One link per PBN article? Two links? Five links? How many? Let’s settle this. In this article, I will show you the right way to build private blog network backlinks which will help you rank your money sites much faster and will help keep your PBN sites, well, private.

What You’ll Learn

• How to build PBN backlinks the right way – I will show you, step-by-step, how to place backlinks in your PBN articles the way you should. Hint: “natural” is the keyword here.
• The ultimate list of important PBN link building notes – think of these as your commandments when it comes to building PBN backlinks.

How To Build PBN Links The Right Way – Step-By-Step Guide

First of all, before we get to the PBN backlinks themselves, I want us to be clear on a few things related to PBN content as many people are still unaware of them and that amazes me:

• No more spun content – no more. Forget about it. If you want your PBN to be effective the way it can and should be, you should forget about content spinners and content generation software.
• Only high quality – it’s good that you finally decided to never use spun content on your PBNs again, however, don’t just go with some low quality content written by a 13 year old who’s been studying English for 3 weeks. No no. You should always use high quality content either written by you or written by people who know how to write (iWriter is a good place for the latter).
• Random length – forget about counting words. This isn’t 2013 anymore. Just write until you feel you’ve written what you needed for the article to encapsulate your PBN links. But if I were to give range of words for your PBN content, I’d say 500 – 2,000. Again, that doesn’t meant that you can’t write shorter or longer articles. The focus here is on randomization and natural looking content. That’s it. Numbers make it really easy for people to fall into patterns and you don’t want any patterns when it comes to private blog networks.
• Single manager per PBN site – preferably, a single person (maybe you) should manage a single PBN site (or all sites if it’s manageable). Why? Because, you want the person writing, or ordering the writing for the PBN articles to know what the site is about, what blog posts it has already published and how to connect new posts with old posts. More on the importance of all that in a minute.

So basically, those four rules are most important when it comes to private blog network content. Make sure you abide by them otherwise your PBN won’t see much light at the end of the tunnel if you know what I mean, especially if you ignore rule #1.

In these days of constant Google improvements to the Panda algorithm and Hummingbird becoming more and more advanced, the last thing you want on your website is poor content. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Google is ridiculously advanced when it comes to understanding content, however, it is now good enough to determine its overall quality. So stick only to high quality content no matter the cost and you will be completely fine.

Now, if you don’t know where to find expired domains for your PBN, I suggest these two approaches:

1. If you are on a budget, check out this tutorial.
2. If you got the money, head over to the domain auctions on the big domain trading sites and find some really good domains to purchase.

Now let’s move onto the part every SEO gets most excited about – link building.

Step #1. Write The Article While Keeping In Mind The Backlinks You Need To Create

From now on whenever I say “you”, I will either be referring to you or whoever you have hired to write your PBN content. If you won’t be writing the content for your PBN articles, then simply send these steps to the writer you hired and tell them to follow them to the letter. Now onto step one.

Step one is really simple. Just write the content for the article without inserting any links yet, however still keeping in mind where you will place the links. What do those links include?

• Link(s) to money site.
• Link(s) to internal pages or posts.
• Link(s) to authority websites.

So, while you are writing the content for the PBN article, you need to keep in mind those 3 types of links and where you will place them. How many links should you insert from each type? Well, we will cover that in the next step.

Step #2. Inserting The Backlinks

Once you have the plain content written, it is time to go back to the beginning and proofread and edit your article. This means fixing grammar mistakes, logic mistakes, commas, hyphens, etc. While you are doing that, when you get to a point where you left a spot for a backlink while you were writing the content initially, just insert it.

