• Ideas
    • Start Here
    • Team Management
    • Mindset
    • FBA
  • Build
    • Money Site Creation
    • WordPress
  • Monetize
    • Income Reports
  • Grow
    • Link Building
  • Tools
    • Tutorials
  • Services
  • About
    • Contact
  • Ideas
    • Start Here
    • Team Management
    • Mindset
    • FBA
  • Build
    • Money Site Creation
    • WordPress
  • Monetize
    • Income Reports
  • Grow
    • Link Building
  • Tools
    • Tutorials
  • Services
  • About
    • Contact
  • Ideas
    • Start Here
    • Team Management
    • Mindset
    • FBA
  • Build
    • Money Site Creation
    • WordPress
  • Monetize
    • Income Reports
  • Grow
    • Link Building
  • Tools
    • Tutorials
  • Services
  • About
    • Contact
  • Ideas
    • Start Here
    • Team Management
    • Mindset
    • FBA
  • Build
    • Money Site Creation
    • WordPress
  • Monetize
    • Income Reports
  • Grow
    • Link Building
  • Tools
    • Tutorials
  • Services
  • About
    • Contact

Category: Link Building

Everything you need to know about PBN creation and the use of expired domains to help your sites rank!
Link Building

How to Check Backlinks of Domains

 

Over the last 8 years my team has been finding domains, buying domains and building PBN sites for both my own portfolio as well as clients. One of the most important parts in the whole process is finding quality domains that can give your PBN some power, and in turn give your money site some power.

 

Most people believe that just going based on metrics such as Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) are really the only things that matter when deming whether or not the domain is good. However most people forget that these expired domains were once used for something else and so checking the backlinks of the domain to ensure there isn’t anything spammy going on is very important and is often overlooked. You don’t want to put your money site at risk by getting links from a domain that has spammy links pointing to it because Google could penalize you for that.

 

Below, is a step by step guide on how you spot check the backlinks of the domains to ensure they were not once abused. For looking at the backlink profile, we always like to use Majestic as it is one of the more reliable tools that we have used.

 

Example of a Bad Domain

For this example, we are going to use the domain ablasor.com

 

As we can see in Majestic, it has a bit of TF and CF (although you want to try and get to as much of a 1:2 ratio as possible. If you can get a 1:1 that’s even better.

But there are two other places that need to be checked. The anchor text profile and the backlinks.

 

For the anchor text profile, you can see that their are not only spammy words being used but also foreign anchor text. This is a clear sign that this domain has been abused.

However, sometimes the Anchor Text appears to be normal and we would have to also check the backlinks to ensure there isn’t any foreign or spammy links.

As you scroll through the list of backlinks, first check to see if there are any unusual or foreign texts.

If there isn’t anything that stands out, click on a few links and open them up to see if there is anything suspicious that pops up. When we open up a few we get some pages that look like the below. This is a clear sign of spam.

Example of a Good Domain

In this example we are going to look at the domain platinumassetdiscovery.com

 

That domain has good TF and CF and has a pretty close ration of 1:1 which is a good start.

When looking at the anchor text profile of the domain, we can see that the anchor text words are relevant to what the domains topical trust flow is which is Society/law. There is also no spammy or foreign words.

When we go and look at the backlink profile we can see that they all look good and no foregin words are present.

When we open them up they go to sites that are relevant and not foreign content.

What’s Next?

After you have looked at the domain in Majestic.com, you then want to check it in archive.org and check a few different dates to see what the domain once was. Ensure that the domain wasn’t used in an inappropriate way or that it had foreign content on it.

Other Tools

I used MajesticSEO here and personally use ahrefs and SEMRush as well. However there are an amazing number of tools to help with backlink checking. Here is a complete guide reviewing the best backlink checkers. 

Conclusion

I find that a lot of people miss a few of these steps which can be vital when looking at potential domains to link to your site. If you have any questions at all or need some further clarification on how to follow these steps please let me know!

 

Read More
Jon August 7, 2018 0 Comments
Link Building

Are PBNs Working in 2017 – Case Study and Test Results

So the big question…. ARE PBNs STILL WORKING IN 2017???

