Hey guys! Wyatt here


And I've got a value-packed post for you today by one of my good SEO friends, Alexander, who is an underground SEO that is absolutely crushing it right now


We looked at the TWO main things that people are struggling with:


1) Finding powerful, cheap domains

2) Setting up hosting for PBN's the right way


So that's exactly what Alex covered in this post, and I decided to share this with you guys because of his unique strategies (especially his cool method for finding great domains)


Enjoy! And don't forget to leave a kind "thank you" in the comments below :)


- Wyatt... Out


P.S. He's a pretty smart dude, so I asked him to dumb it down for everyone but if you have questions, definitely ask them below


P.P.S. Skill Level for this Post = ADVANCED



There are going to be some requirements when building a private blog network, and they greatly vary on how strong you want your network to be.


  • Money put aside only for domains, hosting and prerequisite items - things such as hosting are monthly charges
  • Time put aside for dedicated work, I do all the work myself because for something like this, I don’t trust anyone else
  • Patience is needed, it’s going to get tedious at times, especially when you need to manage your domains and hosting accounts all at once


Now, get a cup of coffee, go do your business, it’s time to get serious.


Finding and Organizing Domains


Let’s jump right into finding domains. There are several tools available that will help us with finding expired domains, I recommend the two most popular: ExpiredDomains and DomCop. ExpiredDomains is the most popular, and it is completely free. We will be using ExpiredDomains for this tutorial.


You’re going to want to sign up if you haven’t already.



You are going to want to navigate to the deleted .com section to view all of the .com domains that have dropped.


Since we are going to be building our PBN with as little time and money as possible, we are going to try to avoid expired domains, because unlike dropped domains, they require additional fees, bidding, waiting time and further screening.


The first thing that you are going to want to do is play around with it, if you’re not already familiar with the platform. It’s like panning for gold, there is going to be a lot of garbage, but a few gems are hidden in there, and we are going to find them.


You’re going to want to click show filter on the top left, as seen in the screenshot below.

Now, setting filters is one of the hardest parts of finding domains that are gems. Below are the settings that I use for the three different tabs of the filter function:

Going in depth a little more on the options that I’ve selected:

PageRank: I have selected sites that don’t have a fake PR, unsure PR or -1 PR. Setting a filter for PR will greatly reduce the pool of domains you will have to chose from, as it has not been updated for several months and Google doesn’t plan to.


Only Available Domains: I selected this option just so we can have results of domains that are only available, sometimes domains are taken, but not removed from the results until a specific time. This is going to help us avoid false positives.


Moz Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA): These are metrics put into place by Moz, this data, however, is not used by Google as it is from a third party source. Moz is not the best at finding links (tools such as Ahrefs are better), so some of the most important links may not be crawled by Moz and the domain authority may stay low, when in reality, it is a very authoritative domain. This is just to filter out the real garbage websites and deal with a pool of decent results.


These are the filters that I have used, now let’s see the domains that we have in the pool of results.

For the sake of having the highest quality results first, we are going to sort by PR. DA and PA. First, we are going to have the highest PR sites.

Any of these domains can be picked up for $10, but the main issue is finding the domains that are good, and filtering the ones that are spammed.


We are going to be using a tool called Ahrefs (use coupon SEOBOOK for 50% off) for this. I recommend having a premium account, as it does give us a better idea of what is going on and what type of links the site has/had.


Let’s put the first domain in Ahrefs:

A lot of newbies would pick up this domain and call it a day, not examining the actual links, just looking at the PR/DA/PA. As you can see, there are currently 1,700 links from around 170 domains - 10 links per domain. It is usually good to have a maximum of two links per domain, unless the domain is a high authority one, such as Wikipedia.


Something that a lot of people ignore is the graph that Ahrefs provides. The domain had 200,000 links, and dropped to just 1,700 recently. This means that there were huge link drops, either from link farms, or blogs that expire (spammers use blog commenting and trackbacks for bulk links) that contained their link. I would avoid this domain just at this point, as it shows that when the domain was dropped, lots of links were lost as site owners saw no site on that domain (or the spam links explained above).


This is not a good domain, but for the sake of this tutorial, let’s look at some of the anchors pointing to this site.

This shows that links were obviously built, and the site was a pharma site, selling drugs.


Without even looking at the links, we can tell by the anchor text and link loss that the domain is no good.


For future reference, there should be no links built by the site owner for the domain that you are looking into. There should be only natural, high quality links from authoritative domains, this helps make the site look less like a PBN site and more legitimate.


For the anchor text, you should be looking for the URL, brand name or some natural anchor text. The anchors, such as the one above, can not be spammy, foreign (Chinese, Bengali, etc) or things like <a>NoText</a> only.

Let’s take a look at another domain.

Again, spammy. At one point, it neared 1,000,000 links. That’s never good, especially since only 385 of them are live right now.


For the sake of this tutorial, we are going to also look at the anchor text for this domain.

This is a new kind of spam, Nike, Air Jordan, outlet, etc. Anything like that should be avoided at all costs, this is going to infect your PBN and make it look like you are receiving links from bad neighborhoods.


Let’s move on, the third domain has a name of fsxds, so anything like that with random numbers or random strings shoud be avoided. A lot of Chinese links spammers use these for buying domains in bulk and utilizing the domains for link farms.


These domains are link farm domains (hence similar DA/PA and other metrics):

Now, you know what to avoid. Now, we need to find domains that are good and high quality. I went ahead and did some more tests, and found a nice domain. A few hours after writing this tutorial, someone picked this domain up, so I’m going to try to make it as anonymous as possible, but revealing at the same time.

There are some great links on there, I left some information on the links available.


