Is Google resetting PBN links and What should I do to avoid penalty?

[William]

Hi,
Did you hear about Google is resetting PBN links?
I have one site which is using some PBN links now. The main keyword of that site is ranked the top position in Google partly by the PBN links. This Google update seems to focus on penalising sites using PBNs.
Should I continue to keep those PBN links or should I remove them to avoid Google's penalty?

Has anyone experienced keyword rank degradation due to this Google update? (if you use some PBN links too)

Many thanks,
William

 

[lion1978]

Google has always been penalizing pbn links, but only when they can find the pbn's ofcourse.

wether or not you should continue to use pbn's, I would say is matter of the quality of them, ask yor self the question "would they stand up to a manual review and not look like they were built soley for the purpose of linking out to your site?" a few things to consider is :
Are they all on the same cms?
Are they all using the same Theme?
Are they all using the same plugins?
Are they on different c- class ip's?
Is the content humanly readable or is it poorly spun content?
Are they being maintained like a real site would be?
Is there frequently being posted new content to them?
Is there different ammounts of content on them?
Does the links to your site make logical sense?

Those are a few questions to ask your self about your pbn's, and please be harsh when you ask your self these questions, don't go down the route of "yeah it's spun content but it's probably ok" if the content makes no sense in just one place.

simpliified if you were a perfect stranger, whoo landed on one of those pbn's would you think it was a site like so many others or would you think "hmmm strange site with low quality content, seems like it was thrown together in rush "

 

[blackwar85]

I personally have never paid attention to what algorithm updates Google or mainstream search engine magazines report.

There seems to be some new Penguin or penalty updates all the time, but I just do not pay attention to it until I see that people in forums or FB groups start mass-posting about how their sites got penalized etc.

I think I would burn out quickly if I would read and analyze every single update Google makes and then worry about how it would affect my site and income, like some people do.

When I just checked some of the sites I use PBN for I noticed down-ward slope in terms of traffic, but it is expected, because in December I received more traffic than usual. So I do not worry about it at the moment.

About your situation:
Depends on whether you need those PBN links.

If your site is ranking because of those links only then it would make no sense to remove them all. Because I am sure you knew PBN-s carry risk before you started the site.


If you just have couple of PBN-s pointing to site just to add extra boost among other links, and the site is important for you, then you might consider removing them. Not because of this update, but because the small ranking boost those PBN-s give you may not be worth the added risk of possible future penalty.

 

[CCarter]

Honestly it's glaringly obvious Google was going to come after PBN aka "Public Blog Networks" eventually. It's the one technique SEO gurus are going on and on about, which seems to be the only technique those gurus have left. There are tons of techniques being developed that smart people have figured out not to publish or talk about, but you now have to watch your competition to find them.

Just think about it, if you, a random person, can get a sample list of a PBN from sellers why wouldn't a Google web spam employee be able todo the same? Why wouldn't they be able to train their billion dollar A.I. with it's neural network on the types of websites PBNs are located on and then systematically destroy/remove them? (Worth a read: The mind-blowing AI announcement from Google that you probably missed.)

Google is alot more sophisticated and powerful than most SEOs tend to give them credit for. Maybe it's out of ignorance or "hope" that the house of cards will hold up long enough for them to retire with just SEO and no other effort. The folks that got hit in 2007 thought the same. Same for those hit in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, and all the various upgrades to Google's algorithm that wiped out SEO gurus' from the face of the universe - guru's who's names we can no longer remember.

Now the latest gurus are talking about "PBN" as being the holy grail - if that's the last technique they've got and ALL of them are talking about it, then obviously Google is going to come around looking to systematically detect and eliminate that. They've got PhDs for god's sake. They also know how to read blogposts and pay attention to the SEO community as a whole and more importantly especially on the fringes. Why do you think the ancients like @Grind stopped publicly talking about the latest techniques? It's survival of the fittest and that means keeping your mouth shut when you've got the latest new exploit - make as much bank as possible and stay quiet.

But ALL of this can be avoided. If you start thinking of your "websites" as a real business and start treating it like a real business you'll be able to weather the storms. Example, make sure you are setting up a newsletter system so that a percentage of your audience will be within grasp of a push of a button from you. Think about it, if 5% of your audience signs up for your newsletter, and you get 300 visitors a day, that's 15 new sign ups. At the end of a year you'll have 365 x 15 = 5,475 users who are dedicated to your brand. They'll help spread your brand if you keep feeding them great content. If you publish a new blog post and then send out your newsletter to your list of 5475 and 50% of them click thru- that's an instant 2,738 people coming to that new fresh blogpost. If it's engaging enough (Creating "Compelling" Content), then they'll share it on social media, with their friends, they'll forward your email newsletter to colleagues, and help you grow your brand. And that's just the newsletter angle.