See the case study process and results below and how I generated 800 organic visitors in a day!

This post is a case study aimed at identifying the potential power of expired domains with actual traffic data and link metrics revealed.

Some of the results are pretty surprising…

PBNs have been a very controversial subject to talk about but have also been the most systematic way of ranking a website I have found. (more…)

Read More
Jon February 22, 2017 18 Comments
Link Building

Cyber Monday – Services Sale!!

Today I have some special Cyber Monday deals on my productized services businesses.

At whatever stage you are at in your business I hope one of these deals below helps you progress in your business!

For the last few years we have found that creating teams and systems to deliver productized services to clients focusing on complex activities in the SEO / internet marketing space has been a good niche for our team. (more…)

Read More
Jon November 28, 2016 0 Comments
Link Building

12 Frequently Asked Questions About Building and Using PBNs

Since 2013 I have been talking about, using and building PBN sites to help rank mine and other websites.

There are very few people that talk about PBNs in a balanced way. I hope this post helps answer some of the common questions people have.

If you have any questions feel free to drop them in the comments section and I will respond.

 

What is a PBN?

A Private Blog Network is a network of real, relevant and authoritative sites that are perceived to be independent from one another in the eyes of Google but you control and can link to your money site. These links being real and relevant drive ranking improvements within Google.

what-is-a-pbn

My Team Offers Two Services To Help:

  • DONE FOR YOU PBN BUILDING SERVICE (let my team build and manage a PBN for you to exclusively use!)
[thrive_link color=’blue’ link=’http://www.lightningrank.com/private-blog-network-building-service/’ target=’_blank’ size=’big’ align=’aligncenter’]Have My Team Build You a PBN[/thrive_link]
  • USE MY PBN – BUY PREMIUM LINKS (get links on my premium PBN network with some of the most powerful domains available!)
[thrive_link color=’blue’ link=’http://www.lightningrank.com/use-my-pbn/’ target=’_blank’ size=’big’ align=’aligncenter’]Use My PBN – Powerful Links[/thrive_link]

Frequently Asked Questions About PBNs…

 

ONE – Do PBNs Still Work to Rank Websites?

The short answer is that backlinks from relevant authoritative sites definitely still works! The question of how much does it work is answered in more detail below but I can say that it definitely does work on both my sites and clients.

Each week we receive emails like this one received last week…

improve-ranking-with-pbn

TWO – What is the Best PBN Hosting Options Now?

Hosting can be a massive pain! I now have 1 person who works full time to manage all my hosting accounts.

I now have two simple recommendations for people who are looking to host a PBN…

  • Best Option for Large Network or Agency – Use multiple popular shared hosting accounts like we do to ensure your referring IP profile is as natural as possible. This strategy ensures your PBN sites are not located in a “bad neighbourhood” of other PBN sites.
  • Best Option for Individuals – EasyBlogNetworks offers hosting that is essentially a dashboard for multiple cloud hosts.
[thrive_link color=’green’ link=’https://websiteincome.com/click/hub’ target=’_blank’ size=’medium’ align=’aligncenter’]Best PBN Host[/thrive_link]

(prices increase for this host Sep 1, 2016)

THREE – Do PBNs help all websites rank and how many backlinks do I need to rank on the first page?

The type of sites that seem to respond the best are those in “boring” niches that traditional white hat link building is the hardest in!  This usually involves an affiliate site or a business site.

The sites PBNs don’t make a lot of sense to use on are sites that have an easier time to build links. For example a “mom blog” would do better to allocate its money for SEO to guest post outreach and creation.

Sometimes the ones that don’t respond the best are either the crazy competitive local niches (unless a lot of links are sent at them) or the large magazine style site who need a monthly link velocity way higher than the package purchased.

To help people answer the question of “how many links do I need” I wrote this post and provided a free guide.

 

FOUR – What is the risk of using a PBN?

There is risk with every marketing strategy online. I have an issue with SEOs who don’t try and communicate the risk of using PBNs.

