What Are PBNs and the Risks of Using Them?
Private Blog Networks (PBNs) are a bunch of websites created for manipulating the search engine rankings. These form a huge section of the SEO industry. Even though getting backlinks is still a significant determinant in the Google search algorithm, PBNs will always be a substantial cause of debate as well as interest among SEO professionals.
Improving your website ranking is not done in a day or a week or maybe even a month. More likely than not, SEO campaigns require a tremendous amount of hard work, patience, investment, and consistency. It is quite natural that, as humans, we always look out for shortcuts. Nobody would love hanging around for months to see the results of their SEO campaign. And in this case, PBNs seems to do this job perfectly. So far, it has been an effective method to rank your websites in a comparatively shorter time period.
If you happen to be an owner of a website that ranks on Google or purchased a domain, you are likely to receive emails from PBNs regularly. These emails will mostly offer you links that you can buy, but should you add these links to your website? Are you aware of the risks of using PBNs?
What are PBNs?
In simple words, PBNs are blogs or websites that have expired domains. They still possess great value due to obtaining thousands of authentic backlinks. Any person can purchase these domains as soon as they expire. Due to its value, they are sold through online auction at times.
People use these expired websites by redesigning it or adding a few fresh content then they start adding or selling links from this website to either boost their SEO rankings or for commercial profit.
For example, let’s say a website abc.com has expired all of a sudden, but over the years, it has generated thousands of backlinks. Now I will purchase this website, redesign it, and add some fresh new content. Then I will start pointing links to my own website and selling some of the links to others to earn some revenue out of it.
However, PBN is not just limited to just expired sites; it can also be a simple news website or blog which sells links purposely for commercial gains.
Until 2014, purchasing links from PBNs was the fastest and easiest method to boost any website’s rankings irrespective of its industry, be it fashion, IT, finance, or whatever. Although, over these years, Google has begun penalizing any PBN website and websites they are linking to, considering this as manipulating the system and anti-Google guidelines. Provoke Google, and you will be inviting a serious penalty either in your rankings or maybe a total blacklisting. One morning you wake up with a penalty, and your whole business structure is shaken overnight.
What are the different uses of PBNs?
PBNs are used in a lot of ways. Some of them are:
- Directing links to your website
Purchase an expired domain, tweak it a bit by re-designing, start writing articles, and add links to your websites in them.
- Selling links
Some people sell these links to SEO professionals or companies to earn some money, which is considered as malpractice and going against Google guidelines.
- Adding links to homepage
Buy multiple PBNs, re-design them, and simply add the links to your websites on their homepages. This is regarded as the highest trust flow.
Will my website’s rankings improve if I use PBNs?
As a matter of fact, yes, theoretically, your website’s search engine rankings can improve if you use PBNs. In the short-term, an inflow of links from websites that have high domain authority will definitely give an instant boost to your website.
For a lot of businesses online and SEO companies, Private Blog Networks is the way they carry out an SEO strategy and basically do business. If they can manage to refrain from penalties, PBNs are accredited to rank some of the top position websites on Google – especially for industries that attract suspicious techniques like casinos, web hosting, and much more.
Will I get penalized for using PBNs?
If you are using PBNs to obtain links, you are actually inviting the risk of getting penalized by Google. You are not going to be downgraded automatically, but it takes just a single update or change in the Google algorithm to cause you big trouble overnight.
Well, let’s say over the years you did nothing other than continuously buying links from PBNs; at some point in time, you will ultimately have to suffer a penalty. And when that happens, you will need to remove all those links from your website to restore your rankings.
However, it is also true that a few experienced SEOs get successful in balancing the PBNs with a clean approach by either making natural content, generating natural and clean links, or by disowning links regularly.
Conclusion
There is constant debate about whether using PBNs as a part of your link building strategy can be successful with highly experienced SEO experts or not. Google is known to bring considerable changes in goalposts from time to time. You are always at the risk of getting penalized. So it is just a matter of time that you end up with a heavy penalty. It may take more time and investment to get results from your SEO campaigns, but they will be organic. You would not be walking on a tightrope and living under the fear of getting caught by Google.
Furthermore, it is possible that your clients, business partners, or investors might not be comfortable with a risk like this. Just for the sake of shortcuts you do not want to risk your whole business model.
As for our conclusion, we would strictly like to advise you to stay clear of PBNs. Taking a risk as big as this is not just worth the damage it can possibly cause. So, this was all about PBNs and the risks of using them. Let us know your thoughts about this via the comment box below.