If you’re using a private blog network (PBN) to build your site’s search engine optimization (SEO), you need to ensure that its domain and IP address is healthy to avoid getting penalized by Google for black hat SEO tricks. So, you need to learn how to determine a good PBN before you buy it. There are several ways of evaluating PBNs to determine their effectiveness and safety.

For instance, you can check their IP addresses to know if they’re hosted by the same web host. Because web hosts have a limited number of IP addresses, it may be possible to identify blogs that belong to a private blog network because they usually have the same IP addresses when set up poorly. 

How to Determine a PBN from IP Addresses

As noted above, the easiest way to know if blogs and sites linking back to your website belong to a PBN is to check their IP addresses–if you see a bunch of low-quality sites on the same IP, it’s a dead giveaway. 

Identifying these is important, especially if you’re working with a link-building agency or buying a site from a seller that doesn’t reveal that the site is using a PBN. 

With the rising price of PBN links, you shouldn’t spend your money on detectable PBNs that will put your money site at risk of getting penalized by Google. Fortunately, you can build safe and healthy PBNs by choosing a reliable web host like Easy Blog Networks, which uses multiple dispersed data centers and web hosts to ensure that your PBNs are completely undetectable.

It also installs each blog or site within your PBN with a random theme, different plugins, a random username, and a different mailbox. These measures are meant to ensure that your PBNs are footprint-free so that you can enjoy an improved ranking on Google without worrying about getting penalized.

When you’re buying domains for your PBNs, get them from different registrars and ensure that their WhoIS Guards are fully enabled; this will help you to determine if they share IP addresses. Once you build your PBN, have it hosted by a company like Easy Blog Networks because the blogs and sites will be disseminated to multiple data centers and hosts.

What Are Private Blog Networks?

A PBN is a collection of high-authority blogs and sites that create a network. This network of blogs and sites is then used to link back to money sites for better SEO. The PBN sites essentially only serve to pass link “juice” to a money site. 

Some SEO influencers have started advocating for PBN sites to work as money sites in their own right to be more legitimate. But this approach defeats the purpose of PBNs in a lot of ways.

The idea of using PBNs to boost a site’s ranking is based on the belief that Google’s ranking algorithm mainly determines a site’s authority and credibility by the number of high authority sites linking back to it. It interprets the backlinks to mean a vote of approval.

These networks are meant to influence Google into believing that your money site is an authority in your area of specialization. With proper private blog network management, your site’s ranking authority and visibility will improve almost immediately.

However, you can easily get penalized if Google detects that your backlinks belong to a PBN. The search engine doesn’t condone such black hat SEO tricks. Furthermore, it doesn’t condone the selling of backlinks. If you violate any of these rules, your site will be suspended indefinitely. To avoid getting suspended by Google, you have to make your PBNs undetectable.