There are offline marketing techniques you can utilize to get more buzz in a local market to get them looking up your brand. For example you can use "Every Door Direct Mail" from the post office and hit up 5,000 homes or business with a $1,000 investment. If you are targeting a local area, don't you think having ground level exposure instantly for your local business for a simple $1,000 investment would give you a leg up so you don't have to waste time waiting for Google to send you traffic? I can literally hit up a whole condo building for as little as $200 if I wanted to narrow it down.

Then there are better outreach techniques like @Steve Brownlie teaches in his thread that will take your outreach game to a new level. The main purpose of any outreach whether it's to do a guestpost on someone's website or have them do a guestpost on your website should be to drive direct traffic - the SEO benefits - yeah are great. But if you want money TODAY, doing a guestpost on a website that's within your industry and getting them to promote that content to their audience will drive in sales NOW.

I prefer the reverse guestpost where you get others to come to your website and post content and then - if you were smart enough, send that new piece of content to your audience of 5400 people and bam, buzz around your great content pieces as well as get exposure to a new audience when the author sends out promotion to their audience. It's a win-win-win. The author gets seen as an expert to his audience since another brand reached out to him and wanted his input, and you get great content on your website written by others within your industry.

And then there is just the general traffic leaking techniques of generating traffic TODAY. But you have to switch your mental receptors to thinking of the whole internet as a potential traffic source, not just Google or Facebook. As well you can leverage even offline sources as a potential traffic source. You can even sign up to HARO and become the go-to person reporters go to within your industry for information, naturally getting backlinks and mentions for your brand.

There are unlimited ways to generate traffic and revenue TODAY if you are willing to get your hands dirty and grind at it. The days of the SEO gurus selling you some "Public Blog Network" links are coming to an end. Maybe not today, but you can't really believe you'll be able to do these techniques 1-2 years from now and Google won't take action.

Those are a few questions to ask your self about your pbn's

The easiest question to ask about a PBN and to future proof yourself from getting penalize is "Does Google send traffic to this website?" If the site owner cannot show you Google sending 1000 visitors a day or even within a week that website is essentially worthless to Google. So it will either get deindex - which all the PBNs that got deindex seem to have in common - no traffic from Google, or it will eventually get penalized.

If Google is sending a website 1000 visitors a day, Google has inherently deemed that website worthy of it's Google visitors and therefore will trust that website and it's links. This one single methods skips all the technical problems of "getting around Google's filters". If Google trusts the website it will send it traffic - therefore the links on the website are also trusted. If Google does not send traffic to the website, the website is essentially worthless to Google, and what do you do with worthless things? You trash them, eventually.

 

[Charles Floate]

Honestly it's glaringly obvious Google was going to come after PBN aka "Public Blog Networks" eventually. It's the one technique SEO gurus are going on and on about, which seems to be the only technique those gurus have left. There are tons of techniques being developed that smart people have figured out not to publish or talk about, but you now have to watch your competition to find them.
....

This is why you're my SEO crush Carter.

I do think you need to differentiate a little around PBNs though.. Yes, there are the BHW multi-hundred thread sales pages for 20 OBL homepage PBNs. BUT. There are a significant amount (Though it's still <25) of vendors and providers that offer quality over quantity.

That being said, I have seen a shift in the marketplace (especially in the last <6 months or so) of a massive rise in outreach services hitting the BH marketplace. Mostly sponsored posting that "white hat agencies" have been using as a tactic for donkeys year... but it does pose a credible threat to the way the algo works at the moment, especially considering it has a complete bias for larger sites.

The modern algo is literally about who has the biggest budget mixed with who knows how to spend it the most efficiently.. This is why you have corporations like Hearst getting into aff. sites like their bestproduct.com site - Which likely generates millions of dollars a month now in under 2 years.

Even since the first iteration of Penguin, Google's algo has been turning into a corporate powerhouse, favoring big brands which lessens the competitive abilities of companies that lack expertise and financial backing.

What I realized a few years ago was what Wil Reynolds has been talking about for over 10 years: Real Company Shit.

You think Hearst are going to use Filipino VAs to create them a 2,000 word generic article on eletric shavers? Hell no.. So why the hell do you think you'd ever be competitive by doing the same.

If you want to earn money in SEO, you either gotta have money or grind. There isn't any magical shortcut anymore - This shows when you look at people who're newer to the industry:

Ryan Stewart - In 2 years he's built a 6 figure agency off spending ever evening working on new SEO guest posts to become an authority in the industry and generate enterprise level leads.