The right level of risk vs reward to accept is highly dependent on everyone’s personal situation.

What I can share to try and help quantify the risk is that our lifetime deindexation rate over the course of 3,000+ sites being built is…

  • Over 3,000 sites have been built
  • 8% for done for you niche relevant exclusive PBNs (done for you PBN service)
  • 23% for Use my PBN, exclusive but shared PBN service with most of those deindexations coming in 2014 (see what I wrote about it when it happened here)

What will happen if sites do get deindexed is that the rankings benefit of the use of those PBNs is lost.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND someone only use PBNs as their SEO strategy. It is critical that your sites footprint remains distributed and not easily identified as a site that exclusively uses PBNs.

 

FIVE – For the Use My PBN Service do links on my PBN stay live after someone cancels?

Yes, links on my use my PBN service stay live even if someone cancels.

The most common reason people have for cancelling is that their rankings have jumped up to where they want them and they no longer need the service. So a lot of people tend to use the service until they achieve the ranking goals for their site or clients site and then cancel the service.

 

SIX – Can I Add More Articles for the Done For You PBN Service?

In our done for you PBN building service we create 1 article per site every 5 months. There are times that people would like to add more.

When we build your PBN with our done for you service we provide you with admin access to the site and you can post as many articles as you would like.

Many SEO agencies use this access for when they add a new client. A lot of our clients have a network relevant to a specific industry or geography and then when they add a new client use that existing PBN to build relevant/authoritative links to that new website.

 

SEVEN – Does it Work for Reputation Management?

With the growth of the online reputation management industry we have seen an increase in the number of people using our service for Reputation Management.

The basic strategy for reputation management fits well with our services…

  1. Create positive pages about the individual
  2. Drive links to those positive pages/profiles (using Use My PBN or Done for You PBN Service) to push them in front of the negative posts

Similar to the agencies mentioned above a lot of reputation management consultant clients we work with like to use a combination of having their own PBN network managed by us and as they add new clients simply post new posts to that network.

 

EIGHT – Does it Work for Videos?

Although it works for videos and clients have seen substantial ranking improvements there are a lot of strategies that are higher risk/lower cost that seem to be able to rank videos more cost effectively.

The reason is that the domain strength of YouTube is strong enough that if you throw some crappy links at the video it usually doesn’t result in the post getting penalized.

However, I believe this will continue to move in the direction that higher quality links will have a bigger and bigger impact driving results for your site.

 

NINE – Can I Rank My Amazon Private Label Listings?

This is a fun one I have been experimenting with lately.

The answer is that YES you can influence which Amazon listing shows up in Google.

It is either Feast or Famine when it comes to rankings Amazon Listings. Since Google only shows a couple results in Google you need to be in the top 2 for Amazon listings for the given keyword or you get no benefit.

Here is the basic strategy I have tested with success…

  1. Identify keyword to rank for, target relevant, buyers intent keyword with low competition (KC score < 30)
  2. Analyze the Amazon competition currently showing up in Google to determine the number of backlinks they have using this strategy.
  3. Based on the number of links you need go ahead and build links to that Amazon listing. I like to use the powerful links from my Use My PBN network to boost my Amazon listings to show up in Google.

 

TEN – Should I Hide My Sites from Crawlers like Majestic, OpenSiteExplorer and AHRefs?

I go against the grain when it comes to my recommendation to NOT hide your PBN from crawlers.

The reason?

You are only asking the crawlers to not index the links from your site and it would be easy for Google to create a crawler that looks for the sites that request to not have the link networks track their links.

Now once they have a list of all the sites that have hidden themselves from Majestic, AHRefs and Moz what is the chance that they are all PBN sites or doing something sketchy…. I would theorize it would be pretty high!

For that reason a better approach is to build a PBN that is real/relevant and could stand up to a manual review if necessary.

 

Eleven – When is the right time to start building a PBN or Links?

People that are just starting out often wonder what the right approach is to the timing for building their PBN.

