Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Buying an existing domain with higher ranks for redirecting
-
I've recently came across one of my competitors who's looking to sell their domain. Now they currently rank higher than my primary site for a few keywords we are targeting.
Would it be wise to buy the domain and do a name server change over to my primary domain? Would it even help boost ranks for the keywords they rank higher for? Or will the link juice be minimal?
Any thoughts would be great!
-
Hi Upick,Fisrt of all I wan to tell you that It’s no secret that one of the tactics search engine optimization specialists use to increase search rankings is domain purchasing. The idea is that you find a domain that currently ranks well within your niche, buy it and then redirect the site to your domain. Alternatively you could purchase this domain and continue to build off of it and utilize its existing rankings and site traffic.
Below are several do’s & don’ts to keep in consideration when purchasing a domain.
DO:
- Look for existing rankings
- Research websites existing links. Are they all pointing to the home page or do internal page links exist?
- Examine the existing content on the site; can it be leveraged for more links?
- Take into account the domain age/authority before purchasing
- Take the time to determine if the price of the domain will outweigh natural content building and link building.
- Check to see if any existing penalties or filters have been placed on the domain.
- Map out domains internal pages to the pages of your current website.
- Look for websites that are relevant to your niche.
- Examine incoming links and see if they target your specific keywords.
- Determine if the links from this domain will stay put even after a redirect placed.
- Do look for yahoo, best of the web, DMOZ, business.com directory links.
- Look to see if the backlinks come from other sites that the current site owner may own as well. There is a good chance these links could disappear after the purchase.
- Check out the websites existing traffic and verify it if possible.
- Check the age of the domains existing links.
- Look for authority news sites linking to the domain.
DO NOT:
- Purchase a domain based off its Google Page Rank.
- Purchase a domain that only has low quality and spammy links.
- Place too much value on a keyword matching domain. (watch out for hyphenated URLS)
- Redirect the entire website to your homepage.
- Buy a site that’s not indexed in the search engines.
- Purchase domains that are not in your niche.
- Use any other redirect outside of a 301 redirect. The value will not pass otherwise.
- Substitute organic link building with multiple domain purchases.
- Purchase a domain that has its entire link equity coming from a small quantity of domains.
- 301 redirect several newly acquired domains at once; this could send a red flag to Google.
These “Do’s & Don’ts” of domain purchasing hopefully will guide you in the right direction when it comes to you purchasing additional domains. There are too many scammers with the intent of selling you a low value site at a high price. This is why it’s crucial to do your homework before you purchase any domains. Yes there are deals to be had out their but you have to be extra careful when you think your getting a steal. If you follow the basics tips listed above you should be just fine!
For more details please visit the Buying Expired Domains
I hope that your query has been solved.
-
Great advice. If there are similar pages on both sites then why not redirect them to the similar page on your site. You can then add a link on the homepage of the new domain to pass through some juice
-
If you buy the domain and re-direct then remember to think of your competitors customers - not just the potential ranking boost!
Ideally you want their customers to become your customers, so think about how you might redirect specific pages from their domain to landing pages designed to reassure people looking for you competitors products/services and position yourself as a viable alternative.
The last thing you want if for them to think they're in the wrong place and bounce straight away, never to return!
Before buying the domain, can you get any supporting stats / analytics? How many direct visitors, how many via search etc.You're likely to have a small window of opportunity, but it's definitely worth thinking about how you can get some of those customers that you might not be able to replace just from search.
-
A 301 should work fine.
You should in theory gain some linkjuice and rankings from the domain.
However the effects wont be as good as regular do follow links to your site.
But as Marcin says it's still an efficient way...
-
Hi upick,
you can buy the domain and do a 301 redirect to your site. I've done it many times, and it is still surprisingly powerful method to quickly get the desired rankings, obviously if the domain you're 301-ing was powerful enough.
Hope it helps.
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
-
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version?
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version? Thant way all forms of the website are pointing to one version?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
301 Redirect - Rank Recovery Examples?
Hi All, I recently did a 301 redirect. Page to Page and the notified google via its console. Its been 6 days since. The home page and one other high traffic page swopped out with the new domain on google search index with 3-4 drops in ranking for each. The rest of the sites pages have been indexed but still reflect the old domain when searched. Recently today my home page dropped even further to the second page of google index for the specific keyword. Can you share similar experiences and how long it took you to recover rank fully? and how long for all pages to swop out on google search's index? Regards Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue10 -
Domain Redirect and SSL Cert
Hi, When redirecting an entire site to another domain, do you have to maintain the SSL certificate? The SSL expires 3 days before the planned redirect. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sofla_seo0 -
How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside
Hi Moz, Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading! We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com. We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs. These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2. The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1 The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank. Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Is it normal to initially rank low in the SERPs, then over time gain rank?
We just released a very targeted page for a specific item about 18 hours ago. For the main keyword as well as multiple variations, we currently are ranking around # 40 to # 50 depending on what the exact query is. Is it normal to initially rank lower in the SERPs and then as the page ages, gain? Thank you for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1231 -
.htaccess 301 Redirect Help! Specific Redirects and Blanket Rule
Hi there, I have the following domains: OLD DOMAIN: domain1.co.uk NEW DOMAIN: domain2.co.uk I need to create a .htaccess file that 301 redirects specific, individual pages on domain1.co.uk to domain2.co.uk I've searched for hours to try and find a solution, but I can't find anything that will do what I need. The pages on domain1.co.uk are all kinds of filenames and extensions, but they will be redirected to a Wordpress website that has a clean folder structure. Some example URL's to be redirected from the old website: http://www.domain1.co.uk/charitypage.php?charity=357 http://www.domain1.co.uk/adopt.php http://www.domain1.co.uk/register/?type=2 These will need to be redirected to the following URL types on the new domain: http://www.domain2.co.uk/charities/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/adopt/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/register/ I would also like a blanket/catch-all redirect from anything else on www.domain1.co.uk to the homepage of www.domain2.co.uk if there isn't a specific individual redirect in place. I'm literally tearing my hair out with this, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
Primary Domain or Redirect?
We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals0 -
SEO value in multiple backlinks from same domain and from various sub-domains.
A site has a link to my site as one of their main tabs, which means whenever a user clicks through to another page within the site, my link - being a main tab - is there. This creates thousands of links from this site. How does Google treat this? Do we have a rough formula estimate. In other words, assume it creates 1,000 backlinks would the SEO value be around the same as if I had just 2 link total as a main tab, but on 2 different non-related sites? Or, does it actually count fully as 1,000 links? Links from various sub-domains. Several .EDU's are linking to my site. Different schools within the overall same university. Example: nursing.abc.edu links to my site, but so does business.abc.edu. For SEO does that count as much as if I had links from complete non-related universities, or would Google evaluate that these links are related (since same main domain) and that will discount any links more than 1 to some extent? If discounted, then what do we estimate the discount to be? thank yoyu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen1