What research needs to be done prior to purchasing an old domain?
-
I'm planning on purchasing an old domain. I'd like to get an idea whether or not any "shadyness" was going on with the domain over the years. It's still indexed in google. I "whois'd" it, ran it through open site explorer, and did a "link:" search.
Anything else you would recommend for researching this domain?
-
Then you should be safe no matter what - if the price is right
All other advantages like is currently listed so no penalization and current back links are just a bonus.
At least this is how I see it
-
Thanks eye. I am purchasing for age and keyword in domain.
-
Mike is right but I think it's enough to see if it's listed in google and if it is it doesn't matter if it was blacklisted in the past or not - since it's clean now.
There are different reasons in buying a domain and based on your reason I think you should focus on the research side. (for example: if you buy a domain for the current trafic and the link profile is kind of dark you could expect a full drop after you've bought it but if you buy it for the name of the domain even if it drops, the domain will recover eventually so it won't be an issue )
1. Buying a domain for the name (brand or keyword).
2. Buying a domain for the history (back links)
3. Buying a domain for the current traffic.
Each of the three has a different "flow" in the review process.
Personally I've bought an old domain for the links in one of my client niche and I've only reviewed the domain for the future potential based on back-links and the investment turned out to be great even if the traffic was very very low.
-
Thanks Mike, very helpful.
-
Can the seller provide you with historical Google Analytics data? If there is a sudden drop in traffic then the domain may have been penalized. Is there a visible site on the domain today? Does it rank for any phrases (should it? given the backlinks it has)? Maybe enter it in http://www.ispionage.com and then click on the SEO tab to see if it ranks for any phrases today. If it's on page 1 for anything then it is unlikely to be penalized.
Also, does it link out to any bad neighborhoods? Google cares more about what you link to than what links to you (in terms of giving you a penalty). If bad neighborhoods link to you then you won't get penalized but if you link to bad neighborhoods and Google identifies it as such then you will get penalized.
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
-
Is there a tool out there to check any domain that might be pointing to my existing domain?
Is there a tool out there to check any domain that might be pointing to my existing domain?
Technical SEO | | adlev0 -
Changing Domains - 301 old https to new https
Brief History: Our company made change to a new domain. Both domains had an SSL configured on it in which the old domain SSL was controlled and created by Shopify which gave us limited control. Because we couldn't redirect the old https:// to the new https:// So basically we duplicated our new HTML website and put canonical ref on all duplicate pages to the final domain to help get search to navigate to the newer domain. Question: In the near future I would like to take down the old domain and do a 301 domain forwarding. What is the correct course of action to complete this? Our old domain was indexed and SERP results were tied to it's https:// url's.
Technical SEO | | bnewt1 -
Old Redirected Domain is replacing my current domain on SERPs
Hello everyone, All of a sudden a 2 year old redirected domain is replacing my current domain for 2 weeks now, my site is apitus.com and my old domain is aptitus.pe (the redirect is still working), however this only happens on my country google results (google.com.pe), if you check my site on google.com, everything looks ok even with a sitelink, which I no longer have on my country search results. Back to the issue, the first thing I thought was go to Search Console and take it out from the index, so I asked for access by uploading a file but since everything on that old site redirects to my current site I can't make such action. While still waiting for such access, is there anything else I could do?. Thanks in advance. PD: I'm adding the images of my SERPs CmzN8kY G3zZwwj
Technical SEO | | JoaoCJ0 -
Some Old date showing in SERP
I see some old date Jan 21 2013 showing up for some categories in Google search results. These are category pages and I do not see the date in view source. This is not a wordpress site or a blog page. We keep changing this page by removing/adding items so it is not outdated.
Technical SEO | | rbai0 -
SEO for sub domains
I've recently started to work on a website that has been previously targeting sub domain pages on its site for its SEO and has some ok rankings. To better explain, let me give an example...A site is called domainname.com. And has subdomains that they are targeted for seo (i.e. pageone.domainname.com, pagetwo.domainname.com, pagethree.domianname.com). The site is going through a site re-development and can reorganise its pages to another URL. What would be best way to approach this situation for SEO? Ideally, I'm tempted to recommend that new targeted pages be created - domainname.com/pageone, domainname.com/pagetwo, domainname.com/pagethree, etc - and to perform a 301 redirect from the old pages. Does a subdomain page structure (e.g. pageone.domainname.com) have any negative effects on SEO? Also, is there a good way to track rankings? I find that a lot of rank checkers don't pick up subdomains. Any tips on the best approach to take here would be appreciated. Hope I've made sense!
Technical SEO | | Gavo0 -
Forum on toplevel or sub domain?
Hiya all I am building a site for the expansion of a facebook fan page that will be sending a fair bit of traffic to the site. One feature of the site is a forum plus a store and i have to make the dissuasion on if i should have the forum and store on the main domain or on separate subdomains for each. domain.com forum.domain.com store.domain.com So my question is would it be better to keep all of these elements on the main domain or each on a separate sub domains? Will
Technical SEO | | wildwill0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0 -
How Do You Balance Factors In Domain Selection?
Recently, there has been considerable discussion and debate about the value of choosing keyword-rich and exact-match domains. In a recent webmaster Q&A, Matt Cutts seems to suggest that google is planning on "turning down the dial" on keyword domain signals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWFv43qubI How will these changes (if at all) impact your advice to clients on domain selection?
Technical SEO | | Gyi0