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
-
Hreflang Tags - error: 'en' - no return tags
Hello, We have recently implemented Hreflang tags to improve the findability of our content in each specific language. However, Webmaster tool is giving us this error... Does anyone know what it means and how to solve it? Here I attach a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/a4AsqLNtF6J Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
301 - Specific Domain
In Google our main website page url is <cite class="_Rm">www.wheelchairparts.com</cite> it has 25 root domain links & PA 34. When you go to our website from there, the homepage url is http://www.wheelchairparts.com/store/pc/home.asp it only has 3 root domain links & PA 27. Do I need to add a 301 Redirect here? What kind of redirect is on it now? Thanks, - Mike Bean
Technical SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
Domain forwarding
Hi Is it ok or bad practice to domain forward shorter more memorable snappier domains used for promoting a website to a longer domain where the website actually lives, such as: Promoting in social media profiles, emails and offline literature a domain with forwarding set up like: www.brand.com To the main website: www.brandincludingprimaryproductrelatedkeyword.com And if ok (not bad practice), since its the forwarded domains that are being promoted they are hence the links most likely to be shared on social media and other websites so will they be treated like 301's and 'link building' for those will pretty much equate to link building for the main domain (or not) ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Multiple domains pointing to same site
Over the years, we have acquired a great number of variations of our domains, or industry-specific domains to protect our brand. Currently, the majority of those domains are parked at the registrars. Would we do any harm to our rankings if we pointed the dormant domains to our website (www.ellsworth.com)? If not, are there any recommendations as the best way to do this, or just point them to the same IP?
Technical SEO | | Ellsworth0 -
SEOMoz is indicating I have 40 pages with duplicate content, yet it doesn't list the URL's of the pages???
When I look at the Errors and Warnings on my Campaign Overview, I have a lot of "duplicate content" errors. When I view the errors/warnings SEOMoz indicates the number of pages with duplicate content, yet when I go to view them the subsequent page says no pages were found... Any ideas are greatly welcomed! Thanks Marty K.
Technical SEO | | MartinKlausmeier0 -
Domain Masking with New Keyword-Rich Domains
Hello, friends. We have an ecommerce site and we also own several keyword-rich domains but haven't done anything with them yet. Is there any value in using domain masking to point them to either product pages or special landing pages on our primary ecommerce site? Here's an example: Primary site is widgetzone.com Keyword rich URL is acmewidget.com (which is totally blank and isn't indexed) It could point to our category page for Acme Widgets: widgetzone.com/category/acme-widgets or it could point to a new landing page: widgetzone.com/acme-widgets My concern is that because the keyword-rich URL hasn't been utilized at all there's really no point in redirecting it. I'm of the mind that it's either going to be ineffective at best or a duplicate content issue at worst. What do you guys think? As a follow-up, if we don't redirect these domains, what should we do with them? Just try to sell them off rather than create totally new sites?
Technical SEO | | jbreeden0 -
Redirecting a domain
I was setting up a new campaign and received the following error from Roger Robot. "We have detected that the domain www.sitename.com and the domain sitename.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here." I know about redirecting a PAGE using 301 Redirects and how to specify the www. canonical in Google webmaster tools, but is there a "DOMAIN" redirect that I'm missing. What would you suggest doing given the error message above. Thanks, Bill Sqnch.jpg
Technical SEO | | Marvo0 -
Why Google did not index our domain?
Hi, We launched tmart 60 days ago and submitted to google, bing, yahoo 20 days later. But google had never indexed our website still when yahoo indexed it in one week. What we have checked or tried: 1. We got 20~50 inlinks in one month and now 81 inlinks via yahoo site explorer. 2. This domain has registered for 13 years and we purchased it from sedo last year. We
Technical SEO | | zt673
did not find any problems from domain archive pages. 3. Page similar: the homepage is 50% similar to one of our competitors when we just launched.
So we adjusted the page structure and modified the content one month later and decreased the similarity to 30% (by tools from webconfs.com) 4. Google Robots: googlebot crawled our website every day after we submitted for indexing.
We opened GWT account for it and added the xml sitemap last week. GWT said nothing
was wrong except the time of page loading. Our questions: Why google did not indexed our website? What should we do? Thanks, wu0