Should You Hide Your PBN Sites for SEO? - Episode 93 - Grumpy SEO Guy

Summary

Podcast Summary: Grumpy SEO Guy – "Should You Hide Your PBN Sites for SEO?" (Episode 93)

Host: Grumpy SEO Guy
Release Date: January 29, 2025
Duration: Approximately [00:00] to [End]

Introduction

In Episode 93 of the Grumpy SEO Guy podcast, the host delves into a contentious topic within the SEO community: the concealment of Private Blog Networks (PBNs) for search engine optimization purposes. Titled "Should You Hide Your PBN Sites for SEO?", Grumpy SEO Guy aims to dispel myths, clarify misconceptions, and share his extensive experience from running an SEO agency for 14 years.

Evolution of PBN Practices

Grumpy SEO Guy begins by tracing the evolution of his agency's PBN strategies. Initially, transparency was key; clients were provided with comprehensive lists of PBN sites used for their backlinking needs. This included detailed metrics such as Domain Rating (DR), Domain Authority (DA), and PageRank (PR), along with target keywords and client site information. As he states at [00:02]:

"We always provided a list of the websites that we use to our clients, mostly because I wanted them to see how great they were."

However, this openness led to unintended consequences. A particular incident with a client attempting to create Tier 2 backlinks resulted in spammy links that compromised the quality and integrity of the PBN sites. Reflecting on this at [00:15]:

"We have a PBN that is actually private. And you know what, sometimes people have a problem with that."

This experience prompted a pivotal shift in their approach, moving from transparency to strict confidentiality to safeguard their PBN's integrity.

Defining PBN and Private Blog Portfolio

Grumpy SEO Guy clarifies terminology to avoid confusion. He distinguishes between a "Private Blog Network" and a "Private Blog Portfolio":

"A 'network' suggests that the domains are linked to each other. A network literally is stuff that is linking to each other. ... A portfolio is not linked to each other, and you definitely should avoid linking your sites together." ([00:25])

This nuanced definition underscores the importance of maintaining independence among PBN sites to prevent detection by search engines like Google.

Challenges with Providing PBN Lists

The host discusses the pitfalls of sharing PBN lists with clients. Initially, providing detailed information seemed beneficial for client transparency and showcasing quality. However, it opened the door to misuse, such as clients generating unwanted Tier 2 and Tier 3 backlinks that degraded the PBN's value. Referencing Episode 77, he notes:

"As you know from episode 77, which is called 'What are Tier 2 and Tier 3 backlinks? Are they helpful?', this is probably not a good thing."

The fallout from such incidents led to the implementation of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), restricting clients from further exploiting the PBN resources. Despite these measures, ongoing issues necessitated a complete cessation of sharing PBN lists, as he elaborates:

"We eventually had to stop doing this because we want to keep this from happening. So, we're not giving you a list anymore." ([00:35])

Protective Measures Implemented

To enhance the security of their PBN, Grumpy SEO Guy outlines several protective strategies:

Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs): Clients must sign NDAs preventing them from distributing or misusing PBN lists.
Hiding PBNs from SEO Tools: The agency took steps to obscure their PBN sites from common SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. As he explains:

"We started hiding our PBN sites. So now the common software like Ahrefs and Semrush and such will not find our PBN sites." ([00:45])
Rebranding PBNs to Private Blog Portfolios: This rebranding emphasizes the non-networked nature of their blog assets, reducing the risk of detection through interlinking patterns.

Balancing Transparency and Security

Grumpy SEO Guy acknowledges the dilemma between maintaining client trust and protecting the PBN's secrecy. While some clients may demand transparency to verify backlink quality, others may inadvertently harm the PBN through malicious actions. He shares a relatable scenario:

"You might have emails from your competitors that are saying, hey, would you give us a link too? Now, you own these websites, so you can't." ([00:50])

This situation highlights the delicate balance SEO professionals must manage between openness and safeguarding their link-building assets.

Should You Hide Your PBN?

The central question of the episode revolves around whether SEO practitioners should conceal their PBNs. Grumpy SEO Guy offers a nuanced perspective:

"If you built your own PBN yourself to promote your domain, you probably don't need to hide that from competitors." ([00:55])

He suggests that for those using PBNs solely to enhance their own site's ranking, hiding may be unnecessary. However, for agencies managing multiple clients’ backlinks, increased discretion could be warranted to prevent clients from exploiting or damaging the PBN.

