Best Metrics for selecting PBN domains

When it comes to finding PBN domains. You need to be sure your are getting those with the best SEO metrics behind them. After all your PBN domains are the most important single element of your entire private blog network.

There are very few SEO metrics that matter these days to be honest with you. They are all a bit of a stab in the dark. But none the less, from vast experience. And being in the privileged position of having extensive private scientific data in my arsenal. I can write this post with the most factual information your ever going to get!

What SEO metrics should I pay least attention to for my PBN domains?

The metrics that you should really take with a pinch of salt when selecting your PBN domains are as follows:

1. Ahrefs DR – The problem with this metric is it can be a false positive. By that I mean its very unreliable. You can have a really high DR but all the links be spammy. Ideally you want a DR of at least 10. 20+ is even better. But it should be only looked at once you have checked the backlinks properly to ensure its clean. Only then can you take any faith in this metric at all. It is not as strong as Majestic TF as a power indicator for PBN domains either. So have this metric only in your mind as secondary one. But for sure do not use it as the main metric you look at!
2. SEO MOZ metrics – Just forget it.

So what are the SEO metrics I need to be concentrating on.

The metrics and information laid out below. I must express to you comes from the most extensive scientific data in the world. I have mapped the collation between metrics and ranking power for over 16 years now.

My extensive studies of PBN domains, networks & SEO metrics. Coupled with my personal experience putting the information obtained from my research to use. Has taught me there are only 2 main things that matter when it comes to domains for a Private blog networks.

1. Majestic SEO trust flow (TF) – The most important metric for PBN domains. You should never have a domain under TF 15. The higher the better and the quicker the link juice power is shown on your money site. Therefore, the quicker your rankings will improve! This is one of the SEO metrics we use inside our dashboard for our customers free of charge also. As it must be monitored and we do this for you, once your domain is added to our Dashboard.
2. Linking Root Domains (LRD) – A very important factor is the amount of linking root domains & the quality of them of course. The quality is reflected well in TF anyway. The best place to get the LRD numbers from is Ahrefs. As its database is the fasted updating in the world, outside of Google. Majestic is also very good for LRD data, but not as good as Ahrefs. You should never has a PBN domain with less than 20 Linking Root Domains (LRD). The only small exception is you come across a domain that say has 15 LRD, but those links are like from the most amazing sites and its TF is like 40 or something. Then I would use it. You can also look at the number of links the domain has. As it may for example have 200 backlinks from 30 LRD. This is better than 30 backlinks from 30 LRD in general. But if you want to keep it simple, look at the LRD over anything more. As its the most important element.

Digging deeper in to PBN domains has also got easier now with the launch of Majestics new Link Graph. This is great for looking at PBN domains and looking at the number of Tier 2/3/4/5 links behind the domains. Choosing the right domain is quiet technical. This new tool can assist you more. By allowing you to also look beyond the standard LRD and Backlinks of the PBN domains with ease. I always have evaluated them, but this makes the process much quicker now. A good strong PBN domain with have good quality link depth. So make sure you select ones that have a good number of at least Tier 2 links behind it also. As this without doubt gives it much better power overall. It also helps greatly with faster indexing of new content.

Other things to consider when buying PBN domains.

Besides the standard metrics mentioned above. You must also look at and take in to account the following factors:

1. Look at the general back links behind the domain. Make sure none of them are looking spammy or from link networks. However remember things like link blasts from the likes of x-rummer or other old SEO software’s are very much ignored by Google these days. This was part of their Negative SEO prevention. So I wouldn’t always not use a domain just because it has some backlinks like these!
2. Make sure you check the domains history. The best way to do this is to use the wayback machine to pull up historic screenshots of the websites that have been on the Domain previously. Looking through these, you can detect if the site has been used previously for a PBN site, been on a 301 redirect or something similar. If the site has been used for a PBN before or has in the last few years been put on a 301 redirect to a different website. Do not use it.
3. The domain name not being connected to your niche. This doesn’t matter at all. If you can not find Niche relevant PBN domains, do not worry. You can buy the domain for example; wordpresshosting.com and use it to put links to a travel website. Google gets very little of its relevance from the domain name it’s self now. The anchors in the backlinks give relevancy of course. So if you can not find niche relevant domains. Look for ones with lots of none keyword anchors in them. E.g, lots of naked or branded anchor texts & very little EMA’s. The main relevance score comes from the pages content. So what you must do, is make sure you put original content on this domain and make the content about the industry you want to link out to. This is very important! If I was going to be using the domain wordpresshosting.com to link out to a website about travel to the USA. I would tie them both together very simply. To do this you would in the main opening paragraph of the website. Write something like this ‘Most travel agents that promote holidays to the USA build their websites using WordPress. Ensuring reliable hosting is readily available to them’. I would not mention it again and the rest of the content would 100% be on the topic of Travel to the USA. No matter what the site content was before you owned the Domain. You must ensure you put topic relevant content on it now!

If you need any help or want to understand any point in this post in more detail. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to help and advise where I can. All our of customers can also ask for Free Personal PBN help where required. As a part of this, we will happy check some PBN domains for you. Therefore, ensuring you get it right and get the SEO results you are here to get.