Should I buy an established domain that has lost it's high PR due to being offline for several months?
-
I'm considering purchasing a domain that has sat idle for several months. It was a company's domain that they have owned since the mid1990's but they went out of business. Previously, it had a PR 5 but has since lost it's PR as it has sat 'inactive' with a 'server not found' warning for the past several months.
That being said, is there any point in buying the domain (for SEO purposes)? Is there any recourse with Google to try and re-establish the site's credibility or would I be starting over from scratch?
-
It is very helpful, thank you Don!
-
Hi Matt
I had a domain that I have used personally off an on for over 8 years now. At one time I had the site in maintenance mode for about a year and half. The day I turned the site to live, I started immediately getting orders. This was due to the strong backlink profile I have built.Customers were comin in from those links 2 weeks later we were back in Google SERP's.
Hope that helps in your decision.
Don
-
In my experience, having an aged domain is a big bonus for ranking. If you say that there are only less than 30 links to a brand name, you should be able to change the link profile rather easily. If you had hundreds of links to an unrelated text, that could change the way G perceives your website relevance and make it more difficult to rank for your terms.
However, I've also seen sites rank very well from having getting 301 redirects from popular, completely unrelated websites. I would expect your to see something similar to this benefit.
Other factors that may affect the value of domain: length of blank site, change in registrar, theme of last site
So will it help, yes. Worth the cost? Depends on the price. There is a lot of speculation in the domain registration/dropped domains value of SEO and nothing concrete from G, but based on my experience, buying an existing domain > starting from scratch.
-
Good idea Oleg. So I just ran it through OSE and every inbound link has the anchor text of the company name which is not what I would be optimizing the site for. That being said, the quality of the sites linking to the domain are excellent. Interestingly, that aren't a lot (less than 30) for a domain that had such high PR (5). They obviously did not devote any resources towards SEO but did at one point achieve a PR higher than any competitive sites I would go up against with this domain.
That being said, obviously it's not optimized for the keywords I would focus on and has also lost it's PR. Would it still be worthwhile to pursue? I guess when trying to answer that question, I'm wondering if the site's history (15+ years old) is enough to give me a leg up and jump start the SEO process enough to warrant the cost, whatever that might be.
Any thoughts there?
-
Does it still have links pointing to the site? I would do a link audit and see the quality of links pointing to the website (quality of backlinks, # of backlinks, anchor text). If they are links you would want to your new site, then it might be a worthwhile investment.
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
-
.com vs .co.uk domain
I have a client who has a site live at example**.co.uk** and would like to rank for the term "example". But example**.com** is owned by another company who offers a different product and service and has been live since 2003. I know that I can make example**.co.uk** rank for keywords related to their service but I think it's going to be a struggle to get them to rank for the brand term "example" as the .com site already owns Page 1 with their domain name, Facebook page, Wiki page etc etc. The only variation is that example**.com** is a US based company and my client want to ranks in the UK only. What are the chances I can out rank example**.com** for the brand term on www.google.co.uk if example**.com** currently owns Page 1 on google**.co.uk**?
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing_Today0 -
Can you canonical from one domain page to a different domain page
We are a boating site and have our main site with all it's products. We have an engine section within our main site. But we also have an outside domain, specific to a certain manufacturer of engines. So we want our customers to still find the engine information for this manufacturer within our main site, as well as find the manufacturer targeted engine site in the SERPS. My question is this: Can I canonical those pages within our main site to pages on the outside domain? Or does are canonicals to be used only within the same domain? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | tdawson090 -
Quick question about bold italics keywords in today's SEO world
Hello guyz do you think that , **or **tags still help you in ranking better for some keyword or this method has become obsolete?****
On-Page Optimization | | ksbnok0 -
What's the best way to tackle duplicate pages in a blog?
We installed a WP blog on a website and the below result is just an example. All of them lead to the same content. What's the best way to resolve it? http://www.calmu.edu/blog/
On-Page Optimization | | Sangeeta
http://www.calmu.edu/blog/calmu-business-spotlight-veev/
http://www.calmu.edu/blog/category/business-buzz/0 -
Will deleting excess self serving links from old posts damage established ranking
My SEOmoz report showed many posts with "too many links." I can easily go back into wordpress and delete self serving links. But is there a downside to this if these posts are already ranked well on google search for the desired key words? Or will deleting the excess self serving links improve ranking
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
Would adding a line break tag into the product name affect SEO ranking and Google's ability to read the entire title?
Our client would like to include a link break so that part of the product name always showed up on a second line. Would this affect how Google bots crawl the product name? Would it also affect how Google would show the product name in a search result page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Using content for cliche' terms, or content found on other sites
howdy, I have a basic question about using content found on other websites for your own use. I have started a pick up lines website for guys to search for pickup lines to use on girls. Anyways, my website has many, if anything a lot, of the same exact pick up lines as all my competitors are using. If I use the same pick up lines found on their site could i be penalized for this as far as SEO? thanks and hope to hear back
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Canonical URL's - Fixed but still negatively impacted
I recently noticed that our canonical url's were not set up correctly. The incorrect setup predates me but it could have been in place for close to a year, maybe a bit more. Each of the url's had a "sortby" parameter on all of them. I had our platform provider make the fix and now everything is as it should be. I do see issues caused by this in Google Webmaster, for instance in the HTML suggestions it's telling me that pages have duplicate title tags when in fact this is the same page but with a variety of url parameters at the end of the url. To me this just highlights that there is a problem and we are being negatively impacted by the previous implementation. My question is has anyone been in this situation? Is there any way to flush this out or push Google to relook at this? Or is this a sit and be patient situation. I'm also slightly curious if Google will at some point look and see that the canonical urls were changed and then throw up a red flag even though they are finally the way they should be. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | dgmiles
Dave0