Intro
Even the best expired domains can flop if you register and set them up in the wrong way. Today we’ll do this the right way from choosing the right domain registrar and hosting to setting it all up and filling it with powerful content, in the right place in the right way, that will leave no footprints and ensure your domains are indexed and begin ranking quickly.
A PBN can thrive or fail based on it’s setup, and this is really important to get right from the beginning. So, read on to see how I go about this process and get dozens of pages indexed within a few days of registering an expired domain.
💡 Free Resource Alert: Download my free Domain Registrar & DNS Standard Operating Procedures document to ensure you are hitting all the major areas of diversity, which is key to a robust PBN.
Diversity is key: Reduce Footprints and Patterns
Diversity really is key when setting up your PBN. You want every website to be registered at a different registrar, to have different DNS settings and records, a different host and different content.
When it comes to registering your domain, you should look to have a breakdown of 3-5 domain registrars that you are comfortable with and rotate between them.
DNS settings may be something you are unfamiliar with but you need to change these settings up for every domain.
For hosting there are more choices than you can shake a stick at, luckily this means there is always a company offering cheap deals for the first year of hosting. Make use of these deals if it fits in your plan (more on this later)
And, possibly most importantly, vary up the content of the website itself. There are so many ways to do this these days, it’s really unforgiveable to set up a PBN with the same cookie cutter design or layout and doom yourself from the start. We cover this in great detail later on.
Registering Domains The Right Way
One common flaw that scuppered a lot of the early PBNs was using the same registrar to register domains on a single registrar, this must be avoided at all costs. With pricing so similar across registrars it makes little sense to have allegiance to one.
How to vary it up if you don’t know who to use? Google is your friend, use it. There are many reliable registrars and whois privacy is almost a given these days so just search for whoever has deals on and try not to use the same registrar twice until you have your first handful of domains.
When setting up a domain for use in a PBN, you will want to use different names and addresses. Giving incorrect details would be against ICANN ToS so I cannot suggest that you do this… Whois privacy should shield this data from the search engines but try to vary it up as much as possible.
Use a different email address for your domains, you can always redirect all emails to a central address for convenience but the outwardly visible email address should be unique. Register your domains periodically, never on the same day. If you’re registering hundreds of domains, obviously you may have some registered on the same day but try to spread registrations out through the year to keep the footprint low.
Web Hosting for your PBN
When selecting hosting, you have several options, each with their own set of pros and cons:
| Hosting Type | Pros | Cons |
| Cheap Shared Hosting | Very cheap, often easy setup. | Slow, single IP shared with many users (reputation risk). |
| Cloud/Droplet Hosting | Dedicated IP possible, cheap for small sites, scalable. | Can create its own footprint if all sites use the same platform/interface. |
| VPS/Dedicated Servers | Cheap only if hosting many sites; high control, fast. | Expensive when starting out, high footprint risk if not managed carefully, requires expertise. (Avoid when starting) |
| Dedicated PBN Hosting | Ideal for PBNs, reduced footprints, high manageability, single admin panel. | Best value after about 5 domains hosted. |
While some argue that the risk of being linked to potentially irreputable websites on shared hosting isn’t worth the cost savings, shared hosts do have their place. Search engines are sophisticated enough to know that many legitimate websites use them.
Our Recommendation: Dedicated PBN Hosting
The most convenient and price-competitive option, especially as your network grows, is a dedicated PBN host.
- They are cheap (often just a few dollars per domain).
- They provide the necessary diversity by deploying your sites across many different hosts from a single administrative panel.
- This gives you the ideal hosting diversity while maintaining a familiar control panel for easy management.
We have a list of some popular and budget web hosts on our website that could be worth checking out when looking for a good deal. Prices change regularly so it is important to check the prices before proceeding.
Setting Up DNS Records and Hosting
Once your domain is registered and hosting has been purchased, our next step is to connect the two via DNS.
DNS Setup: Footprint Reduction
DNS records are how the internet finds your web host’s location. Your main goal is to point your domain to your host’s nameservers.
- If you use many different hosting companies, your DNS will naturally be diverse.
- The Footprint Risk: Be mindful of tracking or mail records (e.g., Amazon SES, Google Workspace) that require you to add specific records to your DNS. If all your domains share the exact same set of custom records, it creates a unique fingerprint. Vary these records across your sites.
Web Hosting Configuration
Each host has their own preferred way of getting a website hosted and online. Usually this will be done via an FTP client (I suggest FileZilla) or a web interface via their hosting admin panel. Either way, you can expect most hosts to have a specific guide on how to upload your webpages to your host.
