A private blog network (PBN) is a network of authoritative websites that are used to build backlinks for a single website. It’s a list of unrelated sites all linking to one central domain to pass link equity to it and improve its’ rankings.
How Are Private Blogging Networks Made?
A PBN begins with someone buying lots of old domains that have high authority in the search engines. Then, they start creating content on those sites while linking to their main website.
That gives the central site lots of quality backlinks. And just like that, they get to boost their SERP ranking for the main domain and get higher traffic on it.
Are Private Blog Networks Illegal?
To give you a short answer: Yes.
PBNs are against Google’s guidelines. Websites that get caught practicing this often end up losing all their rankings in the SERPs.
Google will manually penalise any website that’s part of a PBN and cause it to vanish from top results.
While this used to be a popular method that marketing experts were proud to share, it’s no longer efficient. The SEO community now regards it as a black hat technique that you should avoid like the plague.