what is PBN in SEO?

[sonyrobin]

Can anybody tell me what is PBN in SEO?

[sozzled]

http://google.com/search?q=What+is+PBN+in+SEO%3F

[Diaab]

PBN stands for Private blog network which used to boost rankings, basically they are network of websites owned by the same entity to drop your links in each of them to boost your rankings and looks like you are getting backlinks from different websites in your niche.
You register bunch of expired domains since they hold good value in terms of backlinks and aging, then you install different CMS on them from WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Wikis and so on. And you began to spun some pieces of content in your niche and post them onto your PBN and thus passing link juice to your main domain you are wishing to rank.

[ryanchapman]

A PBN(Private Blog Network) is a set of expired high backlink domains with high DA and PA that you control which all link back to your main money site. Typically PBNs are used to pass high levels of link equity to your site.

Do you want to know more about PBN?
Please, search on google.

[sozzled]

This forum category is for discussions about Search Engine Optimisation (Joomla! SEO) in Joomla 3.x. In other words, there should be a connection between Joomla—specifically J! 3.x—and SEO.

I understand that a lot of people see a TLA and they have no idea what it is; and that's why we have Google to help people find their way through the maze of TLAs. So, when someone asks a question about the TLA "PBN", it's worth giving that person a simple answer (which is what I tried to do a few posts ago). Unfortunately, we have know way of knowing if the OP was interested in knowing the answer or just thought they would ask a question and let the community deal with it among itself.

The problem is that these one-off questions inevitably waste time and attract the usual rabble of "SEO experts"—especially anyone who uses a forum account with "seo" in the username—who have no interest in assisting people with genuinely answering their questions or who make no attempt to tie the question to the forum's purpose. Let me repeat that for those who are tempted to debate my assertion: the purpose of this forum category is to help people use Joomla's SEO facilities. Got it?

Most of the questions posted in this forum category inevitable attract "SEO experts" (those people who plagiarise other websites, who have their own businesses, whose only interest is to sell SEO "products") who do not, themselves, use J! in their everyday lives. Most of the time—this topic is a example of it—these "experts" have made less than half-a-dozen contributions to the forum and they end up being banned for violating the forum rules (in particular, when they're selling products that no-one is interested in buying).

I rarely, if ever, see these "experts" show people how to use Joomla, i.e. what settings people might consider using, in order to improve their SEO performance. Sure, there are plenty of guides available on the internet that will show people how to leverage their website content in order to assist search engines' indexing. But, let's face it: the major search engines are not altruistic about indexing your websites or my websites; they're interested in the profit made by selling advertising space. So you can follow their guides or not follow their guides, or you can buy SEO products, or get involved in PBNs or attempt to flood other websites with backlinks to your websites but, ultimately, the decision about where your SERPs "rank" in the search engines is a matter for the search engines.

Joomla, and specifically, Joomla version 3.x, is not too bad when it comes to "out-of-the-box" features that will help people with SEO. But, it doesn't matter if you speak the lingo or if you know the difference between PA, DA, MOZ or LEGO®, whenever you see a post written in a forum from someone whose forum name is "bestseo4u" or "seoexpert", who razzle-dazzle in forums with their tech-speak spin, go visit their websites but make sure you keep a tight grip on your wallet. You might learn something from them but, most of the time, you'll see the same garbage peddled on a thousand other websites if you did your own real research.

It's been over a week since this topic was created and we're not going to hear back from @sonyrobin (or any of the others who have posted earlier in this topic) because PBNs are as effective to Joomla as shoelaces are as effective to thongs (flip-flops). IDGAD about TLAs.

[fcoulter]

It sounds like you needed to get that off your chest Sozzled.

And of course your are right. PBNs are just another form of spam. It always amazes me the amount of effort that people put into nonsense like that, they could probably put less time money and effort into just creating original content that people actually want to read and that Google and the other search engines actually think is worth indexing.

[sozzled]

It sounds like you needed to get that off your chest Sozzled.

In a way you're right. The entire category titled Search Engine Optimization (Joomla! SEO) in Joomla! 3.x is largly a waste of time or an opportunity for spam merchants to take over the forum and peddle their garbage.

