Buying a SERPs competitor domain / site
-
For a specific term, we have the potential opportunity to purchase the domain (complete with site) that sits just above us in the Google search results... The domain has reasonable page authority of 49, domain authority of 38 with 168 linking root domains - 311 total links...
Would the most beneficial use of the domain be to retain the site content as is and incorporate a few relevant links back to our site or... 301 the entire domain?
-
Tough decision but if the price of the website is affordable I would purchase it. You have to remember it is important to analyze the site and do research but your other competitors may pick up underneath you too. If it is in your budget it maybe best to buy it and hold onto it.
-
A few years ago I purchased the #1 site for a competitive KW.... I ran the site for a couple of months before doing anything - just to get an understanding of the site and the people who visit.
-
Exactly, this in itself is a great answer.
My addition (covered by Goals above possibly) is to focus on the objectives of your business. Search kind of needs to come second here, would this potential purchase compliment your business objectives and goals!
Only you can really have an idea of the investment time & cost it may take to rank higher than your competitor for your chosen search terms. Compare this against the cost of the domain & site purchase to factor into your decision making.
-
This is a very complex question. Any answers given here will be guesses.
I am not trying to insult those who reply... just letting you know that you need a very in-depth study of many things including SERPs, products, goals, content, site strengths, site assets, and more.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will adding /blog/ to my urls affect SEO rankings?
Following advice from an external SEO agency I removed /blog/ from our permalinks late last year. The logic was that it a) doesn't help SEO and b) reduces the character count for the slug. Both points make sense. However, it makes segmenting blog posts from other content in Google Analytics impossible. If I were to add /blog/ back into my URLs, and redirected the permalinks, would it harm my rankings? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | GerardAdlum0 -
Forwarding a .org domain to a .com domain: any negative impact to consider?
Hello! I have a question I've been unable to find a clear answer to. My client's primary domain is a .com with a satisfactorily high DA. My client owns the .org version of its domain (which has a very low DA, I suppose due to inactivity) but has never forwarded it on. For branding/visibility/traffic reasons, I'd like to recommend they set up the .org domain to forward to the .com domain, but I wanted to ask a few questions first: 1. Does forwarding low-value DA domains to high-value DA domains have any negative authority/SEO impact? 2. If the .org domain was to be forwarded, am I correct that an SSL cert is not necessary for it if the .com domain has an SSL cert? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms1 -
How to handle New Page/post with site map
Hi, I've created and submitted to google (through webmaster tool) a site map with the WP plugin XML google maps. Now I've created new pages and posts. My question is: do i have to recreate and re submit another site map to google or can i just submit to google the new pages and posts with the option 'FETCH AS GOOGLE' ? Tx so much in advance.
Technical SEO | | tourtravel0 -
Blog.domain or domain.com/blog
My client can't do domain.com/blog because he's on wix. I'm thinking blog.domain.com. Do you have any resources for the pros and cons of this? I understand that google looks at them very similarly now, is that true for google +?
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Meta data & xml sitemaps for mobile sites when using rel="canonical"/rel="alternate" annotations
When using rel="canonical" and rel="alternate" annotations between mobile and desktop sites (rel="canonical" on mobile, pointing to desktop, and rel="alternate" on desktop pointing to mobile), what are everyone's thoughts on using meta data on the mobile site? Is it necessary? And also, what is the common consensus on using a separate mobile xml sitemap?
Technical SEO | | 4Ps0 -
What needs to be done to tell google my site has moved /changed
Hi everyone, I have a site, which I have re-built on a temporary domain, so that my main ecommerce site can still run.. I have noticed that google has already crawled my temporary domain. The only problem is I now want to transfer the new site back onto its proper domain (www.ourbrand.com). I have changed some of the URL structures of the new site so realize I will need to do re-directs relating to the same domain, but will google get confused that another domain used to have my new website on? I don't plan on using the old temporary domain again and wondered if I need to tell google in some way it was used just to build my site on? Michelle
Technical SEO | | nutjobshell0 -
What is the advantage of using sub domains instead of pages on the root domain?
Have a look at this example http://bannerad.designcrowd.com/ For each category of design, they have a landing page on the sub domain. Wouldn't it be better to have them as part of the same domain? What is the strategy behind using sub domains?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
How much of an issue is it if a site is somehow connected to a site that was penalized by Google?
I am working with someone that is about to launch a new site, and one of the sites was affected by the Panda update. Does it matter if the two sites are connected? Share the same hosting provider and same Google Webmaster's account?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0