As for the anchor text, the site name was NewBlueWidgets (example) and the anchor text was the domain, and also New Blue Widget, NBW contact, etc.


This is the type of anchor text that we are looking for. These are natural links and anchors that are naturally occurring on the pages.

As you can see, there were no major link losses that weren’t covered up by more natural links, right before the domain expired it received some nice links. The links are from 992 unique domains, and not just from one domain, meaning that is has a diverse link profile.


Also, a tip is to check www. and non www. on ahrefs, so and should both be checked.


Social shares on the top right also indicate that the website had engaging content for the end user, and they decided to share the URL on social media.


This is a golden domain, and compared to a lot of the domains we can buy in auction, it has put them in the dust.


To register a dropped domain, you can use any registrar such as NameCheap, 1and1, OVH - any registrar will do. I try to stay away from HostWinds as they have terrible support and threaten clients who run PBNs with fake reports they receive (someone submitted a fake report in terrible English, they suspended my services for 2 weeks until I proved it was fake).


Hosting Your Domains

After finding the domains, you’re going to need to host the domains on different IPs. A lot of users find hosting domains on different C class IPs to be sufficient. I take it a step further and try to get unique A/B class IPs as well.


aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is the format of the IP, so for example, if a site has an IP of


192 = A Class

182 = B Class

252 = C Class

16 = D Class


For hosting, you need to manipulate Google into thinking that your site is a natural site and not a PBN. This means adding SSL ($1.99 on NameCheap with purchase of a new domain) on some domains, hosting them on different C class IPs (I’ll discuss this later, and why A/B may be a better idea) and trying to not leave a footprint.


A footprint can be left by having your site hosted by the same ISP or organization, such as below.

This can be a huge footprint, if all of your websites are hosted on some random host that nobody has heard of (*cough* SEO host *cough). The site that I used for this information is Whoer, it is free and I am surprised that not many people use it. All the information you need can be found with that site.


There are many approaches that you can take to host your sites….


  • SEO Hosting
  • Multiple Shared Hosts
  • CDN


These are the 3 main ways that you can have different IPs on all of your sites.


The first option is SEO hosting. This is the easiest and cheapest method to manage your PBN sites. Now, there are quite a few things that I dislike about SEO hosting.


The main reason is that SEO hosts are just buying B blocks and selling different C blocks on the B block to all of their customers.


So, for example, let’s say that they buy


They can now assign these IP addresses: 192.64.(1-255).(1-255). When you try to host 30 sites, you’re going to have all of the sites on the same ISP and organization, and not to mention, the same B class.


It will look suspicious to Google if that is the case (same B class, ISP and organization), so if you do chose SEO hosting, you should use custom nameservers and not just the same ones on all the domains. Self hosting them is good (such as ns1.yourdomain.tld and ns2.yourdomain.tld) and will give you a little extra security if you do decide to use this method.


Again, Google can buy SEO hosting, look up all the IPs on the B block and see all the sites hosted on the sites. From there, they can conduct manual reviews, and it’s easier said than done. Your sites are relying on everyone else that is a customer of that SEO host, if one of them does something wrong and makes their site look like a PBN, the whole block of IPs may be investigated.


To mention one advantage of SEO hosting, it is the fact that most of them give WHM access, so you can choose from a selected set of IPs (usually thousands available). To add on to that, if Google buys SEO hosting, they get WHM access and the list of IPs too. Just thought I’d add this in there, as it is a neutral idea.


The second choice would be using multiple shared hosts. Now, this can be very hard to manage, so I recommend that you use an online spreadsheet service. For the love of god, do not make a Google spreadsheet and name it Private Blog Network (or make a Google spreadsheet at all) just use OneDrive, it is basically Excel online and it has all the options (better than Google Drive).


Make sure to go with hosting companies that are not resellers, the amount of times I’ve seen people have all of their sites hosted on a “different” hosts is surprising. Let me explain the reality of the situation that people experience when buying hosting from random hosts on WebHostingTalk (like so many other blogs and forums recommend):


John wants to make a quick buck. He starts a hosting company, throws up a nulled copy of WHMCS on a .info domain and makes a thread at WebHostingTalk. He is reselling off of NameCheap, and is paying around 50 cents per client. John gets all of his friends to post saying that it’s a great host, and sometimes makes new accounts himself to bump up the thread.


You go to WebHostingTalk, see the thread and buy the hosting. You also buy from 5 other people who did the same thing that John did (it’s not that uncommon, people that offer 99 cent hosting don’t usually have their own datacenter and servers). They all sell off of either NameCheap or 1and1 (just an example). You get the same C class IP, and the IPs of your 5 best domains are now so close together. This will make Google suspicious, and they will either devalue the links from your 3 sites and only count 2 (they will think it’s a similar site/same person linking to you, since you only have 5 links and they are on 2 different C classes) - those 2 will also be weaker and may be classified as bad link neighborhoods if they are linking to the same site and have everything else similar. They will be classified as more spammy, and your money site will be receiving terrible links, instead of high quality ones.


One thing you can do when using these hosts is to check on Whoer (as mentioned earlier) and see the ISP and organization. If it’s their own datacenter, go ahead and buy it. If it says something like Black Lotus Communications (or something else), do a Google search and see who owns that datacenter. If it is used by a big company like NameCheap (which Black Lotus Communications is), ignore the host and try another.


Here is a list of shared hosts that I have found on Google and several forums:








NameCheap (best by far, I use it for my own personal sites as well)






You can try those out and see which ones work for you, and always know that you can contact the hosting company and ask any questions that you may have. They are usually very helpful (again, avoid HostWinds) and will provide answers to any questions you may have if they are legitimate.