Practical Guidance on Hiding PBNs

While the episode refrains from providing technical how-tos, Grumpy SEO Guy points listeners toward resources for implementing PBN concealment:

"If you search for things like how to block backlink crawlers or that kind of thing, you will probably find articles that will explain how to do it." ([01:00])

He advises leveraging robots.txt directives and other SEO best practices to minimize the visibility of PBN sites to backlink analysis tools.

The Future of SEO and Backlink Confidentiality

Grumpy SEO Guy reflects on the dynamic nature of SEO, particularly the ongoing battle between backlink transparency and concealment. He narrates the historical shifts in SEO practices and Google's countermeasures:

"As SEO happens, people realize that backlinks are important and they start using things like PR to sell backlinks. Then Google says, we're not going to show this anymore because people are leveraging it." ([01:10])

This continuous cat-and-mouse game necessitates that SEO professionals remain adaptable, constantly refining their strategies to stay ahead of search engine algorithms and competitor tactics.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In wrapping up the episode, Grumpy SEO Guy reiterates the importance of evaluating one's own SEO practices in light of the discussed strategies. He emphasizes that the decision to hide a PBN should be based on individual circumstances and risk assessments:

"I'm not gonna say that you should or you shouldn't, but I'm gonna say you should probably think about what I said in this episode and see if that seems like something that feels right to you." ([01:15])

He encourages listeners to critically assess their own SEO needs and adopt protective measures as deemed necessary.

Key Takeaways

Transparency vs. Security: Balancing client trust with the need to protect PBN integrity is crucial.
Evolution of PBN Strategies: Adapting practices over time is essential to mitigate risks associated with PBN misuse.
Terminology Matters: Distinguishing between Private Blog Networks and Private Blog Portfolios helps in strategizing SEO efforts.
Protective Measures: Implementing NDAs and concealing PBNs from SEO tools can safeguard against unwanted exploitation.
Informed Decision-Making: SEO professionals should assess their unique situations to determine the necessity of hiding PBNs.

Quotes

"We always provided a list of the websites that we use to our clients, mostly because I wanted them to see how great they were." ([00:02])
"We have a PBN that is actually private. And you know what, sometimes people have a problem with that." ([00:15])
"A 'network' suggests that the domains are linked to each other. A network literally is stuff that is linking to each other. ... A portfolio is not linked to each other, and you definitely should avoid linking your sites together." ([00:25])
"We started hiding our PBN sites. So now the common software like Ahrefs and Semrush and such will not find our PBN sites." ([00:45])
"If you built your own PBN yourself to promote your domain, you probably don't need to hide that from competitors." ([00:55])
"If you search for things like how to block backlink crawlers or that kind of thing, you will probably find articles that will explain how to do it." ([01:00])
"When SEO happens, people realize that backlinks are important and they start using things like PR to sell backlinks. Then Google says, we're not going to show this anymore because people are leveraging it." ([01:10])
"I'm not gonna say that you should or you shouldn't, but I'm gonna say you should probably think about what I said in this episode and see if that seems like something that feels right to you." ([01:15])

Final Notes

Grumpy SEO Guy concludes the episode by inviting listeners to engage further by subscribing, leaving reviews, and suggesting topics for future discussions. He underscores his commitment to providing actionable, experience-based SEO insights without the clutter of ineffective strategies.

For more information or to connect with Grumpy SEO Guy, listeners can reach out via email or support the podcast through Patreon at patreon.com/grumpyseoguy.

This summary captures the essence of Episode 93, offering a comprehensive overview of the discussions on hiding PBN sites, the reasoning behind such strategies, and practical considerations for SEO professionals.