At the risk of totally hijacking this topic—there's not much left of this topic to hijack, BTW—I asked a question a few years ago about the value of the Search Engine Optimization (Joomla! SEO) in Joomla! 3.x forum category. Regrettably I can't find where I located it, nor can I locate the PM one of the forum moderators sent to me, but the gist of the answer was this:

• the Search Engine Optimization (Joomla! SEO) in Joomla! 3.x mainly exists as a honeypot to channel all the forum spam into one place

I kid you not! I may have paraphrased ad absurdum the answer ... but that's essentially it. This "SEO" forum category has been intentionally engineered to attact spam. While this is probably not a revelation to most—it's personally disappointingand I contend there are many forum categories that have outlived their usefulness, that should be locked for their historical/curiosity value—there may be one in every few hundred discussions this forum category that are genuine, Joomla-specific and not the opportunity for a promotional racket. However, if the intention was to use this forum category as a honey-pot, why isn't the "pot" being more closely watched?

In a similar way to having kitchensink listed as a bad word—because it's too much trouble for the moderators to differentiate between what's legitimate and what's cr*p—funnelling spam into a single forum category is a similarly inert response to dealing with the problems of operating a busy forum.

Cheers

[fcoulter]

The thing is, with the forum moderation, as with most Joomla teams, it is actually a very small number of individuals doing almost all the work. The moderators are kept pretty busy, more than you probably realise, and having a forum that acts as a kind of sinkhole for SEO spam does have its advantages in making their lives a bit simpler.

While I think your principle is correct, it comes up against the hard reality that there is not a large team able to do the extra work that you propose. Really it is remarkable, and it is to the credit of the small number of individuals who do the actual work that the forums run as well as they do.

I don't include myself in that credit, I just moderate the security forum. But because of that I do get to see who does the real heavy lifting.

[gws]

Well it wouldn't be too hard to recruit a few more moderators considering the amount of spam the forums receive.

[sozzled]

Thanks, @fcoulter and @gws. While all of this discussion is off-topic (and I carry a large amount of the blame for leading it that way), I do understand and I do realise the difficulties involved in forum moderation.

At the outset, the moderation team here at forum.joomla.org provides us with good quality service. No-one gets it all right, of course—we're all human and we make mistakes—and there are occasions when one moderator's intervention is inconsistent with another's. On overall balance, however, I'm impressed. Forum moderation is a thankless task and you'd have to be a masochist to volunteer yourself; people are usually press-ganged into the role.

A lot of what I'm about to write consists largely of a "brain dump"—some ideas I may refer to in future—and, for that I offer some apology. We're so far off-topic at this point that it really doesn't matter.

... forum moderation... [involves a] ... small number of individuals doing almost all the work

And I think I know why that is the case, too. The forum at forum.joomla.org is very complicated (for the average user), highly compartmentalised and has been allowed to grow without "remedial housekeeping" (for want of a better description).

There are 178 English-language forum categories. Some of them have been locked but the locked categories represent a fraction of the overall number of forum categories. There are 178 categories that are searchable. These categories cover highly specialist areas such as templates for J! 1.0 (as if we still care) through to general loungeroom discussions where people can compare Joomla to LEGO® (if they wish to do so). The real issue is that, while these categories remain open and there's an insufficiency of forum moderation personnel to examine what's posted to them, people are effectively encouraged to continue to use those places to write instead of being encouraged to use those places to search for the answers.

178 categories for (guessing) 30 people to keep a watchful eye over? Does this seem to be too much of an effort? Or is it that new users are overwhelmed by 178 compartments and are therefore challenged to know where to start? And if this is the result of poor signposts to guide them, are we only seeing the tip of the ice berg to the problem?

Secondly, there are 438 forum categories for non-English speakers. These could be grouped under 40 major headings covering Alabania to Wales which, one would assume, should have at least 40 forum moderators some of whom may also be able to assist in general forum moderation. If those language moderators are deceased, long-gone or AWOL then (regrettably, perhaps) some of those language categories should be locked until and unless another others step forward to replace them. That's a task for the "board of management" within the moderation team.