Watch out for slow ticket replies, terrible English in support staff, bad reviews online and IP ranges (discussed above) when purchasing.


You spent money on your PBN, and hosting is just one of the things that you’re going to need to have your PBN up and running. There is no alternative to spending money (please don’t use a free host, don’t get me started - it ruins your site speed, ads everywhere and the IP ranges are used by spammers for redirects and links) on your hosting, so if you cut one corner, don’t cut another and think it’ll be fine.


Now, onto the last method of hiding your IP. This method is purchasing one hosting package with unlimited sites (more or equal to the amount of sites in your PBN, if you use this method, make sure to plan ahead for any future sites that you may have). You then add your sites onto the host and then use content delivery networks (CDNs) such as CloudFlare, Incapsula (paid) and HighWinds (not to be mistaken for HostWinds, HighWinds is good, but not free) and receive a unique IP for each.


To reduce footprints, please try to transfer your domains onto your CDN (I like to use CloudFlare, since it’s the easiest, the DNS propagation is quick and your site will be up and running quickly) as quickly as possible so Google doesn’t crawl and fetch information on your domains before you add them and associate them as one group of sites (same nameservers, IP, etc). Your CloudFlare nameservers will be the same, but there are tens of thousands of other sites using those nameservers, so you should be fine on that point (this is not the case with SEO hosts, which give you a DNS like clientb484mlz.seohosting.tld) and not need to worry about it. Another issue with CloudFlare is having to pay $20 a month for SSL (if your site has SSL), as I mentioned above, to make your PBN seem more natural, adding SSL on some sites will help. If you’re using CloudFlare, I would assume that you are on a budget and not tons of extra money to spend on the extra things like that, so I’d avoid SSL if you’re using this method.


The only issue that I have with CloudFlare is the IPs. You are only given two A class IPs (this is the maximum I was able to get, even with testing of new accounts on my own computer, VPS and my other computer) and the C class IPs are usually the same. You you will get two unique “ranges” (as I like to call them), aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is one range. So you will receive something like this:




No matter how many sites you have, you will be placed on either range A or B, and be assigned a (sometimes) unique D class IP. This isn’t usually the safest approach, but there are lots of other sites hosted on those IPs, so you should be fine in that aspect.

These are a list of the IP ranges that CloudFlare has, I asked support to assign me different unique A/B/C class IPs, but they said that it is random and refused to.

(I didn’t blur out the IPs for a reason, I have moved away from CloudFlare for a little over two months to the shared hosting method after the idea of the IP ranges and having no control over changing them.)


That should do it for hosting. A tip for hosting, though. If you’re using the CDN or SEO hosting methods, make sure to have different whois.

(I have seen some people do this and spoof the privacy protection because they were cheap )

(I’m not quite sure if it’s allowed by the registrar, but they seemed to have no problem)


Name: Domain Registrant

Address: 123 Main Lane

City: Brighton

State: Michigan

ZIP: 48116

Email: [email protected]


I would fill my information when registering as this:


First Name: Domain

Last Name: Registrant

City: Brighton

State: Michigan

ZIP: 48116

Email: [email protected]


Make sure to change the unique identifiers, such as the email.


I think it’s easier to use a registrar that gives free privacy protection (NameCheap does this) and not have to worry about faking information (keep it diverse by using different registrars, though).


To conclude this section, I am currently using some CDNs (CloudFlare, not with the IPs above, Incapsula and - which is pay as you go, but I don’t get much traffic on my PBN sites, so it’s very very very low in cost) and some shared hosts for my PBN, but mainly shared hosts as my PBN has several hundred domains and only the ones I’ve spent $500+ are put into a unique host (not a cheap one) and a CDN.


Closing Notes


To manage your PBN, you can use obviously use our tool CloudPBN  but you can also do all of the below manually.


We recommend that you use different themes, using WordPress is completely fine, as that itself is almost no footprint at all.


If you’re going to use spun content, at least have good sources of the spun content and don’t go to Wikipedia, copy the whole page and put it in some free spinner.


Never share your domains with anyone, the amount of times I’ve seen people brag about their PBNs and then complain why it’s deindexed is surprising.


This is important, nobody pays attention to it. To make your PBN powerful, you need to have full posts shown on the homepage of the site, not just the excerpt that says read more. If the link in not in the first xx characters (this depends on the theme) of most themes, it will not be included on the homepage and only on an inner page. You want to make sure that it is a full post on the homepage that shows so that you get the link on there as well. You can use themes that show full posts (experiment with a few, preview them and keep a list) or just use this information if you want to do it manually.


You can use plugins such as Spyder Spanker to block crawlers, but all that does is edit your htaccess file. You can do that yourself, and it can be much more efficient. I don’t trust plugins to do it myself.




# Block All Bad Bots

User-agent: AhrefsBot

Disallow: /

User-agent: Alexibot

Disallow: /

User-agent: MJ12bot

Disallow: /

User-agent: SurveyBot

Disallow: /

User-agent: Xenu’s

Disallow: /

User-agent: Xenu’s Link Sleuth 1.1c

Disallow: /

User-agent: rogerbot





SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*rogerbot.* naughty

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*mj12bot.* naughty

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*ahrefsbot.* naughty


Order Allow,Deny

Allow from all

Deny from env=naughty


Like everything else, this isn’t foolproof and doesn’t work all of the time. Make sure that you are taking all necessary precautions to keep your sites safe.


All of the information above comes from personal experience and running hundreds of sites for my private blog network.


If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment and our team will be happy to answer it below. We are always happy to see comments, and happy to answer any questions you may have. We all started somewhere :)


To your success,

The DripApps Team

Comments (139)

  1. Wow! I guess I know what I'll be reading tonight. Thank you!

  2. Hey Wyatt

    What's the position on using subdomains as individual sites within your PBN? Good or crazy?