Rohit Palit - From 14 to 18, he's built a 6 figure affiliate empire starting off his own blog and custom writing tech reviews by hand every day whilst studying. Then used his profits to build tens of niches sites that now generate a 5 figure a month income for him.. At 18, based out of India.

Honorable mention to James Gregory as my prodigy who's built a 6 figure gambling & link building SEO business out of learning every evening and taking a lesser pay from his old job to work & learn at an agency..

Tons more examples I could name off the top of my head.

Stop trying to cut corners, build a business out of pure grind or the cash you've acquired from elsewhere and you'll be thanking this thread in 12 months time.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I'd add that, beyond receiving organic traffic or any other type (a general quality measure) and covering all other footprints, one of the worst things you can do is mismatch the topical relevance of the backlinks with the new content and new OBL's being added. That's an obvious sign of a purchased domain being co-opted. At that point it'll take them an entire 2 seconds to look at the sites you're now linking to and figuring out if you're legit or not.

726 x 213​

 

[William]

Google has always been penalizing pbn links, but only when they can find the pbn's ofcourse.

wether or not you should continue to use pbn's, I would say is matter of the quality of them, ask yor self the question "would they stand up to a manual review and not look like they were built soley for the purpose of linking out to your site?" a few things to consider is :
Are they all on the same cms?
Are they all using the same Theme?
Are they all using the same plugins?
Are they on different c- class ip's?
Is the content humanly readable or is it poorly spun content?
Are they being maintained like a real site would be?
Is there frequently being posted new content to them?
Is there different ammounts of content on them?
Does the links to your site make logical sense?

Those are a few questions to ask your self about your pbn's, and please be harsh when you ask your self these questions, don't go down the route of "yeah it's spun content but it's probably ok" if the content makes no sense in just one place.

simpliified if you were a perfect stranger, whoo landed on one of those pbn's would you think it was a site like so many others or would you think "hmmm strange site with low quality content, seems like it was thrown together in rush "

Thanks for your advice. I built PBNs quite carefully like your advice and I use PBN links for about 20% of links. Hopefully Google does not touch them somedays.

I personally have never paid attention to what algorithm updates Google or mainstream search engine magazines report.

There seems to be some new Penguin or penalty updates all the time, but I just do not pay attention to it until I see that people in forums or FB groups start mass-posting about how their sites got penalized etc.

I think I would burn out quickly if I would read and analyze every single update Google makes and then worry about how it would affect my site and income, like some people do.

When I just checked some of the sites I use PBN for I noticed down-ward slope in terms of traffic, but it is expected, because in December I received more traffic than usual. So I do not worry about it at the moment.

About your situation:
Depends on whether you need those PBN links.

If your site is ranking because of those links only then it would make no sense to remove them all. Because I am sure you knew PBN-s carry risk before you started the site.


If you just have couple of PBN-s pointing to site just to add extra boost among other links, and the site is important for you, then you might consider removing them. Not because of this update, but because the small ranking boost those PBN-s give you may not be worth the added risk of possible future penalty.

Many thanks for your advice. PBN links are about 20% of the total links to my site. I am considering to reduce the number of PBN links slowly.

Honestly it's glaringly obvious Google was going to come after PBN aka "Public Blog Networks" eventually. It's the one technique SEO gurus are going on and on about, which seems to be the only technique those gurus have left. There are tons of techniques being developed that smart people have figured out not to publish or talk about, but you now have to watch your competition to find them.

Just think about it, if you, a random person, can get a sample list of a PBN from sellers why wouldn't a Google web spam employee be able todo the same? Why wouldn't they be able to train their billion dollar A.I. with it's neural network on the types of websites PBNs are located on and then systematically destroy/remove them? (Worth a read: The mind-blowing AI announcement from Google that you probably missed.)

Google is alot more sophisticated and powerful than most SEOs tend to give them credit for. Maybe it's out of ignorance or "hope" that the house of cards will hold up long enough for them to retire with just SEO and no other effort. The folks that got hit in 2007 thought the same. Same for those hit in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, and all the various upgrades to Google's algorithm that wiped out SEO gurus' from the face of the universe - guru's who's names we can no longer remember.

Now the latest gurus are talking about "PBN" as being the holy grail - if that's the last technique they've got and ALL of them are talking about it, then obviously Google is going to come around looking to systematically detect and eliminate that. They've got PhDs for god's sake. They also know how to read blogposts and pay attention to the SEO community as a whole and more importantly especially on the fringes. Why do you think the ancients like @Grind stopped publicly talking about the latest techniques? It's survival of the fittest and that means keeping your mouth shut when you've got the latest new exploit - make as much bank as possible and stay quiet.