Transcript

Grumpy SEO Guy (0:00)

This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 93. Should you hide your PBN for SEO? You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because there's a lot of confusion about hiding your PBNs. So in this episode, that's what we're gonna talk about. So we're gonna talk about how our PBN has evolved over time. We're gonna talk about what hiding a PBN means, and we're gonna talk about whether or not you should hide your pbn. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical. And based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. So really quickly, let's actually define it first. So let me describe our PBN and how we have done it. So when I started a long time ago, we always provided a list of the websites that we use to our clients, mostly because I wanted them to see how great they were. There's a lot of PBNs out there, and ours were good. They had good metrics, they had good quality content. Not that quality of content is a ranking factor, of course, but, you know. But you want your PBN to have good quality content so it doesn't get discovered as being a pbn. That's a different topic. Anyway, so we would send a document with the sites that we use. It would have the URLs of our sites. It would have the target keywords, it would have the client site. It would have the stats like Dr. And DA and PR and whatever. And side note, I know people say that I Repeat myself too much. But I am unaware if you have never listened to grumpy SEO guy before. So sometimes I have to define things. Like right now, PR is an old metric that was used by Google to determine the authority of a website or a webpage. And they used to make this information public, but people were leveraging it and they were selling backlinks based on the PR of the site. So Google made it secret, you cannot find the PR of a website anymore. So anyway, other companies like Ahrefs and Moz came about and they made their own estimates of authority, like Ahrefs has Dr. Moz has DA and so on. But we would include all of them so they could check for themselves and see that they were in fact, great quality websites. Anyway, we eventually had to stop doing this because one client that we had decided that he was going to create some Tier 2 backlinks to all of the posts that we had made for him. So, as you know from episode 77, which is called what are Tier 2 and Tier 3 backlinks? Are they helpful? This is probably not a good thing. It's probably not something that we want on our websites. And in fact, we didn't. I remember we created five posts for this, this domain. And sure enough, when we checked them a little bit later, they all had like dozens or hundreds. I don't, I don't recall how many. But they had like all these spammy tier 2 backlinks to them. And I know the person thought that this person was helping, but this person was not helping. We do not want spammy tier 2 and tier 3 backlinks to those websites. So anyway, at this point I said, you know what, we're not going to provide lists of backlinks anymore because we want to keep this from happening. So anyway, look, after that we came up with an NDA and we would still provide backlinks to clients, but first they had to sign an NDA and they had to sign a document that said there are certain things you cannot do. One of them is build backlinks to our sites. But eventually it's just like, I don't want to have to deal with this nonsense anymore. It was a lot of trouble. So then we made. And by the way, there's like a couple years in between each of these changes. So then we made the decision that we were not going to provide documents at all anymore to anybody. You can buy backlinks from us, but we're not giving you a list. And I said, listen, I know that this might be a problem. For you, there are no exceptions to this rule. If you have a problem with this, do not buy backlinks from us. And it wasn't really that big of a deal because a lot of backlink sellers do not provide a list anyway. But we weren't going to do it because we can't take the chance that somebody's going to spam our websites. Now you might be thinking, well, we could just check in Ahrefs and find the backlinks there. Well, yes, that's correct, you could. So before we talk about that, though, yes, you could. And look, most people do not seem to be affected by this. If you want to check them in Ahrefs, that's fine, dude, whatever. It doesn't matter. But eventually we realized that, no, even that is not enough. We need protection even from that. So we started hiding our PB insights. So now the common software like Ahrefs and Semrush and such will not find our PBN sites. If we link to you and you look up your own website and Ahrefs, you will not see our sites. I understand that that reduces our options for potential clients. Okay, I understand that and I don't care, because I have decided that it's necessary to do it this way. Now, with that said, there are still ways to discover hidden PBN sites, but A, it's not a topic for this episode, and B, it's pretty expensive and most people probably are not going to do that. So maybe we'll talk about it later. The point is, our PBN is now a true private blog network or private blog portfolio, which is a preferable name. But anyway. Oh, and you know, I'm repeating myself. Private blog portfolio, we call it that because a network, like people call it a pbn, a private blog network. A network suggests that the domains are linked to each other. A network literally is stuff that is linking to each other. Okay, So a portfolio is not linked to each other, and you definitely should avoid linking your sites together. Okay, that's a silly idea that just makes a footprint, so probably stop doing that. But you can still say PBN and professionals will still know what you mean. So anyway, at this point, we have a PBN that is actually private. And you know what, sometimes