What Is A Private Blog Network?

Source: Seobility

Date First Published: 7th January 2023

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 6/10

CONTENTS

How To Spot A PBN?
Risks Of Using A PBN

Learn more about what a private blog network (PBN) is in this article.

A private blog network (PBN) is a group of websites controlled by a person or a group of people which are used to build backlinks to a single website to help it rank higher in search engines. The main goal of a PBN is to link to one central domain name to pass the most link equity to it. The network of websites is solely created to link out to one website.

In the past, private blog networks were websites that had thin content that had little value for users and their only purpose was to link to a central website. Today, modern private blog networks often have multiple pages and include much more content than they used to reduce the chances of them being detected. People that use this method to build links often try hard to prevent Google from identifying that their sites are part of a PBN. They may use the following to prevent them from being identified:

Using different TLDs.
Registering the domain name with different registrars.
Using different themes or layouts.
Hosting with different hosting providers.

How To Spot A PBN?

Modern PBNs look like real sites and can be difficult to spot, but there are a few ways to spot them:

Thin content. It is common for PBNs to have thin content that has little to no value for users.
The technical data of the websites are the same, such as the same hosting provider, domain registrar, same theme and layout, and same TLD.
The websites have very few pages.
Use of expired domains. Using expired domains that already have lots of backlinks means that less effort has to go into link building.

Risks Of Using A PBN

Using a PBN is risky because it is considered a form of a link scheme, which is against Google Webmaster's Guidelines. If Google catches links from a PBN, there is a high chance that they will devalue the links. The use of PBNs is seen as a black hat SEO technique as it aims to artificially boost the ranking of one or more websites through manipulation of the number of links pointing to the site. Although Google tries to ignore links that seem unnatural, Google will sometimes issue a manual penalty. If Google ignores or devalues the links, all the time and effort spent into creating them would be wasted.

Originally, PBNs were commonly used as part of off-page SEO before search engines started penalising them. Now, they are used much less and are more risky. Eventually, Google may apply a manual action to a website that is part of a PBN. When getting a manual penalty, website owners will receive a message in Google Search Console saying 'Unnatural links to your site' and the value of those links will no longer take effect when Google determines the ranking of a website.