Should I let 22-year-old website go or revamp it?

[brizc]

Hi,

I’m trying to decide whether to renew annual hosting for my old website and hoping a wiser brain than mine in these matters might be able to advise me.

The website was the home of a weekly website review column, e-newsletter, content writing tips and other web content/marketing related content so has lots of backlinks since 1997, though hasn't been updated for about 10 years.

The domain email address is listed on some spam lists as I suspect it was harvested from the site by crawling spambots. I haven't bothered trying to de-list as don't use the address or website anymore. The site has never been used for PBN or sending spam (at least not by me).

There's lots of good content in there, and some would still be relevant, but not sure if it's worth keeping for backlinks and for redirecting to my new website when it’s built. Plan to build a new WordPress website for my new writing as no longer in the content marketing business.

It's a country-specific domain so can't really sell it as need to own the business name to own the domain name. I no longer use the business name either as plan to set up new brand for new website.

But it might be useful to direct traffic to my new website domain once it's up and running if I cleaned up all the many broken links to expired websites in the databases of hundreds of website reviews.

It's all on archive.org but I'm still very attached to the old site, even if it's no longer useful from a business point of view.

Did a Moz check which showed:

Domain Authority
20

Linking Domains
89

Discovered in the last 60 days
1

Lost in last 60 days
4

Inbound Links
1.9k

Ranking Keywords
0

My web host stats show the site gets between 300 and 500 visits a month. Had about 138,200 visits since October last year. And about 653,200 hits.

Is that amount of traffic worth the time and expense of pruning the site of hundreds of expired links and fixing up other glitches? It's very dated in design and layout and is written in .asp

I could send you the URL in private message if you would like to look at the website first.

Been agonising over this decision for months as budget is very tight but don’t want to lose the site if it might have future value.

Would greatly appreciate advice from someone who's up on this stuff as I've been out of the game for a long time and the deadline to renew the site hosting is very soon.

Thank you in advance for your time and help.

[brizc]

Thanks for that. You certainly know your stuff.

I'm beginning to wonder if it is worth keeping the old site alive as it might require a lot of work to clean up and be useful linking to my new website when it's built. Not sure its ranking and links will help my new website that much, or hinder it. Big decision.

[WebQuest]

Looks like there could be some spammy domains in the backlink profile, however, most of the linking domains are fine. The next step is for you to go through all these domains and see what kind of domains they are, and what is the nature of the backlink coming to your website.  If it turns out to be a spammy domain, then you can disavow the whole domain through Search Console.

[brizc]

Thanks for that.Spam Score BreakdownPercent of Linking Domains with a Spam Score of:1-30%82.1%31-60%16.7%61-100%1.3%Linking Domains89Domain Authority20Spam Score2 %Not sure what that means? the domain is brizcomm.com.au  Backlinks look legitimate but not sure I'm checking the right thing.

[WebQuest]

The fact that the domain is on spammy lists (I'm assuming email lists here) does not mean that the domain itself is in a bad shape. You can check the following:

• See if the domain has any Manual Actions on Google Search Console

• Check the MOZ Spam score

• Check the backlink profile of the domain to see if any spammy domains are linking to your domain - this matters much more than the domain being on email lists. If you find the domain to be on some spammy websites, you can disavow them.

Also, keeping the domain does imply that there will be an upkeep effort/cost.

As for whether to keep it or not, it really comes down to if you can benefit from keeping or redirecting it. If so, then it's worth it.

[brizc]

Thanks very much for your response and advice.

I'm worried that the fact the domain is on so many spam lists will mean it could be a negative benefit to redirect to my new site when it's built.

I would also have to get it de-listed from spam monitors and fix up the site to remove the email address, among many other broken links in the database.

Nobody else could buy the domain as they would need to have a business in the same name to comply with my country's domain registration rules.

So confused about this and renewal expires next week. If I do let the hosting renewal lapse, I'm guessing I would quickly lose any search engine rankings the old site has gathered, though not sure if 20 is much of a ranking anyway.

I can send you the URL if it helps?

[WebQuest]

Sounds like the site is in decent shape. I'm pretty sure that if you let it go, it will be picked up very quickly by someone else.

I think you have a couple of options:

1- You can keep it and continue to maintain it on a minimal basis. This will allow you to link out to your new domain where appropriate.

2- Redirect it to a new site, or a section of a new site, provided it's in the same space. This would require you to keep the domain name without the hosting & maintenance expenses.