people have a problem with that. But I feel like this is kind of a frustrating issue because on the one hand, I absolutely understand why somebody might not want to buy a backlink if they don't know where they're coming, where it's coming from. I absolutely understand that. On the other side of the issue, you have people who can't be trusted and will destroy your sites if they find them. And you never know if the person is a pretending to be a client. Hey, can you send me a list of your sites? I'm really interested in. I'm really interested in renting some backlinks from you, but I just need to see the websites first. Yeah, sure, dude. Okay. Like, the person's. By the way, side note, I've done an episode on SEO scams and scammy sellers. We're gonna do one on methods used by dishonest buyers too. Okay? Because on each side of the process, you have suspicious people. Anyway, hey, I'd really like to buy some links from you. Send me a list of them. That's not gonna happen. Or, well, what if they pay you first? Okay, look, no, like, because some people might say, oh, I would never. I would never. I would never pay that much money just to uncover a list of sites. But there are people who would do that, so. No, and ultimately I understand, because if I were purchasing this, I would probably. Guys, I would probably do the same thing. I'd be like, I don't know this person. I'm not gonna send them a lot of money. Like, whatever. How do I know, you know, how do I know it's not just like spun content, C class ip, like websites that aren't really gonna help you? I don't know, man. I can't really answer that question for you, but unfortunately, this is how I have decided that we have to do it. So we don't ever provide lists of our websites to people. Now you might ask yourself, should you hide yours? Probably not. Listen, presuming you made your PBN yourself to promote your domain, you probably don't need to. Like, there's no real reason to hide that from competitors. And here's a hilarious thing that might happen. Okay? Let's say you built your own pbn, okay? And by the way, private blog portfolio, not a private blog network, because, you know, linking them together is pointless. But anyways, look, so you built your own PBN to promote your own website. Now, one of your competitors is trying to figure out why you're ranking so well. So what do they do? They run a search on your website using some SEO tools and they find your list of PBNs, and they find these websites that are linking to you. Now, first thing you did, make your websites look organic, right? So they can't instantly identify them as PBNs. Right? Right. Okay, good. Here's the other thing that Might happen. There is a method in SEO where you email people that link to your competitors and you ask them for a backlink. So you might have emails from your competitors that are saying, hey, would you give us a link too? Now you own these websites, so, I mean, you can't. We might talk in the future about how to handle that situation. I'm just saying it's feasible anyway. Should you block your PBNs if you're an SEO consultant? Probably. I mean, I don't know. Maybe, like, if you want to look, if you want to do it. Yeah. If you're worried about it depends on your level of, like, secrecy, Right? Like, I'm not saying that you have to, but I'm saying maybe consider the things that we've talked about in this episode and select if that feels like a cool choice for you. Okay. It's up to you. Anyway, so then your next question is probably, well, how do I do it? All right, we're not gonna talk about how to do it, but I'm gonna tell you how to find the answer. Why? Because it's stuff that you add to robots. Txt, and I don't wanna be sitting here reading code in a podcast, and you don't wanna be listening to me reading code in a podcast. But if you search for things like how to block backlink crawlers or that kind of thing, you will probably find articles that will explain how to do it. That's all I'm going to say about that. But anyway, be aware that you can hide them. So look, mostly like. So when SEO happens, Look, the development of SEO over the years, people realize that backlinks are important and they start using things like PR to sell backlinks, right? Then Google says, oh, we're not going to show this anymore because people are leveraging it. Okay, so now PR is hidden. How are we going to find our backlinks? Well, now there's tools that will show you approximations of authority, right? So now people sell backlinks based on those tools. Okay? Then people find out the backlinks are important. Well, how do I know where my competitor has backlinks from? And there's tools that figure that out. But then they're like, well, we don't want people to know where our backlinks are coming from. So then they came up with ways of protecting that information so they don't show up in the tools anymore. Okay. But then people are like, well, people are hiding PBNs. How do we find the hidden PBNs? Now there's ways of figuring that out, too. So just, just be aware that, like, this is happening in SEO. But I'd probably, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty, like, implausible that you need to hide your own PBN if you're just doing it for your own website. And even if you're an agency, you still might not need to. It's not that big of a deal. I think I've provided the reasons why we hide ours. But, like, for you. You know what? I'm not gonna say that you should or you shouldn't, but I'm gonna say you should probably think about what I said in this episode and see if that seems like something that feels right to you. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders, because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder, and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about where does authority even come from in the first place? Like, how do websites even get authority.