    • Hi,

      Subdomains on a single domain (,, won't work as well as unique domains. Since all of the links come from one domain, it won't be as powerful. I recommend spending some money on expired domains and hosting. Let us know if you have any more questions (:

  3. Very in-depth tutorial, thank you. How many blog website do we need to rank xbox live gold gratuit? Thanks.

    • Hi, it is different for each niche. It all depends on how powerful your PBN domains are, your previous links, domain age and lots of other factors.

      Please let us know if you have any more questions.

  4. Great tutorial! Just wanted to leave a "thank you" :)

  5. I'm with Aman on this one. A lot of bullshit in the SEO community, mainly from people like GodOfSEO and Matthew Woodward promoting affiliate links, not knowing what they're talking about - literally, every three words, you see an affiliate link. I was expecting to find a few in this one, but to my surprise, there was only a CloudPBN link (not affiliate) - I did already have the tool, but yes, it's a very good tool. Now, back on topic. Keep churning out posts like these and I'll definitely keep coming back... you've got me hooked.

  6. I like it thanks, please keep it up and posting more for us seo noobies...

  7. The real deal, definitely. Any idea when the next post is going to be out?

  8. Great post, thank you. For the linking to bad neighborhoods, like you mentioned in the post, that really did spark a few things in my mind. First time I've heard that, and quite frankly, it probably explains things I've been doing wrong with my (current) private blog network. The question that came up was if we buy links from BHW or any other forum selling private blog network links, what are the risks of being associated with spammy domains? Thanks, looking forward to more!

    • The main problem with networks that do sell publicly... is that they're not private anymore. The amount of times I've bought a small package, usually under $50 from BHW to test a service, and none of them do the things I list in this post. I just check on ahrefs the next day, and see terrible sites linking to me, with tons of other links to sites that have been penalized, are promoting pharmacy products and lots of things that you don't want to associate yourself with. They usually do charge more than $10 per post, and the domains are terrible. You can get better domains and make unlimited posts on your own network for $10 (a new domain) - so it's a better idea to not use those kinds of services. Make sure that you don't "share" links on your PBN, a lot of people ask to trade, they give you x posts if you give them x posts, but in reality, it's not safe as you risk linking to bad neighborhoods + getting bad links in return.

      Don't hesitate to post if you have any more questions :)

  9. This is some good stuff here.
    Nice job Alex.

    BTW, are you alex the pbn dude from BHW?

    • Thanks Shay! I'm not AlexThePBNDude from BHW, I don't post much on BHW, although I'm a donor, but I mainly lurk.

      Don't hesitate to ask any questions, that's what we're here for! :)

      • OK,
        I happen to have a question about the Whoer tool you just showed.
        Let's say I'm now on the look for a shared hosting on WHT.
        How do I use this tool and what exactly am I supposed to check with it?

        • Hi Shay,

          You can just go to Whoer and type in your website or an IP. Click enter, and as soon as you do, you can view the information about the host, whois, and lots of other information. It's great to use for comparison of sites in your PBN.

          • This is good, however many times the website of the hosting company itself is actually hosted somewhere else and not on the server he's offering. So how does this help us?

  10. Tons of info.

    Thanks Wyatt!

  11. Great value Wyatt ! Alexander you're guys make a great team. I'm really glad I'm on board.

  12. Question - is it safe to transfer domain registrar to GoDaddy because their yearly fees for renewal are the lowest (or any domain name provider) and point cnames at different hosts (i.e...SEOHost, BizBuilderhosting, CDNs, etc...)where we can control the IP addresses?

    • I wouldn't recommend using an SEO host, but if you do, make sure to ask for unique nameservers per domain. So it's and, being your domain name (SEO hosts usually give you nameservers like client123qaz.seohost.tld - make sure to request unique ones). For registrar, I recommend diversifying it up, but, as long as your nameservers and whois information is unique, you should be fine.

  13. Fantastic tutorial. Good info on PR/DA/PA when you explained them a bit more in detail, great marketing info for noobs like me :p

  14. Cool, thanks for the information. Any idea if these are sape links? I hear a lot about them and i'm wondering how to make my own sape links from my private blog network.

    • Hi John,

      Sape links are different links that aren't related to PBNs. You can find more information here:

      If you're going to buy Sape links, make sure to buy them on your own and not from resellers - you're better off as you have more control over your links (cancel anytime, know what sites your links are on) and it's much cheaper.

  15. I've talked with a seo pro who has used HostNine for his PBN's for over 6 yrs and feels that's pretty safe. I'm assuming you disagree with that approach?

    • Hi Phil,

      A friend of mine, running over two hundred sites for his PBN, used HostNine for a few months. He did have some issues setting the accounts up, and the IPs overlapping. I've never tried it myself, but I've seen HostNine recommended by people on forums. The next week, they wonder why their PBN was deindexed. What we're trying to achieve with hosting is to make it look like we're not a spammer. I've never been deindexed when using OVH, GoDaddy, HostGator and NameCheap. Hosts like these aren't usually investigated, as so many people use them. However, for hosts, like HostNine, it seems like a lot of people building PBNs are using them (from what I've seen) and the support is lacking. I'd stay away from them personally, but that's all from what I've heard and some personal experience with other hosts.

      If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask :)

      • Hi Alexander,
        I posted this question in the wrong place so I'm asking it again. If you host your PBNs in Hostgator, GoDaddy and the like so they look legit, where do you host your money sites? I read that they should be kept separate. Your opinion?

  16. Question: how long does it take to rank a website with a pbn?

    P.S: Really good blog post!!!