The short answer is that as soon as you know you are going to be going into a niche it is a good idea to start building out a niche relevant PBN but do not let that stop you from getting started.

 

TWELVE – What is the PBN backlinking strategy I use now for new sites?

So, what do I do today to get a site moving up the rankings?

It of course depends on the competition and the number of links I suspect I will need to rank. Like I have mentioned above using PBNs exclusively is NOT the best strategy but using them strategically still makes a lot of sense for me.

What I really like about the strategy of using PBNs as the cornerstone of ranking a website is that it is scalable based on the results. Because of that here is the basic strategy I use with a new site…

  1. Build a 5-10 site relevant, niche specific PBN right away
  2. Once the site is created start dripping use my PBN links to it
  3. Measure the results of the ranking improvements and create a plan to scale up the links as needed.

 

  • DONE FOR YOU PBN BUILDING SERVICE (let my team build and manage a PBN for you to exclusively use!)
[thrive_link color=’blue’ link=’http://www.lightningrank.com/private-blog-network-building-service/’ target=’_blank’ size=’big’ align=’aligncenter’]Have My Team Build You a PBN[/thrive_link]
  • USE MY PBN – BUY PREMIUM LINKS (get links on my premium PBN network with some of the most powerful domains available!)
[thrive_link color=’blue’ link=’http://www.lightningrank.com/use-my-pbn/’ target=’_blank’ size=’big’ align=’aligncenter’]Use My PBN – Powerful Links[/thrive_link]

 

Read More
Jon August 22, 2016 7 Comments
Link Building

How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Rank in Google? Full Analysis and Free Template

In this post I am going to demystify the confusing question and provide you with a template and system to answer a key question…

“How many backlinks do I need to get to the first page in Google?”

Want My Team to Complete a Backlink Competitive Analysis For You?

I show you everything we do to analyze a websites competitive position in terms of links in this monster of a post!

If you want my team to complete this analysis for a REALLY low price simply sign up below... 

How Does This Quick Valuable Service Work?

  1. Order by clicking on the link below
  2. Enter your URL and email into a short form
  3. Receive a custom report prepared by me and my team in under 1 week!
$19.95 Custom Backlink Analysis Report

From the report you will know...

  • ​What keywords you are currently ranking for
  • Who your competitors are
  • How many quality links they have
  • How many quality links you have
  • Suggested strategy to close the gap between you and your competitors!

The Confusion!

People often email me with some variation of the above question and I can definitely understand the frustration!

  • “I have done everything the gurus say to do and done great keyword research and created great content but I get so little traffic and am not ranking anywhere near the first page!”
  • “I built a website, it doesn’t get the rankings it deserves and when I search for answers I end up in paralysis by analysis”
  • “I know I need backlinks but I don’t have any clue as to how many I need 5, 10, 100, 1000? How can I tell”

This frustration is completely understandable…I shared it as well.

The Case for Backlinks

If you do 3 things well when it comes to building a website it is going to get traffic…

  1. Solid Keyword Research 
  2. Create better content than anything else out there
  3. Get more quality backlinks than your competition

If you do those 3 things over time it will be rare you don’t have success!

The first 2 (keyword research and content) are well documented but how many and how to get links is definitely not simple!

Brian DeanBacklinko.com July 5, 2016

​

Backlinks remain an extremely important Google ranking factor. We found the number of domains linking to a page correlated with rankings more than any other factor

MozRanking Factors

​

The 2 most important factors are links "1. Domain Level Link Features" and "2. Page-Level Link Features"

What If There Was a Systematic Way to Know the Answer!

What I am going to share with you today is a systematic way to break down the questions above and truly understand how many links you should be prepared to get to compete with your competition.

We will simplify this question way down to 4 steps and include a template for you to follow!

Whether you are thinking about going into a market or are currently in one this process can be used to know what you need to do to compete!

​

How To Analyze The Number of Backlinks You Need to Compete?

Overview:

  1. What are the keywords you are currently ranking for (or attempting to rank for)?
  2. Who are your top competitors?
  3. What is the gap in terms of the number of links your competition has vs you?
  4. Get the additional links you need to either compete or better yet crush your competition!