But ALL of this can be avoided. If you start thinking of your "websites" as a real business and start treating it like a real business you'll be able to weather the storms. Example, make sure you are setting up a newsletter system so that a percentage of your audience will be within grasp of a push of a button from you. Think about it, if 5% of your audience signs up for your newsletter, and you get 300 visitors a day, that's 15 new sign ups. At the end of a year you'll have 365 x 15 = 5,475 users who are dedicated to your brand. They'll help spread your brand if you keep feeding them great content. If you publish a new blog post and then send out your newsletter to your list of 5475 and 50% of them click thru- that's an instant 2,738 people coming to that new fresh blogpost. If it's engaging enough (Creating "Compelling" Content), then they'll share it on social media, with their friends, they'll forward your email newsletter to colleagues, and help you grow your brand. And that's just the newsletter angle.

There are offline marketing techniques you can utilize to get more buzz in a local market to get them looking up your brand. For example you can use "Every Door Direct Mail" from the post office and hit up 5,000 homes or business with a $1,000 investment. If you are targeting a local area, don't you think having ground level exposure instantly for your local business for a simple $1,000 investment would give you a leg up so you don't have to waste time waiting for Google to send you traffic? I can literally hit up a whole condo building for as little as $200 if I wanted to narrow it down.

Then there are better outreach techniques like @Steve Brownlie teaches in his thread that will take your outreach game to a new level. The main purpose of any outreach whether it's to do a guestpost on someone's website or have them do a guestpost on your website should be to drive direct traffic - the SEO benefits - yeah are great. But if you want money TODAY, doing a guestpost on a website that's within your industry and getting them to promote that content to their audience will drive in sales NOW.

I prefer the reverse guestpost where you get others to come to your website and post content and then - if you were smart enough, send that new piece of content to your audience of 5400 people and bam, buzz around your great content pieces as well as get exposure to a new audience when the author sends out promotion to their audience. It's a win-win-win. The author gets seen as an expert to his audience since another brand reached out to him and wanted his input, and you get great content on your website written by others within your industry.

And then there is just the general traffic leaking techniques of generating traffic TODAY. But you have to switch your mental receptors to thinking of the whole internet as a potential traffic source, not just Google or Facebook. As well you can leverage even offline sources as a potential traffic source. You can even sign up to HARO and become the go-to person reporters go to within your industry for information, naturally getting backlinks and mentions for your brand.

There are unlimited ways to generate traffic and revenue TODAY if you are willing to get your hands dirty and grind at it. The days of the SEO gurus selling you some "Public Blog Network" links are coming to an end. Maybe not today, but you can't really believe you'll be able to do these techniques 1-2 years from now and Google won't take action.



The easiest question to ask about a PBN and to future proof yourself from getting penalize is "Does Google send traffic to this website?" If the site owner cannot show you Google sending 1000 visitors a day or even within a week that website is essentially worthless to Google. So it will either get deindex - which all the PBNs that got deindex seem to have in common - no traffic from Google, or it will eventually get penalized.

If Google is sending a website 1000 visitors a day, Google has inherently deemed that website worthy of it's Google visitors and therefore will trust that website and it's links. This one single methods skips all the technical problems of "getting around Google's filters". If Google trusts the website it will send it traffic - therefore the links on the website are also trusted. If Google does not send traffic to the website, the website is essentially worthless to Google, and what do you do with worthless things? You trash them, eventually.

Thanks so much for the very long tip, CCarter. I am now moving to guest posts and whitehat links only. But I used some PBN before and have not removed them yet. I am considering to remove PBN links time by the time.
I really like your view on the actual value of a site where we build a link, based on how Google evaluates the site and drives traffic to it.
For me, SEO like a kind of Art, thanks for sharing. I am trying hard to learn from you and other members in our BUSO community.

Kind regards,
William

 

[lion1978]

PBN links are about 20% of the total links to my site. I am considering to reduce the number of PBN links slowly.

If it's only about 20% and as you say you build them carefully, then I probably wouldn't delete them, but insted reduce their % by adding more of other link types, unless you see a drop in ranking though.

 

[Frog]

I dont buy this, it is more google PR.
Google tend to take do something and then make a fuss about it and move on, they take down one big link network and publish that "link networks are dead" and everyone goes around repeating that networks are dead. They did the same with paid links, they did the same with profile links.
I wouldnt panic about this until you see an actual impact to your rankings on your own site

 

[Old_Henry]

I did hear the rumor that Google may be giving less relevance to the backlinks on domains that expired and have been reregistered (that came from @Charles Floate if I'm not mistaken). So my guess is it's only a matter of time.