    • Hi Michael,

      It really does depend on how many domains you have, your current rankings, content, domain age, how powerful your domains are - so many factors play a role in that. If you could give me some of your stats such as amount of domains and more information about your money site (competition, domain age, pages indexed) and your PBN (how many sites, hosting information, current OBL and stats), I can give you a better estimate.


  17. What about using Amazon s3 along with Cloudfront for your host? Seems to meet all the needs. Thanks and great post.

    • Hi Keith,

      The only CDN I have personally used is CloudFlare, but, it's a good thing to have a few of your domains on a CDN if you do have an especially large network. I assume that you're put on an IP with other users, so your PBN site should be fluffed and look more legitimate since actual businesses and blog owners are using that IP.


  18. Thanks Alex!

  19. You two are the perfect team; great tutorial.

    • Glad you enjoyed!

      • How many times should you link to your money site, if you have about 5 posts on the PBN site?

        • I usually try to stay away from linking more than once, if it is a long article and you do have other links to sites (such as Wikipedia and other authority sites), you can link more than once (however, don't go crazy linking it twice every sentence) - I recommend a different anchor.

          • So if we only used one link per site we would require lots of other domains if we intended to create several backlinks to our money site. Is this what you're saying or am I missing your point?

  20. Is it better to use posts or pages for a PBN?

    • I personally use posts (automated with CloudPBN), much easier and faster - better results, as I did do a test with this (mainly because they are embed on the homepage - discussed in the post).

  21. Hey guys,
    Excellent post.

    What's the maximum amount of posts and links per posts do you recommend on each domain?

  22. Fantastic post guys!

  23. Information-filled article, thanks for all the new information. I'm thinking of signing up for CloudPBN - but what are the differences between that and other free WP management softwares?

    • Glad you enjoyed!

      The main benefits are the ability to optimize multiple PBN sites at once with plugins, themes, titles, etc. Also, you can generate spun posts with links (Contextual links after today's update) and you can build tier 2 video links. We're also in the process of integrating more tier 2 options

  24. Having been in web design for over 10 years, I have access to a few domains where the company went OOB, or one I used at one point for a project that I never went thru with.
    I have some domains with PA of about 20 and DA of mid 20s. Are those ok to use? We aren't talking about domains that had many links...just a few in most cases.
    Also, if I find for example a relatively new name 1/100 1/00 pa and da, but it is relevant to a niche, say, real estate, is it sound or not to try to build up that domain to a strength that would make it beneficial due to its relevance?

  25. Thank you for the post, it is an awesome read!

    I just want to clarify on your shared hosting method. Do you used a unique domain for each hosting package or are you using multiple domains on some hosting packages?

  26. I have been purchasing expired domains and they all are in godaddy. I purchased whois privacy protection for each of them. Is that sufficient.............if I own say 10 domains in a single godaddy account with whois privacy protection............or should I transfer to namecheap or something like that and/or set up the fake whois information and skip the $7.99 whois protection at godaddy. If you get a domain at a godaddy auction, and then immediately transfer it to another registrar, does that not still create a trail tied to your name/godaddy account?

    • Hi Steve,

      As long as Google did not crawl your site in between the time of transferring, you should be good. As for registrar, you should try to diversify it a bit, but it's not necessary to have 1 domain per registrar, as it is for hosting (most sites use eNom and are resellers anyway).



  27. Would You Ever Purchase A Domain THAT Has 30 Or More DA but no PA at all.

    • In my experience DA & PA have not improved my rankings. I have a money site with both of those metrics being greater than 40 but it's not ranked by Google.

      • Hi Ben,

        Metrics such as DA and PA can easily be inflated, as discussed in the article. I did have a churn and burn money site with a DA of 81 and a similar PA. However, that does not mean that the links pointing to the site are quality links, as they have just been inflated with spam. Again, as discussed in the article, it's important to look at the links.



        • Yes, agreed Alex - I normally do, but it's hard to find a deleted one that easily these days since others have also learned what to look for and they pick them up much quicker than they used to before :)

    • Hi Ralph,

      This is the case when a lot of the links pointing to the domain are pointing to the www. version. Make sure to check the www. version for DA/PA, as I can almost guarantee you that it does not have a PA of 1.



  28. Thanks for the info!

    Ok, I may be a dolt, but I have a few questions.

    1) In the middle of the post, you refer to custom nameservers-


    Is this the same as 'vanity' nameservers? My understanding is that you would create a custom nameserver, say and, which would actually point to the original nameservers, and Is this correct? Is that what you mean by 'self-hosting' or 'custom' nameservers? If not, PLEASE explain further.

    2) Are you saying that you DO NOT recommend using SEO hosting like, (I think they're a sister company of host9) and instead get hosting from a variety of different providers (after verifying that they have their own data center), spreading your domains around and getting different class A and B IP addresses AND throw a few of them on a CDN? I was a bit confused as to what your recommendation was in this regard.

    3) Whois - Would it be OK to use a fake name service for your whois information, as an alternative to private registration? I have seen some that will give you a complete 'identity' along with a working email address that can receive email. Would that be sufficient to keep from leaving any unnecessary footprints?

    Thanks again for the info and I apologize for my long-windedness.

    Looking forward to hearing what you have to say!


    • Anything??

      • Hi Willie,

        Sorry for the late reply, something unfortunate came up.

        Thanks for the info!

        Yes, that is the same thing as vanity name servers, they only take a few minutes to set up and they really do reduce the footprints, if you do decide to go with SEO hosting.

        Again, I don't recommend SEO hosting, especially the site that you mentioned. They give you WHM access and you get a full list of IPs that you can choose from (they are all very close together, such as and - all Google needs to do is note these IP addresses down and visit them at a later date to uncover a PBN.

