The past few months there has been a lot going on in relation to Private Blog Networks (PBNs). They’ve become extremely popular and everyone’s out looking for domains using GoDaddy Auctions, ExpiredDomains.net and similar sites.
A little more than a week ago Spencer Haws of Niche Pursuits and the guys over at No Hat Digital each shared blog posts about how their networks were hit and de-indexed:
- Alright Google, You Win… I’ll Never Use Private Blog Networks Again!
- PBN sites de-indexed, how bad were we hit?
Spencer and his partner Perrin got severely hit, getting a lot of money sites de-indexed and a lot of their network sites de-indexed as well. The No Hat Digital guys didn’t get hit that hard, even though they took a relatively massive hit.
Spencer also made a follow-up post and podcast episode called “NP 46: Why You Should NOT Build a Private Blog Network” where he and his business partner described why they’re done with PBN:s and how they’re going to move on.
Of course this sudden PBN penalization caused a stir in the SEO community – and everyone didn’t share Spencer’s opinions that PBN:s as a tactic shouldn’t be used anymore.
Glen from Viperchill.com wrote a post called ‘Why I’ll Keep Growing My Private Link Network After Google’s “Crackdown”‘ and Dale from SudoRank wrote a post called “Google PBN Crackdown? More an exercise in media scaremongering“.
Basically, they both believe that this is more of a scaremongering tactic than an actual and massive effort from Google’s side to completely shut down PBN:s.
If they could detect and shutdown PBN:s algorithmically – why haven’t they done so already?
The situation in it’s entirety is somewhat similar to what happened a few months ago when another Internet Marketer, Sebastian, got completely penalized and wiped by Google.
By all means that situation also looked lika a scaremongering tactic from Google to scare people away from using the same tactics as that guy did.
Should I continue with Private Blog Networks?
It’s definitely obvious that these lates penalizations have created a split in the SEO-community.
There are those that say it’s game over, it’s time to move over to something else and go more ‘white hat’.
There are those that say that it’s all about just creating better PBN:s.
The Niche Pursuits guys are for instance dropping PBN:s and smaller niche sites in favor of authority sites, something that Sebastian also seem to be doing since he’s working on his authority site/project Smartlend.
Guys like Glen of ViperChill and Dale of SudoRank give off the vibe that they’re not going to stop with PBN:s anytime soon.
In the end it’s all up to you and your risk appetite.
Go slow and steady and get links via outreach or fast and risky by creating your own links via a PBN? It’s your choice.