If you need a boost in the search engines for specific keywords there is one strategy which can be beneficial to you and the search engines: properly customized private blog networks. The key focus is “properly”.
Remember that the search engines have 2 primary goals:
- To make money as they all are, or are part of, publicly-traded companies
- To earn “market share” from current and future search engine users, so their organic search result listings must be as helpful and value-added for the end user as possible
I Have Heard About Private Blog Networks, But Why Should I Care About Them Especially If They Get To Be Expensive?
In the ideal, perfect world your website would rank # 1 in the organic search engine result pages (SERPs) for every keyword which is relevant to your industry. This scenario would include those phrases which indicate that a searcher may be willing to do business with your website/company right away (e.g. “24 hour plumber Dallas” or “vanilla protein powders free shipping”) if the searcher sees what he/she wants right away.
The problem is that often your website (or other web properties) is nowhere near the first page for the phrases you want. Even if your website loads quickly, visitors stay on your site and visit many pages when they do show up, you have a privacy policy/terms of service/etc., and you have proper “on page optimization” for the keyword phrases you want… it still may not be good enough!
You need quality websites linking to you, with some (but not all!) of those links pointing to your website with your desired keyword phrase(s). Such quality websites would include local universities, your city’s chamber of commerce, an industry trade association website, your local newspaper/radio/TV websites, guest blog posts on widely-read bloggers in your niche and/or geographic area and local/national business directory sites. These are terrific sites from which to get links!
The problem is… can you get those types of links, with a mix of specific wordings for each specific link, whenever you want?
How Can A Private Blog Network Service Do This?
Remember that a “quality” website to the search engines is one which has sufficient “authority” that it can meet the 2 stated goals earlier: help the search engine provide a good user experience so that the end user, one day, clicks a paid on that that search engine which (drum roll…) helps the search engine make more money!
The main key for choosing a private blog network service, or if you decide to create your own custom private blog network for internal use only, is to “play nice”. You need several things to make this work properly. The first is to purchase or develop different domains which have “authority” before you post content which has the type of link you want for your SEO and traffic-generation purposes.
By “authority”, this does not necessarily mean JUST the Google PageRank algorithm number. Many other factors such as each domain’s value for the domain age, SEOMoz Rank, Moz Trust, Trust Flow, Citation Flow, URL Rank, Domain Rank, DMOZ.org inclusion and much more come into play. You need to know these values ahead of time before you purchase any domains to include in a private blog network.
You then want different IP addresses as well as other factors for your hosting and site creation. You need to make sure that each blog is configured differently with the plugins and themes. And…
… make sure that the content you put on these sites is quality information which actually helps the end users!
This includes video, images, infographics, unique articles, unique audio, and some other value to help the end user make a more informed decision. Yes, a private blog network firm should set up the network with the main focus being the boosting of your website in the search engines; but sometimes the specific content on a private blog network site actually outranks the website you are trying to promote. If this happens, you want the content on that page to be good enough to stand on its own like a “mini-website” for the company or client you intend to help.
I Heard That Private Blog Networks Were Taken Down And Penalized. Why Would I Want That For My Site?!?
Actually, there was a huge difference between a customized “PRIVATE blog network” and “blog network” which was advertised on every SEO forum as being the “Golden Key To Kick Google In The Tail”. Remember that you have to “play nice” with the search engines in order to get what you ultimately want. Using a service which was advertised all over the place as a way to “game” the search engines violates the original two rules of helping the search engines make more money and increase market share.
Compounding the situation was that many marketers were throwing onto the “public” blog network pages virtually-unreadable content along with links to less-than-clean subjects (pills, adult, gambling, etc.). Even if you were part of such a blog network and posted great content which was unique and helpful…
… your “neighbors” (other marketers) were making a “slum” around your beautiful property!
A customized private blog network has no such concerns as you control everything that goes onto those pages. You can post only quality, helpful, value-added content. You can control how many links to the same domain appear per post. You can control what type of subjects/niches you wish to promote. You can control which types of “authority” is expected per domain included in the blog network.
Playing Nice With The Search Engines
Go back to the 2 goals you need to fulfill in order to get the search engines to reward you: help them increase the end user experience and help them to make more money. If you provide some terrific unique content on a private blog network, it may be better than the content on the main website for the desired keyword.
If so, you can do at least 3 things to promote this content and get the post/page on the network to gain more “authority” which, in turn, hopefully should boost the page you are promoting for the keyword(s) you are promoting:
- Buy some traffic to the site through the main search engine pay-per-click (PPC) services. This would include Google AdWords
- Share the post/page on the private blog network on social bookmark sites
- Get others to link or share/re-tweet/like the specific post if the content is unique, funny, entertaining, informative, etc.
All Right, I Understand The Differences And Am Willing To Give These Customized Private Blog Networks A Chance. What Do I Need To Get Started?
To do this right, and for not much extra (marginal) cost, here is a quick list of what you need to get started:
- A good amount of domains which you have bought which have built-in high degrees of authority across multiple authority-measuring services
- Unique IP addresses, perhaps even separate hosting packages
- Quality, unique content for EACH keyword you want to promote
- A list of other web properties you don’t mind promoting (e.g. your LinkedIn company page, your YouTube channel, an industry/association directory listing for your company)
- Unique images which are relevant. If you can’t obtain unique images then either get written permission to use specific images or buy relevant stock photos
- The embed code for specific public videos (yours or others which you can use) or embed your company’s videos via the blogging system’s feature or a third-party service like Amazon S3
- A schedule of drip-feeding out the content
- List of keyword synonyms as the search engines don’t want you to barrage a specific page on your website for just one phrase. That is unnatural and could hurt your rankings for other phrases in addition to the one you are attempting to get increased
Hopefully this helps you better understand the need for customized private blog networks. If you need help creating this as an asset for your company then you are welcome to contact us or use a reputable private blog network consultant whom you trust. If you simply rather would pay a monthly fee to post your links on an existing private blog network – where you still can control the content post by post – then you are welcome to contact us as well.
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