PBN in 2018: Is it worth creating and are there any profitable alternatives?

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Creating a PBN is one of the classic and most common grey-hat SEO tactics. Creating private blog networks allows you to collect good traffic to a site that you want to monetize. However, despite all the benefits, there are a few questions you should consider before using a PBN:

How profitable is it to create a private blog network and what is the ROI of a potential network?
If creating a PBN is not profitable, are there any good and maximally secure alternatives?
We will consider these questions within the framework of this article and will try to give our readers the most comprehensive answer.

Why You Should NOT Create a PBN
Analytical articles often begin with a list of advantages, but we will go the other way and list, first of all, the reasons why you should not create a private blog network.

1. Cost

One of the biggest drawbacks is the cost of creating and maintaining the network. To create a PBN, you will have to shell out between $40 and $400 just for a good domain name. If you are going to purchase a domain name from official vendors, the price will be similar.

So, the creation and maintenance of one website will cost the following amount:

A good domain name is $100;
Private Whois - 5$;
Hosting - $12;
The cost of one article of average quality is at least $10-12.
In total, to create one site you will need $117, adding to this articles (at least 10-12) - another $100, the total cost of one site in the network of private blogs is $217.

If you think that cost is the only drawback, then let's move on to the issue of time.

2. Investment of time

Building a quality (really quality, not web 2.0 spam) PBN takes a lot of time. The initial stage is selecting suitable domain names and TLD (ccTLD) permissions. In practice, only 5% of domains will suit your requirements, the remaining 95% will be unsuitable.

Let's imagine that your PBN will consist of 10 sites. You will have to on page seo service spend at least 12 hours searching for suitable domain names. Another 5-7 hours checking the quality of the domains. Speaking of quality, we mean domains with minimum indicators according to Majestic: Domain Authority>15, Trust Flow>15.

The next step is to install domains. It will take you 2-4 hours to find a suitable hosting for each domain (remember that each site on the network must have a unique IP and a unique host).




Creating the necessary pages, selecting a design, creating sections, installing plugins and setting up themes will take another 2-3 hours for each site. In total, for a network of 10 sites, you will have to spend about 30 hours.

Content development, content moderation and editing, finding interesting and useful materials, SEO and link building in particular - another column of constant time costs. We do not take into account the occurrence of various situations when it is necessary to devote additional time to one or another site.

Ultimately, building a PBN yourself takes a very, very, very long time.

3. Risks

Let's be honest: although many people use PBNs, and good private blog networks can be very useful for a site, Google has a very negative attitude towards this phenomenon. In other words, if PBN is detected, there is a high probability of receiving sanctions from the search engine for manipulative link building.

Why Create a PBN
Despite the disadvantages, PBN also has its advantages - we will list them below.

1.Control

Having a private blog network gives you a great opportunity to control the entire SEO process. No other link building strategy gives you so many opportunities to test and check the “workability” of certain methods, anchors, etc.

Even if you get penalized (in the worst case scenario) for unnatural link building, the situation will be easy to fix by simply removing unnecessary links from your PBN. Moreover, the likelihood of getting penalized will be minimal if your link profile consists of 80% natural links and only 20% PBN links.

2. Quick Authority

If you use proven, reliable blogs with high search engine trust in your network, it will be much easier for you to make your site more authoritative in the eyes of the search engine by getting links from such blogs. Accordingly, the higher the authority of the site, the more likely it is to appear in the top positions.

3. No need for outreach

Building relationships with other bloggers, contacting them, constantly working to improve interactions and ultimately getting links from other bloggers/webmasters - all this will not be required with PBN. Accordingly, your time will be significantly saved.

ROI for PBN
Since the key point in creating a network is the amount of money that needs to be invested to create a quality PBN, we must consider the real return on investment and the financial feasibility of its creation.