        That should be fine, under the hosting section of the post, I did discuss this further.

        Thanks for your comment, and I apologize for the late reply.

        All the best,


  29. Thanks, that was an excellent post. totally worth the read

  30. Thanks guys this was very helpful. Does your money site need to be hosted separately from your PBN feeder sites if using SEO Hosting? Is it important to have high PR,DR,BL on your money site and is it vital to have a EMD for your money site or not?
    Thanks again, I look forward to your next post.

    • Hi Richard,

      EMD's do not carry as much power as they used to back in the day, as long as the quality of the links and content on your site is good, you should be in excellent shape.

      You should use a different host for your money site and your PBN sites, it lowers the risk of any footprints and getting deindexed by Google.



  31. Thanks for the great info.

  32. Hey Wyatt,

    This is a $1,000 post full of extremely helpful information. Thank you for posting this!

    I have a question about deleted domains. You explained the cons of getting expired domains and the pros of getting deleted domains.

    I joined OMG a couple of years ago and Greg Morrison (a real SEO genius) said to only get expired domains and stay away from deleted domains. If I remember correctly, I think he said that deleted domains lose their backlinks and link juice (unlike expired domains) and you have to start all over with them, whereas with expired domains you still benefit from their backlinks and link juice. Could you provide more clarity on this as I'm a bit confused?

    Looking forward to your next great post, keep them coming!

    • Hi Wayne,

      As long as the domain still has the links pointing to it, you should be fine in the link juice aspect. The real problem is when the domain has been deleted and been unregistered for weeks or months, then the sites linking to it may notice and remove the link, the link juice would then be gone and Google would be suspicious if the domain was registered again.

      However, if it's been deleted for a few hours and then reregistered, it would still have all of the links (as nobody checks the outgoing links on their site 24/7) and Google wouldn't suspect anything - as things such as deletion do happen to normal domains as well, and the issue would most likely be fixed before Google crawls the site again.


  33. Hi Alex,
    Great tutorial!
    I have recently gone back and forth in the issue of sub domains...someone else asked the question, and you provided an excellent answer. Thx!

    Another issue that has bothered me is the details that get published in WHOIS. Most of my domains profiles are public knowledge. I am assuming that Google can access anything in WHOIS whether you spend the money to keep your info private or not. Is the correct, or does the "privacy coverage" really protect you from Google eyes?

    Thanks for the great tutorial,


    • A godaddy rep once told me that the only way to get inside the privacy files is by court order due to a probably cause of criminal activity or trademark infringement, for example.
      Take it for what it's worth, hearsay, but privacy should mean privacy.

    • Hi Juan,

      Whois privacy means privacy, even though Google is now a registrar, the chance of them linking your sites together with a suspicion that they may have your whois info linked together shouldn't be your biggest worry. As long as you take the precautions listed in the post - you should be fine :)


    • You shouldn't have a concern when you pay for privacy protection on your domain names. Privacy protection is offered by separate, private companies, not affiliated with Google. And as they stated, the only way one of these registrars would reval your real identity is with a court order. Also another quick note, lying on your WHOIS information is against ICANN. If they suspect you of this, they'll try and contact you with the whois info you listed. Your job as a domain owner is to make sure that all of that information remains current. Most registrars that offer whois privacy, automatically forward emails send to the ghost address you gave them. The only concern would be if google got to the point where they saw all of your links were on sites that protected their WHOIS privacy. (But I see that as something that won't be highly weighed and won't be of interest for sometime)

  34. Great info. Thanks

  35. Hey Wyatt,
    Great info! A good step by step process and unlike other so called "experts" you haven't left out any chunks! Keep it up!

  36. This is a great post plenty of great info to help us with our PBN's thank you

  37. Hi Guys

    Great post.

    Just wanted to ask your opinion if I may. My plan is build out a 20-30 site network to rank sites in the Uk. I was planning for now to use a different shared host (all based in the UK) for each site with privacy whois activated on the domain. Does this sound like a solid plan and is there anything else I need to consider. Thanks for any advice


    • Sounds like a great idea! Good luck, let us know if you need anything else. If you're looking to rank in the UK specifically, check out the expired domains instead of .com, may find some gems in there as well.

  38. Re renting links...Becker suggests one way of quickly ranking a site could be renting links. In other words, rent existing links to quickly rank your money site and then you can take your time to build your PBN. When you have finished building your PBN you won't need to rent anymore.

    He suggests paying about $30 a month for a PR 4 link and only rent from someone who has 10 links or less from a site.....better yet 5 links or less.

    Could you please comment on renting links as a temporary solution....and then what to pay for the link rental. Thanks a lot!

    • Hi Phil,

      When renting links, the price can increase a lot before you even notice. For example, if you're paying $30/month for a PR4 link, you're most likely not going to rank with just one. Say you buy 20, you're putting $600 for the first month of links - which you can spend on a private blog network (60 domains). Again, it is really up to you, but the focus of this is to get long term rankings, you should look into churn and burn or SAPE (pick the cheap 10 cent links) if you're looking for fast/temporary rankings.


  39. Great Tutorial Alex, bookmarked it.

    I want to know if domains lose their age once we register them for our PBN sites?

    Are these domains less effective than aged domains which people buy in Godaddy auctions?

    • Thanks PJ!

      They'll be just like new domains - age isn't as important as the link profile and other metrics. You can have a 10 year old domain name with no links, but a new domain with high quality links is much better.



  40. "do a Google search and see who owns that datacenter."

    Could you please be more specific?
    What to type into google exactly to find this info, and what to look out for?
    Is there any particular sites that give this exact information.

