You may have heard of Private blog networks or PBNs but have no idea what they are or how they can affect your business. PBNs use duplicate content, the same IP address, and paid links to gain higher rankings than your own. Here’s a quick rundown of what a PBN is. Despite their benefits, PBNs pose certain risks. Here’s how to distinguish a PBN from a normal blog.
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Private blog network (PBN)
If you’re looking to rank high on Google, you may want to use a private blog network (PBN) for your SEO efforts. These networks consist of hundreds or thousands of blogs with many backlinks, and they’re great for sculpting your anchor text. But it’s important to remember that you should only use PBNs to supplement your other link-building efforts. Private blog networks should make up no more than five to twenty percent of your overall link profile. Ideally, your website should make up 80-90% of its total links from internal pages, editorial links, niche blog comments, and other sources. You can also consider a White Hat Alternative to PBNs.
Paid links
Paid links on PBN networks are considered black hat SEO tactics against competitors. In this type of scheme, you purchase links on domains with low domain authority and then point those links to your competitor’s website. Since these links are not authenticated by any authoritative website, Google won’t see them and will ignore them. Moreover, they won’t show up in your website’s Google Analytics and Search Console. Because of this, they’re also considered unnatural link-building techniques.
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is the same content that appears on more than one URL or domain. It can be exact copies or chunks of the copied text published on multiple websites. While some duplication is unavoidable, there are a few factors that can lead to duplicate content. Google considers this content to be “appreciably similar,” meaning it is not as different as the original version. The best way to avoid this problem is to make sure all of your content is unique.
Same IP address
While the concept of using the same IP address for a PBN isn’t new, there are some ways to tell if you are dealing with a PBN. You can look for a PBN’s footprint by looking for C Block IP addresses that are different from one another. One way to do this is by manually reviewing the PBN’s C Block. If 15 valuable links from 15 different domains are shared on the same C Block, it is probably not a PBN. If they are spread out on 14 separate C Block IP addresses, this is much more plausible.
Same hosting provider
The same hosting provider for PBNs can be difficult to choose – but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the same one for your main website. Some PBN hosting services use CDN servers, which makes your website load faster. Another option is static HTML pages. These are faster than WordPress. Some services also give you unlimited IP addresses.