Some considerations for setting up your hosting are:
- SSL Certificate: No reputable website is without it’s own SSL certificate, it is non-negotiable. Google will be reluctant to send clicks your way without one, so make sure yours is set up
- Email Address: Create at least one email address (e.g.,
info@yourdomain.com). This is needed for your privacy policy, looks more legitimate, and allows people/authorities to contact you. Forward all PBN domain email accounts to one central address for easy management and to make sure you never miss an incoming email. - CMS/Technology: If you plan to use a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, ensure your host offers an easy installation option, or install it manually. Some sites won’t require a complicated CMS to run, in these cases just use a simple html website.
Website Content and Build Strategy
This is where your domain finally comes back to life. You have several options for filling your domain with content:
| Content Strategy | Pros | Cons/Notes |
| Hand-Build | A unique masterpiece. | Time consuming, not usually practical for a PBN build. |
| Template / Theme | Good design and functionality out of the box. | Can look generic without customization; still takes time. (Better for long-term sites) |
| Recover Old Website | Full-featured site with minimal effort, preserves link structure. | Risk of copyright issues; use as a temporary placeholder. Not easy to extend large sites |
| AI Generation | Fast, can create unique-looking content quickly. | Content can be surface-level or buggy; ensure linking structure works and content is fitting. |
The Power of Recreating the Old Site Structure
An expired domain’s authority and power exists in its backlink profile. These backlinks point to specific pages on the old site. To capture all that authority, you must:
- Recreate Key Pages: Use backlink analysis tools (Majestic, Ahrefs, DomDetailer, SemRush, etc.) to identify every page with existing backlinks.
- Recreate the Content: The pages with backlinks will preferably have some relevant content that is able to be indexed and rank. This will help to rebuild it’s relevancy.
Using AI to Expedite the Build
AI tools are a great way to get something built and online ready with little time. Utilise them for:
- Content Regeneration: You can feed a backlink profile to an AI and have it recreate a site for you based on information you provide. Explain the sort of site you are trying to create, tell it to create the pages from your backlinks profile and see what it creates. Don’t forget that you can improve results by refining your prompts
- Functionality Recreation: If the old website used to have some notable tools or functionality, you can use AI to recreate this.
I recently recovered the main functionality for Links2RSS.com, a domain I found while filming this series. ChatGPT (I use this for most of my code and projects) was able to one shot the look and functionality of the original tool. I will be detailing my process on this in a future guide, so stay tuned for that.
Goal: It should not take more than a day to get your site online. Streamline your process to eventually get sites live within an hour or so of registration.
Essential Pages (The Must-Haves)
While your PBN sites should be diverse, and have little in common with each other, there are a few pages you should almost always include for legitimacy:
- Privacy Policy page
- Contact page
- Sitemap.xml file (most CMSs handle this, but easy to create manually)
And, as mentioned before:
- SSL Certificate: Always have one. They are free, take minutes to set up, and are essential for ranking in 2025.
For a sitemap, if you aren’t using a CMS that will create one for you, you can use something like Inspyder Sitemap Creator to quickly whip one up for you. Simply upload the sitemap.xml file to the home directory of your web hosting. Don’t ping this file, at least until the site has warmed up first.
Reindexing and The Plan Going Forward
The backlinks that a good expired domain will have should help to get it indexed without the need for any further promotions. By putting the old content back online or recreating the key backlinked pages, you should see the domain index itself in a matter of days.
- Patience is Key: Do not push a ton of links to it right away or bother with indexing services. Let the domain speak for itself.
- Keep Hunting: While you wait for indexing, spend your time crawling for more domains. Looking before you need a domain allows you to be picky and only select the best domains you find.
- Social Signals: Talking about your new acquisition and posting it on social media is usually fine and can start a small “rumble” without the risk of spamming links. Keep this lowkey at first.
- Link Building: Remember, these domains already have a good backlink profile. After a couple of weeks minimum, you can consider building more links, but the domains should primarily stand on their own.
Remember: These domains should stand on their own as quality assets to your backlink profile. They should be promoting you, the time and money spent promoting the PBNs should be kept to a minimum early on.
If you have built a simple placeholder website to cover the main pages, or if you have used a recovered website, you will likely want to replace this in future. When replacing a recovered site, always make sure that any unused pages should be redirected to a new page that is related to that content.
Never let a juicy backlink point to a dead (404) page, make sure it either points directly to some content, or that it at least redirects to a page with similar content.
Wrap Up and Next Steps
We’ve covered the critical steps from domain registration through to a working website, ensuring every step is as sustainable and effective as possible by eliminating common footprints.
For those who prefer a step-by-step breakdown, I’ve created a printable Registrar & DNS Standard Operating Procedures checklist, download it now to guide your next PBN build.
If you found this guide helpful, I encourage you to check out the accompanying video and subscribe to the channel for more in-depth tutorials. The next part in this series will cover the exact technical steps I take to recreate and index a website!
