PBN Backlinks: Should You Avoid Them?

PBN (Private Blog Network) backlinks are hyperlinks from websites created to sell links and boost another website’s search engine rankings and manipulate Google.

As a link building specialist, just knowing that PBNs are against Google policies is not enough. We should understand how to identify them. Here is why I am separating important points and methods on how I do:

#1 Website Design

Look at this image above. As you can see, there are no investments in UI/UX. Of course, if the website is created to sell the backlink, why invest in a unique interface? On the homepage, the first things you can notice are the blog articles and nothing else.

#2 Topics of the website

Mostly, the PBN websites have no specific topic they write about. They can write from social media to healthcare. You can even notice that the topic authors are the same. In my opinion, really impossible to write a specific topic regarding the healthcare industry and education at the same high level. Here is why I do not rely on the information provided on PBN websites. In short, no clear focus on the platform.

#3 Lack of “About us” page and a trustworthy “Contact us” page

In many PBN sites, you can not find an “About US” page. Instead, you can see the contact us page, where website owners do not have professional emails like Johny@example.com. Most of the PBN sites do not even spend time or money on the nuances of the professional structure of their emails or something like that. I am not screening something in this part as I do not want to show other people information. You can not find members of the team on LinkedIn or any other social media sites.

#4 Unnatural Links and Aggressive Content Promotions

Look at the image below. The backlink is bold text. In case you see sensitive content like this one, connected with the surgery, and a specific location, this can be a signal that the link can be promoted with money. I will highly recommend not even looking at that website and staying away from even contacting them.

#5 Checking Domain History

There are still people who buy expired domains and use them as PBNs. This can be manipulative, as the domain that got many backlinks to the niche website with relevant anchors, and if, after re-registering the domain, the niche is changing, the website value is not the same as in the past. If you notice something strange, you can use just two tools to not harm your website:

• WHO.IS – This will help us to understand the domain owner information and compare it with the name of today’s owner.
• web.archive.org – Wayback Machine will help us to understand the past niche of that website’s homepage. Always compare it with the current situation.

#6 Checking Traffic Metrics And Their Positions On Google

Two cases can indicate their low quality by checking the traffic.  The first is when it is totally 0, and the second is the types of keywords they ranked for. In the image above, I have screened the performance of one of the PBN sites via Ahrefs; many of them lack a long-term strategy. Here is why you can notice strange drops in their traffic and performance. I check it via tools like Ahrefs or Semrush. Also, you can look at the keywords they ranked for and the traffic value. Ahrefs also provides a traffic value metric. If the traffic value of the domain is 0, then it can be a signal that it is a PBN site.

#7 AI Content

Most of the PBN websites do not create valuable content. They generate text to fill the article, and they use different tools like ChatGPT or something like that. I do not want to say that you can not generate an idea or do research with ChatGPT, but the content quality, of course, is harmed when the text is written by robots.

In short, yes! But let’s point out what their pros and cons.

Pros

✅ Fast results for short-term goals

✅ Control over your anchor texts

✅ Cheap link-building expenses

✅ If you have your own PBN website, the link is free 🙂

Cons

❌ Your site can be penalized

❌ Risks of deindexation

❌ Losing money and time

❌ Losing trust in Google’s eyes

❌ Problem selling your website in the future

What to do if you have a PBN backlink?

Let’s say that you are affected by your competitor’s SEO attack. What do they do if they can not win you in the market? In short, they are buying links from PBN sites, signaling Google to harm your site. In that case, the only thing you can do is find that links and create a document for disavowing them. This is the only thing you can do to signal to Google that it is not your approach. At the same time, I would rather recommend outsourcing link building to the experts so that they can build natural links. This will help to recover your past page positions you had before getting toxic links.

PBN backlinks, or as said, toxic backlinks, can harm your website’s SEO. If you want to increase your brand awareness across search engines, I would rather recommend that you avoid PBN links. Instead, find a contextual link building service that will create a strategy for your white-hat backlink approach.