Detailed Tutorial:

For the purposes of this tutorial we are going to use a website that I have no association with as the case study site!

Introducing our case study site, http://rangefinderadvice.com/ (I have no association with this site). We are going to consider ourselves the owner of this site and try to answer the question of how many links do we still need to get to page 1?

For this tutorial there is a Free Google Document template that helps with this

Free Spreadsheet Template For Backlink Analysis

Step 1 – Determine what keywords you are currently ranking for using SEMRush.com

For the case study site http://rangefinderadvice.com/ it is clear that there are some pillar articles they are wanting to rank for so we will do the analysis for each of these 3 pages to say how many links are needed for each of the main money pages to rank well…

  • http://rangefinderadvice.com/best-golf-rangefinders/
  • http://rangefinderadvice.com/best-hunting-rangefinders/
  • http://rangefinderadvice.com/best-golf-gps-reviews/

Running each page through SEMRush.com we see how the site is doing for each of the target keywords…

  • ​URL = rangefinderadvice.com/best-golf-rangefinders
    • Keyword = Best golf rangefinder
    • Google Rank = 24
  • URL = rangefinderadvice.com/best-hunting-rangefinders
    • Keyword = best hunting rangefinder
    • Google Rank = 5
  • URL = rangefinderadvice.com/best-golf-gps-reviews
    • Keyword = Best golf GPS watch
    • Google Rank = 20

(Enter the URL into SEMRush and see what keywords it ranks for or how it ranks for the keyword you are targeting)

(Enter the details into the free Google Spreadsheet Template I created here for you)

Access Free Sheet Here

Step 2 – Find your competition for those keywords using Google

In this step you want to find sites similar to yours that are ranking well in Google for the keyword you are wanting to rank for.

  • TIP – The key is to identify sites similar to yours! You don’t want to be comparing your site to an Amazon Page or Wikipedia page… if you are an ecommerce store find other similar ecommerce store or likewise if you are an Amazon affiliate site (such as this example).
  • In the example the first 3 results are all amazon affiliate sites which shows that as long as the on page content and SEO is of a similar quality the key difference maker is the number of links!

Now enter the 3 competitor URLs into the Google Sheet Template…

​

Step 3 – Determine the difference in the number of referring IP’s between you and your competition.

Now it is time to determine if us ranking at 25 for the same keyword and similar sites is due to the number of backlinks to the site and if it is the reason how big is the gap?

Using MajesticSEO.com we enter each ranking URL into the Site Explorer.

Our Example Website:

1st Place Result:

​

Now entering the number of Referring IPs into the spreadsheet provides a picture showing the gap between the site we are wanting to rank and the first page results.

  • TIP 1 – You can do this all with a free account if you are just wanting to analyze 1 site
  • TIP 2 – NOT every backlink is created equal. If you want to get a more accurate analysis you can choose a TF level to filter out. For example remove all Referring IPs with a TF < 5 to get a better understanding of the link profile you need to overcome.

Step 4 – Determine the Gap and How to Close It!

Now that you know how your site matches up to the first page competition it is time to decide how do you act on this information.

In the template I tried to provide a suggestion on how to close the backlinks.

If this was my personal money site and I had an average gap in the number of referring IPs to the homepage I would have the following strategy…

  • Use My PBN Links – 10 Links
  • Done For You PBN Sites – 10 Sites
  • 7 White Hat Outreach Links (guest posts, sponsored posts, broken link building, outreach, ego bait etc)

This would help close the gap by around 27 links which should allow us to get to page 1 based on the quality of the links but at a minimum would give us a really good understanding of how many additional links would be needed.

Here is the full analysis for the sites 3 main pages…

​

What I find very interesting is that there is one of the three pages that is ranking on the first page in position 5 and it is the only one of those 3 articles that has a small gap.

