip to abide by when it comes to PBN is not to link all your PBN sites at once to the money website. In case Google gets wind of what you are trying to do, it will penalize not just your money website but also all the other sites, and probably forever.
You can be as apprehensive as you want about PBNs, but you cannot deny its role in improving the ranking of your website. Rather than removing PBN as an option from your SEO hack, try educating yourself on how you could use it to the best of your efforts. Once, you get the hang of how PBNs work and how you could build them, there is no other SEO technique as efficient as this one.
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