 

[Charles Floate]

I did hear the rumor that Google may be giving less relevance to the backlinks on domains that expired and have been reregistered (that came from @Charles Floate if I'm not mistaken). So my guess is it's only a matter of time.

Not quite what I said, you referring to this video:

Title is more for clickbait, my apologies.. Gotta get dem views!

 

[Old_Henry]

Not quite what I said.

Correct - that's the video. And yes, while that's not exactly what you said, the implication is still there (partly due the the clickbait title). Granted nothing has happened yet but we all know that Google will want to "kill" anyone who manipulates... they'll keep poking until they find a weakness that will take down PBNs IMO.

 

[William]

This is why you're my SEO crush Carter.

I do think you need to differentiate a little around PBNs though.. Yes, there are the BHW multi-hundred thread sales pages for 20 OBL homepage PBNs. BUT. There are a significant amount (Though it's still <25) of vendors and providers that offer quality over quantity.

That being said, I have seen a shift in the marketplace (especially in the last <6 months or so) of a massive rise in outreach services hitting the BH marketplace. Mostly sponsored posting that "white hat agencies" have been using as a tactic for donkeys year... but it does pose a credible threat to the way the algo works at the moment, especially considering it has a complete bias for larger sites.

The modern algo is literally about who has the biggest budget mixed with who knows how to spend it the most efficiently.. This is why you have corporations like Hearst getting into aff. sites like their bestproduct.com site - Which likely generates millions of dollars a month now in under 2 years.

Even since the first iteration of Penguin, Google's algo has been turning into a corporate powerhouse, favoring big brands which lessens the competitive abilities of companies that lack expertise and financial backing.

What I realized a few years ago was what Wil Reynolds has been talking about for over 10 years: Real Company Shit.

You think Hearst are going to use Filipino VAs to create them a 2,000 word generic article on eletric shavers? Hell no.. So why the hell do you think you'd ever be competitive by doing the same.

If you want to earn money in SEO, you either gotta have money or grind. There isn't any magical shortcut anymore - This shows when you look at people who're newer to the industry:

Ryan Stewart - In 2 years he's built a 6 figure agency off spending ever evening working on new SEO guest posts to become an authority in the industry and generate enterprise level leads.

Rohit Palit - From 14 to 18, he's built a 6 figure affiliate empire starting off his own blog and custom writing tech reviews by hand every day whilst studying. Then used his profits to build tens of niches sites that now generate a 5 figure a month income for him.. At 18, based out of India.

Honorable mention to James Gregory as my prodigy who's built a 6 figure gambling & link building SEO business out of learning every evening and taking a lesser pay from his old job to work & learn at an agency..

Tons more examples I could name off the top of my head.

Stop trying to cut corners, build a business out of pure grind or the cash you've acquired from elsewhere and you'll be thanking this thread in 12 months time.

Thanks so much, Charles.

I witness in my niche there are some big sites from corporations, like bestproduct.com, The SweetHome, The Wirecutter,.... They rank keys quite easily. Sometimes I see some new posts from their sites but the keyword gets #1 in Google quickly.

I find it's quite difficult to compete them in the same niche (The niche I have been ranking, but someday I found the SweetHome got #1 rank in Google for that niche). Do you have any idea or strategy to outrank those sites once you know they got #1 rank in Google for the keyword you are doing to rank too?

 

[operator00]

I think I would burn out quickly if I would read and analyze every single update Google makes and then worry about how it would affect my site and income, like some people do.

Agreed with that comment 100% trying to learn as fast as the machine learning is changing processes for Google is a full time job.

 

[William]

I'd add that, beyond receiving organic traffic or any other type (a general quality measure) and covering all other footprints, one of the worst things you can do is mismatch the topical relevance of the backlinks with the new content and new OBL's being added. That's an obvious sign of a purchased domain being co-opted. At that point it'll take them an entire 2 seconds to look at the sites you're now linking to and figuring out if you're legit or not.

726 x 213​

Thanks Ryuzaki, I understand that the relevancy of the content and backlinks is very important.

I dont buy this, it is more google PR.
Google tend to take do something and then make a fuss about it and move on, they take down one big link network and publish that "link networks are dead" and everyone goes around repeating that networks are dead. They did the same with paid links, they did the same with profile links.
I wouldnt panic about this until you see an actual impact to your rankings on your own site

Thanks Frog, I will monitor my site ranking for the decision, instead of just reading Google's notification ))