How do I check that domain I'm considering buying has clean history?
-
I'm weighing up buying a niche-related 13-year-old domain that hasn't expired but hasn't been used in some time.
I've read the very informative thread here: www.seomoz.org/q/buying-domains-with-prior-age-and-or-pr
The backlink profile is clean, with only on-topic links.
However, it doesn't rank in the top 50 positions for its own (hyphenated & fairly competitive) domain name. Does this indicate a Google penalty of some kind? What's the surefire way of checking?
-
Yes, the owner can delete messages, but perhaps you might be able to find something in the indexation history graph or other place.
-
I've run it through Open Site Explorer and the link profile is pretty good.
The tip about GWT's a good one - I'll ask if the seller's open to that. Is it possible for site owners to delete unsavoury messages in GWT?
-
I would recommend using opensiteexplorer.org to find out what type of links the site has coming towards it (you might have already done this). Also, do you have access to the domain owner's Google Webmaster Tools account? perhaps you could poke around there first if they will allow you access.
Scott
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
-
Recently re-built our site and changed domain. Now I want to go back to old domain - it it a bad idea?
About a year ago I rebuilt our website and changed our domain name. We rent villas in Tuscany, we used to be 'invitationtotuscany.com'. Then I started doing the same in Provence, and in the italian lakes, so i had further sites called invitationtoprovence.com and invitationtotheitalianlakes.com. But maintaining them was awkward and I wanted to have one site. So I put them all onto invitationto.com and did 301s from the old domains and sites. Now I'd dropped off organic search results and I've also realised that invitationto.com is far less clear as a business address. My inclination is to go back to invitationtotuscany.com - Tuscany is still 80% of our business and have the other areas in there too - optimised for SEO for Provence etc. I'm being told its a really bad idea to change domain, 301 the old one, and then revert to the original domain. But I'm suffering anyway, so I wonder if I sjhouldn't just bite the bullet. A lot of my old good backlinks still point to invitationtotuscany.com (BBC, Sunday Times, etc) and the DA is 33 against 22 on the new one.. All help gratefully received! : )
Technical SEO | | DanWrightson0 -
Domain Forwarding Implications
Hi, I am working with a client who is planning to rebrand the company and set up a new domain. What is the best way to maximize and pass the authority from the existing sites (there are 2)? Each site already has many inbound links and have been around for a while. Should I set up 301 redirects for all of the pages? Should I set up domain forwarding? If I do this, what are the implications from an SEO perspective? Please advise. Thank you, Erin
Technical SEO | | HiddenPeak1 -
Domain Name Acquisition
Hi Anyone know how to get contact details for a domain owner beyond those provided by the likes of whois, archive etc etc ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
When testing the on page report I'm having a few problems
First of all, is this test checking my seo optimization over the whole website or just over one site: Ie. when I type in www.joelolson.ca...is it also checking sites like www.joelolson.ca/realtorresources... Secondly. I have found that it won't find specific websites on my page and says they can't be found when clearly they exist
Technical SEO | | JoelOlson0 -
Redirect link from a particular domain
Hi guys/gals, I have a few domains and blogs which I use really for a bit of fun and experimenting. One of the domains (abc.com) wasn't doing much but has a few decent links built to it. I redirected this domain to an active blog (123.com). Here's the problem: There's a particular external link to the homepage of abc.com which drives a lot of traffic but isn't relevant to the content of 123.com which it redirects to, causing a huge bounce rate from this link. Is there a way (maybe using using htaccess) that I can redirect traffic from this one link to another domain completely? I've contacted the owner of the external site but they are unable (or unwilling) to change the link. I hope I haven't lost you all but shout if you need any clarification. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
What's the issue?
Hi, We have a client who dropped in the rankings (initially from bottom of the first page to page to page 3, and now page 5) for a single keyword (their most important one - targeted on their homepage) back in the middle of March. So far, we've found that the issue isn't the following: Keyword stuffing on the page External anchor text pointing to the page Internal anchor text pointing to the page In addition to the above, the drop didn't coincide with panda or penguin. Any other ideas as to what could cause such a drop for a single keyword (other related rankings haven't moved). We're starting to think that this may just have been another small change in the algorithm but it seems like too big of a drop in a short space of time for that to be the case. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Ignore url parameters without the 'parameter=' ?
We are working on an ecommerce site that sorts out the products by color and size but doesn't use the sortby= but uses sortby/. Can we tell Google to ignore the sortby/ parameter in Webmaster Tools even though it is not followed by an = sign? For example: www.mysite.com/shirts/tshirts/shopby/size-m www.mysite.com/shirts/tshirts/shopby/color-black Can we tell WMT to ignore the 'shopby/' parameter so that only the tshirts page will be indexed? Or does the shopby have to be set up as 'shopby=' ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0 -
We have a decent keyword rich URL domain that's not being used - what to do with it?
We're an ecommerce site and we have a second, older domain with a better keyword match URL than our main domain (I know, you may be wondering why we didn't use it, but that's beside the point now). It currently ranks fairly poorly as there's very few links pointing to it. However, the exact match URL means it has some value, if we were to build a few links to it. What would you do with it: 301 product/category pages to current site's equivalent page Link product/category pages to current site's equivalent page Not bother using it at all Something else
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0