In concluding my remarks at this time, I firmly believe that the moderation team does good work. Sometimes it takes extra effort to draw matters to the moderators' attention than would seem necessary and I'm unsure why that seems to be the case. I know, from my own experience, that there will be debates, disagreements and sometimes heated disputes behind the scenes; I know, from my own experience, that one moderator's approach to tackling certain issues will be disapproved by other members of the team. In knowing these things, I congratulate the majority of forum moderators who diligently, tirelessly and thanklessly do what they do. In passing, however, I have observed that there are one or two members of that team who do not do what they're supposed to do.

[digitalkube]

A PBN is a collection of high authority websites that you have complete control over and all of which link back to your money site.

Typically PBNs are made of expired domains that have great backlinks and therefore pass high levels of link equity to your money site.

[sozzled]

A PBN is a collection of high authority websites that you have complete control over and all of which link back to your money site.

According to whom? What determines if a website is a "high authority" one or not?

Typically PBNs are made of expired domains that blah-blah-blah.

Typically, PBNs do not comprise "expired domains" (because, if they were expired, they wouldn't exist) and there's no way of passing "high levels of link equity"—whatever the heck that means!—any more than a butterfly flapping its wings over the Andes might cause a hurricane in Vanuatu.

See what I mean by all that "razzle-dazzle" nonsense? Link equity? Does that mean one can trade it on the stock-market like any other equity?

[digitalkube]

According to whom? What determines if a website is a "high authority" one or not?

Site's DA, PA, Age, and Spam score decide the authority of the site. You check all the stats before buying the expired domain.

Typically, PBNs do not comprise "expired domains" (because, if they were expired, they wouldn't exist) and there's no way of passing "high levels of link equity"—whatever the heck that means!—any more than a butterfly flapping its wings over the Andes might cause a hurricane in Vanuatu.

See what I mean by all that "razzle-dazzle" nonsense? Link equity? Does that mean one can trade it on the stock-market like any other equity?

Who told you that if a domain is expired then it has no authority? All the matrices on SERPs reset once the domain is expired. But if it has some good backlinks built by its previous owner then they start pointing to it again once the domain is live.

What's the trouble in that? If the PBNs are not built using expired domains then why would someone bother to rank multiple domains first so that they can help rank the main money making site? Wouldn't it be easy to rank the main site directly by putting all the efforts in it instead of ranking 5 different sites? Apply some sense mate!

[sozzled]

Most people who write DA, PA, "age" and "spam score" don't understand (and never bother to explain) these terms.

If a domain is expired, the domain is dead; it ceases to exist. All SERPs relating to that domain will vanish. Any reputation associated with the domain also disappears. There's no need to say in high-faluting terms "all the matrices on SERPs reset once the domain is expired." It's clumsy English and it means nothing. The domain goes and the SERPs go, too (although it may take a week or two for the search engines to tidy things up).

So ... if people use expired domains to build their PBNs in order to (let me make sure I quote this information correctly) "have great backlinks and therefore pass high levels of link equity to your money site", this basically means that a PBN consists of several dead domains talking to other dead domains, correct? If that's the case then, according to your definition of a PBN, we have an arrangement of expired domains somehow collaborating among themselves. I would very much like to know how the very existence of these deceased domains provides a "benefit" to the "money site".

In effect, all you're saying is that if a site owner proliferated the internet with "backlinks" and someone else, years later, purchased the domain name, then any existing backlinks would resolve to the new site owner's website (assuming the URLs still worked). Kind of like Frankenstein's monster, huh? In the meantime, it's also likely that the site owners of the websites where the backlinks were placed, probably removed the backlinks when they discovered they were broken.

Why bother? I'm just applying some commonsense using the facts supplied to us.

[jameshouston135]

well PBN is a very old tactics but currently it is very risky you must have to be expert in it because if you are not good enough knowledgeable person then you can't get positive impact from the PBN.

[sozzled]

This whole discussion is so off-topic from Joomla, you would need to be an astrophysicist or a con artist to be able to make the connection.

http://google.com/search?q=What+is+PBN+in+SEO%3F

There's your answer!