    I understand the idea but I don't know exactly the results I'm looking for.
    Thanks very much for your help :)

    I enjoyed your excellent post by the way, and found it most informative and useful.

    • Hi,

      For example, if a reseller (reseller1.tld) buys off of NameCheap and resellers, his site is likely hosted on NameCheap as well. You go to Whoer, type in reseller1.tld and find out that the organization is Black Lotus Communications. You then do a quick Google search and confirm that they are a reseller, hence avoiding that host and going onto a new host.


  41. Having purchased CloudPBN, what I personally think would be super cool is a step by step tutorial on the best way to build on a PBN. This article was a good first step and very appreciated.

    So after this article, we've gone out, bought some great domains and obviously will keep checking expireddomains for new gems we can purchase with an aim to building a PBN with 70-100 sites in it.

    We get the domains setup (install wordpress etc.), fire up CloudPBN and pull in the domains .... now what?

    Say we have 10 PBNs; do we let cloudPBN create a new post for each, let it spin the same post across all 10, does each spun article have to reflect different anchor text?

    Moving on from that, do you promote the PBN sites at all? Social share them, etc.?

    A proper step by step process on building out a PBN from people like Wyatt and Alexander would be an amazing treat!


    • After you get your domains, you should start hosting them. If you need any help, check the hosting section above for reference, or just comment down here and we'll do our best to help you out.

      As for content, since you do own CloudPBN, you should just be able to load all of your sites in and manage them with a click of a few buttons. The content will be relevant and a contextual link will be pointing to your site.

      As for promoting the PBN posts, you don't have to. The main reason we pick up expired domains is because they are already authoritative, so just publish a post and you're good to go! You said you plan on having 70-100 sites. Let's say you make 5 posts, you're going to have to send social signals to 500 pages - which will cost more than it's worth. CloudPBN does build quality tier 2 links - so you're good in that aspect as well.

      We're here if you have any more questions :)

  42. Hey guys,

    I'll be answering all of the unreplied comments when I get home (in a few hours).


  43. Disappointed. You're publishing posts like these and giving them out to the general public - they're full of information - BUT why are we paying for Drip University if you're posting all of the juicy stuff here.

    Either make tutorials like this (high quality like this one) in the Drip University panel or don't post here and just post there.

    Just my 2¢

  44. Hi Wyatt!

    Thanx for this... Excactly what I need since I'm a complete PBN newbie. Will take some time for me to start implementing since I haven't stated buying domains yet.
    Thanx again - excited to learn more

    • Hi Per,

      Thanks for the comment! We're here if you have any questions!


      • Hi again Alexander & Wyatt!
        Again - Thank You for the great work You do!

        I'm returning to this thread since I just bought my first deleted domain (via GoDaddy) and I thought I just swing by here to get some feedback on my plans. I also bought Private Domain Registration - seems logical right?

        I'm planning to try to buy my next domains via other registrars than GoDaddy in the future - to spread it out a bit - is this important or not ???

        Having read through this post several times I have decided to go with SEO hosting after all (simplicity) and I'm most likely will use ASEOHosting since they offer Private Name Servers. My plans are pretty modest - I will go for a PBN of 5-8 sites to start with since I just have 2 money sites at the moment.

        I'm based in Europe so I will also get a European package from them - Is that important or not?

        Would love to get some feedback on this - did I forget anything or are there some glaring mistakes I need to take care of???


        • Hi Guys...
          I of course realize that You are very busy butI would love to get some quick feedback on this.

          On a separate note - this post and all the comments is really gold. You could take all this and transform it into great, extended training on how to find and set up PBN's...

          All the Real-World questions are here...


  45. Waytt;

    I bought Cloud PBN and it's an awesome product...... I love it...
    Any tips on how to Optimize my PBN's thru Cloud PBN to avoid Google's recent deindexing.....?

    Thanks for the great information.

    • Glad you like it! Your best bet would be to mix it up-- keep it as natural as possible. Use different plugins and different themes on each site. If you want to stay on the safe side, use the custom post option.

  46. Great post guys, picked up 5 good domains with this process today, I use Majestic vs Ahref, but all good. Lot more to weed through than Register Compass, but its easy enough to screen out domains that just plain &*%#.

    • Wanted to mention... I spent $26.20 on these 5 domains. Use the chrome extension "Honey" and you will save money on domains and a whole lot more. A

      • Hi Greg,

        Thanks for the comment. I try to stay away from those coupons because they usually charge more the following year, charge extra for things such as whois, don't allow you to change nameservers (learned the hard way) and lots of other things. Glad you got 5 domains, though! There are some real gems in the millions of domains listed on ExpiredDomains, so it's just a matter of time until you find one.

        Let me know if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer.


        • I bought the domains on GoDaddy.

          How could GoDaddy charge me anything other than a standard renewal rate?
          On nameservers, if I own the domain, how would i not be able to change the namerservers?

          I have used the "honey" extension for months now and never had an issue. That doesnt mean something wont happen in the future,but I am curious how problem could/would occur.

  47. always great!...but i have a question.. most of deleted domains from expireddomains dot net are not indexed by google..or removed by google due to not hosted. so unindexed domain will work ?

    • If the domain is not blacklisted, then it will get indexed within 48 hours normally.

      • Just like to add. A lot of people seem to worry about indexing. It's ranking which you should be worried about. It's very rare that domains won't get indexed, even parked domains get indexed quickly.

    • You should be checking the link profile first, if all is good, then you shouldn't worry about them being indexed as much. Usually, if they've been dropped for more than a few days, Google will remove the site from the index and then reindex when the site is back up, with content. As long as the links and anchor text look clean, you're good to go.