Now, when it comes to the number of backlinks that your private blog network article should have, these are the general guidelines you want to follow – again, you don’t want to fall into any patterns:

• Money site links – no more than a few. This means something like 1 link to the root domain of the money site, and then maybe 1 or 2 links to inner pages such as blog posts. What you shouldn’t do is link more than once to the same URL. One backlink to the same URL is just as effective as three or more.
• Internal links – this is why I noted that one person should manage a PBN site single-handedly. That way, this person will know past blog posts and will be able to link to them from new PBN articles. As for a number, I’d say that most of your PBN articles should have internal backlinks. Maybe something like 70 – 80%.
• Authority links – for these I’d go with around 1 – 3 backlinks.

Again, these are just general guidelines. The number of backlinks will strongly depend on the length of the PBN article and on its needs. So for instance, if you need to link to some Wikipedia article to prove a point made by the article, go for it. If you need to link to relevant internal blog posts, go for it. You get the idea.

Your main goal should be not to reach a certain number of backlinks for each type but rather to create a high quality article which will be the thing that will boost your money site’s rankings the most. Now let’s talk about anchor text ratios.

Step #3. Respecting Anchor Texts

As most of you probably know, in the past, you were able to rank almost anything by simply creating thousands of backlinks with your target keyword. Nowadays, that doesn’t fly with Google. Nowadays, the focus is on branding anchors. So, if I were to give you some general numbers again, I’d go with these:

• Exact match – around 1 – 3%.
• Synonyms and LSI anchors – around 3 – 5%.
• Branding anchors – around 50% or more.
• Generic anchors – around 20%.
• Naked URLs – around 20%.

In my experience, Google is now ranking certain pages for certain keywords not by the keyword anchors pointing at said pages, but by the keywords contained in the content on the page. So, when you are writing a PBN article, you need to be aware of current keyword research methods and the way the Hummingbird algorithm works i.e. use synonyms instead of stuffing the same keyword(s) over and over again.

And if there are still people unaware of the different types of anchors, please refer to this guide and everything will become crystal clear. Again, those are general guidelines and you need to be strongly aware of your money site’s current backlinks anchors ratio before you build the PBN links.

Step #4. Respecting Time & Spam

So far, we’ve covered most of the important steps of PBN link building, however, there are a few things remaining which we will cover in this last fourth step. How many links should you build from one PBN site to the same money site? And what should be the time frame between backlinks to the same money site?

The answer to the first question is indefinite. Why? Because it’s completely natural for one site to link multiple times to another site – we’re talking from different article of course. This is basically called a good relationship, you know, the one that Rand Fishkin from Moz was talking about when he said this:

Don’t build links. Build relationships.

Anyway, can you build more than one link to the same money site from the same PBN site in different articles? Yes, yes you can. Can you do it in two consecutive articles? Well, yes, you can. However, only if it seems natural. Don’t build 10 billion consecutive links from the same PBN site just because the first one gave you a good boost.

No no. Randomize and make sure that the backlinks look natural and not forced into existence. And as for the time frame, it really depends on the money site and its age. The younger the site, the less links you should build in a given time frame.

For these two things I cannot give some range in numbers as they vary too much from site to site and it is where SEO experience will help you a lot. But, if you simply keep it natural and don’t fall into any patterns, you should be fine. Again, this is where a single manager per PBN site comes in handy as they will know all blog posts on the site and how many of them link to the same money site and when it would be a good idea to link again or at all.

The 10 Commandments Of PBN Link Building

This will basically summarize all that we said in the above 4 steps. Make sure to follow these notes when you are building PBN backlinks and you won’t have any issues ranking your money sites.

Summary

See how simple it is? Four easy to follow steps and you will be on track with your PBN links. Basically, I’m sure that you’ve already noticed it, but all you have to do is create real websites. Treat each of your PBN sites as you would treat a money site because after all, if you do it right, a PBN site can also make you money – either via ads, affiliate marketing, or simply by selling links on the site itself.

So forget about the words quick and easy when it comes to a PBN, throw away low quality out of your vocabulary and invest as much time and money as you can in your private blog network. You will see that it will all be worth it as a high quality PBN has a virtually no limit when it comes to monetization and ranking power.