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
-
Why has my clients domain authority dropped 4 points?
I have been noticing odd results with the domain authority stat for one of my clients' wesbites. Whilst they have considerbaly improved for keyword rankings for granite worktops bristol and granite kitchen worktops bristol, I have noticed that the domain authority of the site has recently dropped from 12-6. Is there any particularly why this has seen such a big drop and what can be done to turn this back around? Best wishes, Richard O'Brien
On-Page Optimization | | obbass0 -
How to 301 redirect, without access to .htaccess and to a new domain
There are few ways to do this and I would like to ask other Mozzers if they have found the best way. We have a site .co.uk and are moving it back to .com. However we do not have any access to the site folders for .co.uk. (We have to move it anyway as our provider is withdrawing their service). We have built our URL 301 redirect file and it is ready to go, but how to impliment it? We can repoint .co.uk to another site, and then redirect all traffic for each URL but this is quite messy, or just forget trying to 301 each page and just rediect the whole site.
On-Page Optimization | | BruceA
the .com has more authority already, but we ready do not want to frustrate visitors who are using a link to reach a product, only to find they hit our homepage and not the product. Your thoughts would be very welcome or other ideas Bruce0 -
Inches or " Feet or ' Does Google translate the symbols?
I have a client who sells things that the size is important. In their industry some people say "15 Inch Blue Widget" and others say "15" Blue Widget" using the symbol " for inches. On the page I know we could say both to cover all the bases but I want to get the title right. In their industry there is not one more preferred than the other. Does anybody know if Google translates ' to feet and " to inches. Should I work both into the title for a product or only one?
On-Page Optimization | | JoshuaLindley0 -
Lost Page Rank after directing http:// to WWW?
Hi I am trying to redirect all the non www urls to WWW. After I redirected them, most of my category page PR are dropped to 0. Can someone please tell me if this is the normal after effect after the redirect? Example url: this is PR2 before the redirect http://www.ilovebodykits.com/category/95/Body_Kits_Front_Bumpers.html
On-Page Optimization | | ilovebodykits0 -
What's a reasonable bounce rate for school website?
Does anyone have a baseline on what the average bounce rate should be on a school website?
On-Page Optimization | | BillyBobGriffin0 -
Can Your Site Get Penalized For Keyword Stuffing On An 'Untarged' Keyword?
My site has dropped since the EMD/Panda 20 roll out and I am looking for reasons why. I am looking at Keyword Stuffing as one potential problem. My web site is on the topic of WordPress Security with that being the main keyword I want to target. Now I can limit the number of occurrences of 'wordpress security' to below the recommended 15, but it is impossible to do this for 'wordpress' without severely compromising the user experience. I've got other content on topics such as WordPress Backup and WordPress Security Plugins etc, so obviously the word 'wordpress' is bound to appear frequently. Is there a risk that Google will penalize me for Keyword Stuffing on 'wordpress' and thus pull down the site or page for other keywords? Or would it simply mean I won't be able to rank for 'wordpress' (which I am quite happy about)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | andersvin0 -
Rethinking company's monthly content production process.
I'm trying to rethink my company's content production process. I believe that we're stuck using a formula that works but can surely be improved. Our Current Process It essentially boils down to posting a certain number of content pieces per month for each client. After the pages are approved and live, there isn't much thought given to them. What We're Thinking After taking a step back, we realize now that a lot of these clients have sites with a tremendous amount of content that is rarely, if ever, revisited. In hopes of creating higher quality content and avoiding having to write that certain number of pieces per month, we're investigating alternative strategies to ensure each client has fresh content. What We're Looking Into Page Edits/Refreshes - I'm beginning to wonder if we can get similar gains by simply refreshing the content that already exists. We can include additional keywords and improve the content in a fraction of the time that it takes to produce a new piece. We're struggling to come up with a process for refreshing the content, however. Ideally we'd be implementing a process where content is revisited 6-12 months, but that still doesn't take care of the problem of creating too much new content. Simplified Version I believe that my company is creating too much content. Editing/refreshing seems like a better use of resources, but I have no idea how to implement a process and develop procedures. Questions What does your content production process look like? Do you produce a certain number a month, a quarter, as needed, etc? How do you go about refreshing your content?
On-Page Optimization | | SeoWebMechanix0 -
Creating Content for Several Local Keywords
I have a client who is in the lead generation business for a specific aesthetic service. The company basically generates leads through SEO and sells them to hundreds of local businesses across the US and Canada. There is some serious competition for the main service keyword (this is not the real keyword) e.g. “liposuction” and over the past year we have seen rankings fall significantly (from top 3 to 13-15). But... what I have found is that most of the traffic, particularly the highly converting traffic, comes from local keyword variations e.g. “liposuction in san diego”. However, these keywords are also highly competitive because there are several local businesses in these areas. How would you suggest creating content for these pages when they are all extremely similar and we need to target 100s of cities? For example the page “liposuction in san diego” is very similar to the page “liposuction in sacramento”, ect ect. Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | Bartell0