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 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
Does having a different sub domain for your Landing Page and Blog affect your overall SEO benefits and Ranking?
We have a domain www.spintadigital.com that is hosted with dreamhost and we also have a seperate subdomain blog.spintadigital.com which is hosted in the Ghost platform and we are also using Unbounce landing pages with the sub domain get.spintadigital.com. I wanted to know whether having subdomain like this would affect the traffic metric and ineffect affect the SEO and Rankings of our site. I think it does not affect the increase in domain authority, but in places like similar web i get different traffic metrics for the different domains. As far as i can see in many of the metrics these are considered as seperate websites. We are currently concentrating more on our blogs and wanted to make sure that it does help in the overall domain. We do not have the bandwidth to promote three different websites, and hence need the community's help to understand what is the best option to take this forward.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinodh-spintadigital0 -
Canonical Question: Root Domain Geo Redirects to SubFolder.
Howdy, Working on a larger eComm site that 302s you based on your location. With that in mind should I canonicalize the final page. domain.com => 302 => domain.com/us/, domain.com/fr/, etc... (Should these all have a canonical pointing to the root domain.com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blake.runyon0 -
What happens to a domain in SERPs when it's set to redirect to another?
We have just acquired a competing website and are wondering whether to leave it running as is for now, or set the domain to redirect to our own site. If we set up this redirect, what would happen to the old site in Google SERPs? Would the site drop off from results? If so, would we capture this new search traffic or is it a free for all and all sites compete for the search traffic as normal? Thanks in advance. Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
How to combine 2 pages (same domain) that rank for same keyword?
Hi Mozzers, A quick question. In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP. Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4). So in the SERP it looks something like: www.mycompetition1.com www.mycompetition2.com www.mywebsite.com/page1.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
4) www.mywebsite.com**/page2.html**
5) www.mycompetition3.com Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic. Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more. So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank? Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1. Does anybody have any experience in this? Any advice is much appreciated.0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0