  • TIP – One aspect of SEO I really enjoy is the ability to see marginal improvement and adjust course as needed. What this means is that if you think you have a 50 referring IP backlink gap… don’t try and close it all in one big blow schedule it out over
  • TIP – Regardless of your gap and budget I advise that you schedule out the link acquisition over time (2-3 months in the case study example).
  • TIP – The best backlink strategy is one that uses a mix of backlink sources and doesn’t over-rely on any one tactic regardless of how “safe” it is. My goal is to ensure Google can not “finger print” my money sites as “built with PBNs” or similar.

Does this Repeatedly Work?

Does this systematic method of analyzing the number of backlinks you might need work? Here is one example of a team who used an extremely systematic approach to build up a portfolio of sites in 2015.

Their approach was extremely systematic with each site going through the a detailed/systematic process of…

  1. Solid Keyword Research
  2. Great Content Creation
  3. Similar Backlink Analysis (they relied heavily on PBN sites for their links in this case)

The results of their systematic approach was the creation of a very healthy looking portfolio of sites!

​

Can My Team Help You?

Want My Team to Complete a Backlink Competitive Analysis For You?

I show you everything we do to analyze a websites competitive position in terms of links in this monster of a post!

If you want my team to complete this analysis for a REALLY low price simply sign up below... 

How Does This Quick Valuable Service Work?

  1. Order by clicking on the link below
  2. Enter your URL and email into a short form
  3. Receive a custom report prepared by me and my team in under 1 week!

From the report you will know...

  • ​What keywords you are currently ranking for
  • Who your competitors are
  • How many quality links they have
  • How many quality links you have
  • Suggested strategy to close the gap between you and your competitors!
$19.95 Custom Backlink Analysis Report

Read More
Jon July 11, 2016 16 Comments
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • …
  • 7
Categories
  • Build 116
    • Domains 5
    • hosting 12
    • Money Site Creation 59
    • Wordpress 39
  • Grow 65
    • Buy and Sell Websites 2
    • Content 14
    • Email 5
    • Keyword Research 3
    • Link Building 32
    • SEO 2
    • Social Media 3
    • Traffic 1
    • YouTube 2
  • Ideas 97
    • ecommerce 2
    • FBA 19
    • Mindset 36
    • Productized Service 1
    • Team Management 32
  • Make Money 8
    • Affiliate 7
  • Marketing Strategies 4
  • Monetize 115
    • Amazon 10
    • Buy and Sell Websites 7
    • Display Ads 7
    • Income Reports 82
    • Lead Gen 4
    • Youtube 1
  • NEWS 3
  • PPC 5
  • SEO 2
  • SMM 9
  • Tools 73
    • Amazon FBA Launch 4
    • Content 20
    • Sales 3
    • Tutorials 16
  • Uncategorized 1
Recent Posts
  • 99+ Dofollow Backlinks List To Boost Traffic [Updated In 2021]
    99+ Dofollow Backlinks List To Boost Traffic [Updated In 2021]
    January 1, 2021
  • How Ping o Matic Can Boost Your Link Building in 2021
    How Ping o Matic Can Boost Your Link Building in 2021
    January 1, 2021
  • Expired Domains With Traffic – Case Study
    Expired Domains With Traffic – Case Study
    November 25, 2020
  • Are PBNs Safe and Do They Work in 2020
    Are PBNs Safe and Do They Work in 2020
    July 26, 2020
Tools I Use
  • AWeber Email Marketing
  • Best Inexpensive Starting Web Host
  • Fastest WordPress Host (I Now Use)
  • Multiple IP Host I Use For Expired Domains
  • ODesk – My Outsourcing Team Lives Here
motioninvest.com
brandbuilders.io

Engineering Your Financial Freedom with Online Business   Sharing everything (except my passwords) as I repeatedly build income streams from online businesses
Contacts
If you have any questions about this site or the internet marketing tutorials I have here please don't hesitate to contact me…
Email Me – Jon Gillham at…
jon (at) authoritywebsiteincome (dot) com
Services
MotionInvest.com
ContentRefined.com
SiteBuddy.io
BrandBuilders.io
LightningRank.com

Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions

Copyright © 2021 WebsiteIncome.com All Rights Reserved.