In recognition of Halloween, today we’re going to talk about something verrry scary: private blog networks. Okay it’s not so much scary as it’s something which can be a valuable linking tool from an SEO stand point.
Developing your own private blog network is an effective way to build link juice and traffic and spread it amongst the pages on your websites which you want to rank. But how do private blog networks work?
The first thing to define is what is a private blog network?
A private blog network is a network of blogs (duh), or rather a network of blog based websites which interlink with one another whenever appropriate to share link juice and traffic. The “private” in private blog network refers to the idea that every blog in that network is owned by the same person or people so that they have control over the quality of the content and links which these blogs send and receive.
Another characteristic of a private blog network is that it will typically revolve around one major niche or topic. So you could create a private blog network around the subject of dogs as pets. You could then create and have a blog dedicated to dog training, one for puppy care, one for dog nutrition, etc.
These micro niches all overlap with one another and have that common connection which is owning a dog as a pet, so you would and could likely find a lot of opportunities to link between different niches.
This can be an effective linking strategy because you can help multiple domains and pages on each of those domains to rank better by sharing the link love between your own property.
Pros of using a Private Blog Network:
- Share traffic amongst multiple sites which you own to get your visitors to the most targeted content.
- Whenever one site receives a valuable link, every site in the network potentially gains from it.
- Multiple chances to monetize a website.
- Increased intellectual property.
- Low risk SEO technique.
Cons of using a Private Blog Networks:
- It’s expensive in that you have to pay the registration fees for multiple sites and any other expenses associated with owning a website.
- Time consuming + more work in that you need to create a lot of content for each of the sites in the network as well as generate more links off site to your sites to get the most out of it. If you pay to outsource content creation and or link building this obviously increases your expenses, as well.
There are a few things to keep in mind to get the most out of using private blog networks:
- The more blogs you have the in private blog network, the better.
- Use WordPress as a simple and SEO’d method for adding content.
- Host these blogs on different IP addresses if possible to make it look more natural.
- Use professional themes to make each site look unique and have its own look.