PBN Strategy Explained - The Complete Guide To Find The High-Quality Expired Domains - SEO Tutorial Series - # 21
Welcome to the twenty-one episode of my SEO tutorial series. We have covered pretty much everything in the past tutorials. In my last post, I introduced the robust link-building method to you and also mentioned that it is not possible to explain everything in a single tutorial.
Setting up PBN seems like a very easy task but actually, it is not. There are a lot of steps that need to be taken carefully. You can't skip any of those steps otherwise your network won't serve any good purpose and instead, it will affect your site.
As I mentioned in my last post, you need the following to build the robust blogs network:
- High-metrics Domains
- Careful hosting
- Different approaches
- Big number of HQ content
- Outbound/Inbound strategy
In this tutorial, we'll discuss one of the best ways to find the high-metrics expired domain. That's the first step to take. You might be wondering, why not the new domains? why is it mandatory to have expired domains? In this case, I want to ask something to you, will the new domains have any high-metrics? If no one ever used that new domain, then how can you expect high-metrics? A new domain always starts with 1 DA and 1 PA.
![Domains](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://antzbusinesssolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/criteria-to-choose-right-domain-name.png)
Image Credits: AntzBusinessSolutions
If you've missed my previous tutorials, I explained there that why metrics are important. These metrics measure how much importance your site is likely to receive from search engines. It is mandatory that your main money site should have nice metrics. Just like that, when you build backlinks, Google pays attention only those links which come from high-metrics site to ensure that it doesn't rank crap on its search result page.
Well, enough introduction. Let's start learning the strategy.
Guide To Find The HQ Expired Domains:
The authority sites often mention the link to external sites within their article/page which becomes the backlink for an external site. As a result of this backlink, the metrics of that external site increases. But it is also possible that the article/page is very old and the link mentioned is no longer working (i.e broken link). This could be because that domain may be expired.
That means its an opportunity for you to grab that domain and start your work with it. Sounds amazing, right? But it is not quite easy. There are some big domain agencies that follow the exact same strategy and register domains on their name. As in SEO world, it is called "competition". But remember, domains expire every day! Maybe you would find the domain that was expired just a day ago? It's quite possible. After all, it is just a "competition" and that means it is not impossible to find a great domain with it.
Step 1: Pick the High Authority Site:
First of all, you need to pick the authority site that you expect would have mentioned some external sites. HuffingtonPost and Wired are two great examples. They often link external sites which becomes the valuable backlink for those external sites.
In this example, I am choosing HuffingtonPost and I will start searching its external links.
Step 2: Find the external links:
Remember that you must scrape all of the external links that were ever mentioned on HuffingtonPost. And for that, you'll need to browse the "Complete" site. Going to each link and page is a painful task and no one have such a free time to waste.
Therefore, I've made my own strategy and that's using "Sitemap" of the site. There may be some recent articles missing in the sitemap but it doesn't matter. Our main target is to browse the site's old pages.
In my case, I am going to browse: huffingtonpost.com/sitemap.xml
You should add "/sitemap.xml" at the end of the domain. Some sites have sitemap located in "/sitemap_index.xml". Usually, large sites store multiple sitemaps in one index to make crawling easier for search engine bots. And some have sitemap located in "/sitemaps.xml". In my case, "/sitemap.xml" is working fine.
![Sitemap](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s10.postimg.org/ybpmd44cp/sitemap.png)
As you can see above, HuffingtonPost stored multiple sitemaps in one XML file. You need to copy all the links that end with .xml and paste in the notepad. Save the text file. Make sure that each line has only 1 sitemap URL. If you're unable to find all the sitemaps, just visit huffingtonpost.com/robot.txt and there you'll see the dedicated XML for each category.
Step 3: Extract Sitemaps using Sitemap Scraper Addon:
Now, it's time to extract sitemaps so that you could have actual site's links. In my case, I must extract sitemap in order to see HuffingtonPost articles link that they mentioned in the sitemap.
In order to do that, we'll have to use a paid tool "Scrapebox" where you have "Sitemap Scraper" addon. Simply load all the sitemap links (that end with .xml) into that and click on start. It will fetch all the URLs of your desired site on its own (in my case, the site is HuffingtonPost).
![Sitemap XML](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s10.postimg.org/or5zqarw9/Sitemap_E1.png)
Step 4: Find External Links:
We now have the URLs of HuffingtonPost's articles. It is possible that there would be broken external links on those articles and they could be some good expired domains too.
So, we need to use "Scrapebox" again. We'll be using "Link Extractor" addon. Unmark the "internal links" option and make sure that only "external links" is marked. Then hit on start. It will start looking at each page and store the mentioned external links into a text file.
![enter image description here](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s10.postimg.org/5yu4mqqd5/LE1.png)
Step 5: Remove duplicate external domains:
It is quite possible that there are multiple duplicate domains. The reason could be different URLs of the same domain. The work of scrapebox is to store whatever the external link it finds into the text file. You'll have to remove duplicates.
First of all, load the external links file into the harvester and click "Trim to root". It will convert all the URLs into the domain.
