SMX Advanced: SEO Domain Buying

Got to this one a bit late:

ShoeMoney says if you buy a lot of domains for SEO don’t 301 redirect them all at once as this could send up a flag to the search engines.  301 them over time.

Jeremy Wright of b5 media  – a blog network of about 700 sites

Metrics for Buying Sites:

• Revenue potential
• Existing traffic, uniques, revenue, feed subscribers, page rank
• Age of site, stability, age of domain, amount of content, existing SEO metrics, staleness (growth per content over time)
• Technology

Tools to Use

• Blog Valuation Calculator
• Compete.com
• Search Depth Calculator (proprietary tool)

Mistakes You Can Avoid

• Always verify traffic
• Don’t deviate from your playbook
• Don’t be afraid to buy partners early if you see early success
• Avoid sites that depend on specific personalities
• Watch out for inflammatory schemes like buying traffic and revenue stuffing

Creating networks compounds value

For most small publishers SEO & revenue are big challenges

Gab Goldenberg 

Web content is being undervalued – Newspapers pay journalists $140 per article v. $30 for blog posts. (maybe journalist articles are overvalued).

How to find high quality sites in a category:

• Look for a footprint – an indentifying characteristic that all websites in an industry share.

How do you protect your site from not having it’s SEO strength reset once you buy it?  Put it in a trust so that the WHOIS data still shows the old owner but you have legal ownership.  See your attorney in Pleasanton, CA for more info.

Todd Malicoat  aka stuntdubl

Finding Old Sites

• Think like an old site
• Use creative search queries to find their footprint
• Automation

Contacting Site Owners

• Be credible
• Be brief
• Be lucky

Valuing a Site

• Domain
• Age
• Links (age of links better than age of domain)
• Theme
• Traffic
• Revenue

Negotiating & Closing a Site Purchase

• Lowball but don’t offend
• Get a price out of the seller
• Counter, counter, counter
• Have the contracts and system to take over domain ready so there is no time for the seller to back out
• Use an escrow service like Escrow.com