How much is Page Rank really worth?
-
We are in a position to purchase a domain, made of relevant keywords to our company with a current page ranking of 4 for their home page. However in looking at their analytics and other information they do not do well on significant keywords and have very low site traffic. In fact they do very, very poorly.
With their high page ranking would it be relatively easy to conduct a successful SEO campaign on the domain if we were to take it over as our own and attempt to climb in the SERP's? I know Page Rank doesn't mean everything when it comes to your ranking, but 4 is relatively high in our field, so I don't really understand why they do so poorly when it comes to their actual rankings on key words.
-
Definitely use a tool like OSE or Majestic to take a look at their link profile. Where are their high authority links coming from? Are they hard to duplicate links, or something you could get yourself? Are they links that could be removed once the site is sold? Are there any spammy or blackhat links?
Make sure you do a thorough analysis of the site's backlinks to make sure you're not getting a lemon. Also, PageRank can sometimes drop when a site is sold to a new owner, so be aware of that possibility, especially if you are going to be changing the site's content a lot.
-
First thing I'd do is look at their traffic history if possible. Look as far back as you can and see if there are significant drops in traffic. It would be a good sign if there were not any significant drops. If the terms they're getting their most traffic for now were the same terms they were getting their most traffic for two or three years ago--and they rank down on page 2 or 3, it could be a sign of fixable under optimization.
If, however, you don't see any significant drops and you examine a page (maybe their homepage) and it looks appropriately optimized for appropriately competitive terms but the page is not showing up anywhere in the results, I'd hesitate. There could be a penalty far back in it's history that you're not able to see.
Take a look at the wayback machine and see what the site looked like prior to the analytics history you're able to view. Was it the same site? Maybe the people you're buying it from bought it from someone else who'd spammed and jammed it. If that were the case, maybe a simple reinclusion request could fix the problem--if there is one.
There are a lot of possibilities and they're all worth looking into. Of course, the smart buyer might do exhaustive research, keep the results close to their vest, and push the seller hard on the lack of traffic issue to suppress the price.
-
Maybe they were hit by Panda or Penguin or another penalty.
Lots of sites have been hit in the past couple of years.
I would have the site reviewed by someone who knows a lot about those types of penalties if you are going to pay serious money for the domain.
And... lots of sites have PR that drop after the domain is sold and the former owner takes down his links.
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
-
Schema Mark up - Product Listing Pages
Hi I know you can add product schema to a product page, but can you add mark up to a product listing/category page? If so, which one would you use? I saw the item list mark up but didn't think this was relevant. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Adding / Manipulating Page Meta Titles?
We have a client who is experiencing some heavy google modification to the title tags being displayed on the search engine. It is adding "- 0 Reviews" to an ecommerce site. Obviously a bad start. There were no instances of these keywords anywhere on any of these pages, header tag or otherwise (on only a handful of the affected pages there was a single commented out image with an alt tag 0 reviews - but it was commented out and since removed) We have attempted to rewrite the title multiple times and it will modify the title but still include the non-relevant addition. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this?
Algorithm Updates | | Spindle0 -
A continuation drop in rankings
Hi All, We used to rank highly for the keyword 'Magazine Subscriptions' and after the past few months and have started to slowly go down the ranking. Recently we have spiked from #46 to #60 over the last few weeks. Anyone have any ideas on what could of caused this? Our website is: http://goo.gl/KnBkT9 We have kept updated the same as we have done with PRs, backlinks etc etc
Algorithm Updates | | DavidPatrick0 -
Impact of recent On Page Optimisation changes had negative impact !
Hi I recently updated some page titles, H1 tags & on page content which overall has seen search results slip down following the first site crawl by google I assume. My question is, should I try to get back the rankings and test and change one thing at a time to see the impact right now or should i wait for a period of time for it to settle down once goggle has crawled the site a few times or will the subsequent crawls have no impact? Thanks Ash
Algorithm Updates | | AshShep10 -
How on earth is a site with ONE LINK ranking so well for a competitive keyword?
Ok, so I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm asking about in my question. The query is 'diy kitchens' in Google UK and the website is kitchens4diy[dot]com - which is ranking in third from my viewing. The thing is, the site has just ONE BACKLINK and has done for a good while. Yet, it's ranking really well. What gives?
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Why is site dropping in rank after we update it?
One of our sites - supereyes.com - appears to drop in rank after we update it. The client notified us of this today and I've verified that it did indeed drop in Google -- four spots since last week. He says this happens every time we make changes to the site, but then a week later it will go back up and is usually higher than where it was before. I have not verified this, but I'm very worried it may not rise again In the past week, we've posted a new blog entry to their site and we've changed some of the content -- specifically, added their locations to the header, added a contact page and put two testimonials in their sidebar. We've also had someone submitting their site to directories and local business sites like Angie's List and so forth. There are about 16 new backlinks established in the past 2-3 weeks. Also, I should note, traffic is higher than it's ever been, but the client doesn't look at traffic. They only look at their Google results. Can anyone offer any insight into what's going on here and if I need to be worried the site won't rise again in the rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | aloley0 -
Specific Page Penalty?
Having trouble to figure out why one of our pages is not ranking in SERPs, on-page optimisation looks decent to me. Checked by using gInfinity extension and searched for the page URL. Can one page be penalised from Google engines (.ie / .com ) and the rest of the website not penalised? The (possible) penalised page is showing in Google places in SERPs. I assume this would not show if it was penalised. Would appreciate any advice. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | notnem0 -
Google said that low-quality pages on your site may affect rankings on other parts
One of my sites got hit pretty hard during the latest Google update. It lost about 30-40% of its US traffic and the future does not look bright considering that Google plans a worldwide roll-out. Problem is, my site is a six year old heavy linked, popular Wordpress blog. I do not know why the article believes that it is low quality. The only reason I came up with is the statement that low-quality pages on a site may affect other pages (think it was in the Wired article). If that is so, would you recommend blocking and de-indexing of Wordpress tag, archive and category pages from the Google index? Or would you suggest to wait a bit more before doing something that drastically. Or do you have another idea what I could to do? I invite you to take a look at the site www.ghacks.net
Algorithm Updates | | badabing0