![Trim](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s10.postimg.org/kusnuf9ih/Trim.png)
Then click "Remove duplicates". Hurray, now you have the unique domains list.
Step 6: Check availability:
The best way to check if the mentioned site is available or not is to check the availability of domains. That will help you to easily spot the available domains.
To check the availability, you can use Dynadot bulk domains availability checker.
DynaDot Bulk Domain Availability Checker
Store all the available domains into your text file and wait for my next tutorial because availability is not what we are looking for. We are looking for the high-metrics quality domain. If the metrics are high, then it is must to verify if the metrics were scored with artificial methods or they are organic.
Important Info:
In my coming tutorials, I'll be mentioning what are the quality expired domains and what should be verified before buying that domain. You must not purchase any of the available domain right now because we are not looking for availability, we are looking for availability + quality. For now, please follow me at @princewahaj to keep receiving updates of more tutorials. If you've enjoyed the read, then make sure to support it in any way you can.
Previous Tutorials:
1st: How to Optimize Your Steemit Content for Search Engines
2nd: How To Give Your Steemit Content Even More Visibility In Search Engines And Beat Your Competitors
3rd: How To Benefit From Images You Use In Your Steemit Content - Internal & External Links - The Proven Method
4th: How To Generate Steemit Content Ideas - Keyword Research - Exact Search Volume Of Keywords From Google!
5th: Turn One Keyword Into Thousands Within Minutes - Long Tail Keywords - The Proven Keyword Research Technique
6th: Understanding The Leading SEO Metrics - Domain Authority And Page Authority
7th: Understanding The King Of Metrics In SEO Industry - Majestic - Trust Flow And Citation Flow
8th: An Introduction To Semrush - Keyword Estimated Traffic Calculation And Difficulty Score By Semrush
9th: Keyword Difficulty Analysis - The Second Core Part Of SEO - How To Find Out Your Ability To Compete - Steemit Metrics
10th: How To Perform Keyword Difficulty Analysis - The First Complete Strategy Explained - Can You Beat Your Competitors?
11th: Keyword Analysis Made Easy - Find Out The Competition Of Keywords In One-Click - The Proven Method Revealed
12th: How To Automate Your Keyword Analysis Task - Analyze Thousands Of Keywords With The Blazing Speed
13th: The Summary Of All The Proven Strategies Related To On-Page SEO
14th: Introduction To Off-Page SEO & The Strategy Of Social Networks To Boost Rankings With Social Signals
15th: Introduction To Backlinks And The Backlinks History
16th: Introduction to No-Follow and Do-Follow Backlinks & Their Importance
17th: Introduction To Link-Building Strategies - Blogs Commenting Explained
18th: Use Cases of Blogs Commenting Strategy - Forum Posting & Signatures Strategy Explained!
19th: Guest Posting Strategy Explained! - Step by Step Guide to Guest Posting
20th: Learn How To Boost Your SERP Ranking With Testimonials - The Robust Strategy Explained
21th: Private Blog Network (PBN) & How It Works! - The Robust Link-building Strategy To Rank ANY Keyword
Thanks @princewahaj for your consistency all this while, I’ve learnt a lot from your tutorials.
Compliment of the season.
I remain a humble friend and your follower @maxdevalue
Is it important to have a domain name or a domain name that is relevant to the content on my web site?
Thanks for details your content i learned alot of things abouth domain and seo tips
Yes, you'll need a relevant domain based on your niche. If it's about how-to posts, then you'll need a related domain name for better rankings. But if you pick a completely general word which is just 1 word long, then there's no problem. But don't go with 4-5 words domain, they rank less often on Google. Limit the max number of words to 3 and pick easy to remember name only.
You're welcome :) . Keep following the posts, and you'll learn much more. Also, share your experience so that we could learn something from you ;)
Thanks! I'm actually using Majestic to look at the domain's value, to see the external link, etc..
Majestic is also good for SEO work, so it's all in one package for me.
And for finding good domains? I'm using Majesitc as well for it. I'm going to the page of a high-quality domain. checking its external links and clicking on "Broken links" and seeing if these domains that linked to this website are available. if so, I'm checking more about the domains and if they are good enough for me - I'm buying. I've over 50 domains already. It's a hubby&business for me.
Thanks for your valuable comment. Yes, I was about to mention about Ahrefs and Majestic in my coming tutorials.
Awesome. Yes, Majestic and Ahrefs can save a lot of time and prove to be profitable. Domain selling is a very profitable business. And let me tell you, 50 domains means shitload of money if the metrics are high enough. ;)
Yes, Ahrefs is really good as well.
And yes, my domain list worth some money, not as much as I want it to be, but it's enough. :)
thanks for the strategy, reading it now.
Your post is very informative , I watch key points in this article
I am also work on SEO and this article is helpful for me and
other programmers to work on domain and seo
Great info here! Is it worth it? Hard to say without knowing what your goals/niche are. A small PBN of 10-20 web properties can make movements in a lot of niche's, however to make a dent in some of the more competitive ones, you'll need to scale way beyond that. Obviously the more you scale, the more costly this strategy becomes. But I find it risky, you should come up with an ultimate guide to PBN Safety post.