  48. Hey, where do I put in a coupon code at Ahrefs? I've got a free account, but there's nowhere I can find to try the coupon...

    • coupon code is for paid service. when you will purchase a monthly subscription just put that coupon code and get discount.

      • Yeah, I tried to pay, but I got taken directly to the PayPal payment and never saw a place for the coupon. Maybe I was on the annual option (I did look at both monthly and annual) and they don't let you use a coupon for that.

  49. Some people who work with Local Businesses and charge them recurring seo fees will sometimes set up small PBN's of about 10 sites each. In other words a PBN for each small business. Does this sound like a plan that might work?

    It seems these small PBN's could be put together fairly fast with Cloud PBN.

  50. Great tutorial. - thanks.

    What settings do you use with DomCop? (a service I just discovered)

  51. WOW!! That was AWESOME!! Thanks for the valuable information. Truly appreciate it.

  52. Hi Great post guys,

    I have a quick question:
    When I signed up for Cloud PBN, I decided to go with ASEO hosting as that is what was recommended in the tutorial. I guess I'll stick with them for now.

    Here is my question, I have 5 PBN's hosted on ASEO hosting and they have been there for perhaps 2 weeks. They all have the same nameservers. Is it safe to change these nameservers after the fact, because I would like them to be unique as you suggest.

  53. Good gracious, how many pages of domains do you usually have to go through to find anything? I've been looking for hours!

    • At first most people get excited but after seeing the amount of work one has to do to find a half decent domain, then gradually most people give up. Of course if you're doing it manually.

  54. First of all thanks Wyatt, I'm loving this,,,
    I do have a question.
    With PBN's is it ok to use a domain and then use sub domains off that same one

    Will this work with pbn or is it better not to use sub domains?


  55. Hello great stuff, I am having issues with domains and by mistake purchased a couple with fake pr (wasted $70) , the filters did not work for some reason , is there a 100% sure fire tool to detect fake PR?
    thank you

    • Don't even look at the PR :P Just look at the backlink profile, and you can look at the PR of the sites that are linking to the domain in question

  56. Thanks Wyatt,

    if i use different email ids and different accounts to purchase domains and different hosting by using same paypal or credit card it would be any problem?

  57. Amazing information only going over it for five times

  58. Hi Alex,

    Very informative post, thanks. I have a couple of questions relating to PBNs. Should a PBN site only link to a money site 1 time or if not what is the maximum number of times it can be linked? Secondly, can a PBN site be used to link to several money sites? If so if there an ideal maximum number of money sites which should be linked to it? Thank You

  59. Hey, Thanks a lot for the training.
    I was searching this on Google to build my first PBN, but I was confused where to start.
    You covered everything here.
    So, Thanks Again....

  60. Wow! Thank you for sharing such indept information, I certainly learned a lot from it.
    Will definitely be reading more of your blogs.

  61. Hi to affiliate marketing...I picked up 10 expired Tumblr blogs that Simon from Raw offered out to the group. I get that they will give juice but how do I use them or hook them all up. Say I want to promote a face cream..Do I register a new domain, build a site and then link all the Tumble blogs or just one blog to the new site or use the blog domain with a new pathname on the new site...I can't seem to figure this out. Can you help me.....

  62. Hello,
    Nice post.
    Is an IP address with 198.xx.xx.xx better than 192.xx.xx.xx ?

    • Hi Siddardha,

      The A-class on the IP doesn't matter, as long as the A/B are unique -- do not strive for C/D as they leave a large footprint.


  63. I was wondering what % of PBNs you acquire via scraping and processing lots of domains to sift out the gold flakes, and then register them, vs. simply using tools like moonsy and major auctions? I would imagine a mix would be fine with the first method the domains are cheaper, and with auctions they are likely more costly but probably have some pretty solid sites in there...

    I was also thinking it will be best to host each domain on its own unique cheap hosting account, yes this is a logistic pain, but it just makes the most sense to me. I was also considering "stacking" say 1-3 domains on the same account, where the 3 domains would be in different markets, pointing to separate money/target sites.

    My final question is, since at least initially until your network is big and strong enough to start to drive your $ sites up and produce revenue, your out of pocket especially for the several recurring hosting accounts monthly, I am trying to think of a way to sell/rent a small number of links in order to cover the host costs and maybe even provide a little extra to buy more domains with. Of course the best option is to avoid this, but does anyone have any thoughts on how this could be done mitigating as much risk as possible? This would be for my $ sites really, as for doing same with clients they would be paying monthly (to build a nice PBN portfolio)

    Oh, I was also considering doing a very in depth due diligence process and possibly service for checking out domains prior to purchase, essentially doing the initial basics taught on many guides, but then running the final list through a service like (I don't recall the exact names) but they were like "link risk analyzer" and another that had a great suite of cool tools, may have been link research tools....they seem pricey, but my thoughts are if your planning on selling the domain on, it would give the buyer more confidence and possibly command a better selling price, and likely most useful when considering a domain at auction that's getting expensive...

    Just my semi rambling thoughts for today lol

  64. Just wanted to add, I was actually thinking of creating clusters of domains for various purposes. For example, the first one would be created with the intention of selling a handful of links while keeping it as safe as possible given the circumstances. the purpose of this initial network would be to generate positive revenue flow, which would then fund another network that would remain totally private. This would avoid exposing your personal network while supplementing to build out cost also.

    I plan to try and create each site as if it's a stand alone website, that could be developed into a larger entity that could be leveraged down the road if it shows promise. My goal is to build a community of these sites thAt can be leveraged to kick start a new $ site on call and in due time sold off the portfolio to the highest bidder! Virtual real estate lol

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