Penguin/Panda/Domain Purchase
-
If I move forward with the acquisition:
1. Should I, if there is a way, just acquire the domain and then attempt to unlink existing links?
2. Can I just buy the domain, completely kill the site, and then build again from scratch? Even if I do that, the links to the domain will still be out there.
3. Should I even move forward with the purchase if I know these tactics have been used?
Thanks!
-
If the domain name is a solid one that has the ability to stick in your clients head then it might make sense to buy the domain and spend a few months rehabbing the quality of links. If you have the financial ability then I would buy it, use google webmasters to identify the bad links, reach out to the site owners and request they remove the links, send a report to google showing the work you've done. Then I would work on getting positive links for your site by getting mentions in online news sites, edu sites and others. You can accomplish this by hosting a small charity event. Also have your customers write reviews on Yelp and similar sites. Yahoo Directory link and BBB link. Time heals all wounds including bad links.
-
Great advice.
-
Run another report using something like ahrefs or majestic. OSE concentrates on the "better" links. A tool with a larger crawl might find more of the junk that can cause problems.
I'd particularly look for for sitewide keyword links. I've seen those causing quite a lot of problems. They are also easier to fix, which might be nice post-sale.
Check a few sites like alexa that estimate traffic volume as well. Whilst the numbers given them all are next to useless the trend data can be useful.
-
Run another report using something like ahrefs or majestic. OSE concentrates on the "better" links. A tool with a larger crawl might find more of the junk that can cause problems.
I'd particularly look for for sitewide keyword links. I've seen those causing quite a lot of problems. They are also easier to fix, which might be nice post-sale.
Check a few sites like alexa that estimate traffic volume as well. Whilst the numbers given them all are next to useless the trend data can be useful.
-
I ran a report and nothing really jumps out at me as spammy or horrific. A principal at their organization tweeted a few weeks ago about his "hatred for penguins". He even tweeted yesterday stating that he is "always the 1%" referring to the recent Panda update that only affected 1%.
While Open Site Explorer didn't produce many negative things I am definitely concerned. I guess the solution is to just simply ask him what is going on. He tweeted it for God's sake....i'm sure he realizes that Twitter is public.
-
I think you need to do more fact-finding to make an informed decision.
How spammy are the links? How many are there?
You need a detailed analysis of the link profile.
More questions:
What has happened to the site since Penguin ?
Why is the owner selling now ?
OTOH, the purchase could still make sense.
But what are you planning to do with site? Put your content on it? Or plant a bunch of links on it that point to your site?
-
Run a report on open site explorer. See what links they have. Look for things that could be harmful. There's no easy way to undo links but many webmasters will gladly unlink you if you ask.
That having been said, if the domain name was really that good, I'd find a way to make it work (especially if the domain is easy to remember). A good domain name is hard to come by these days and there are major reasons beyond SEO to buy one.
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
-
Disallow: /jobs/? is this stopping the SERPs from indexing job posts
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesHancocks1
I was wondering what this would be used for as it's in the Robots.exe of a recruitment agency website that posts jobs. Should it be removed? Disallow: /jobs/?
Disallow: /jobs/page/*/ Thanks in advance.
James0 -
Too many backlinks from one domain?
I've been in the process of creating a tourism-based website for the state of Kansas. I'm a photographer for the state, and have inked a nice little side income to my day job as a web designer by selling prints from Kansas (along with my travels elsewhere). I'm still in the process of developing it, but it's at least at a point that I need to really start thinking about SEO factor of the amount of backlinks I have from it going back to my main photography website. The Kansas site is at http://www.kansasisbeautiful.com and my photography website is http://www.mickeyshannon.com. This tourism website will serve a number of purposes: To promote the state and show people it's not just a flat, boring place. To help promote my photography. The entire site is powered by my photography. To sell a book I'm planning to publish later this year/early next year of Kansas images. To help increase sales of photography prints of my work. What I'm worried about is the amount of backlinks I have going from the Kansas site to my photography site. Not to mention every image is hosted on my photography domain (no need to upload to two domains when one can serve the same purpose). I'm currently linking back to my site on most pages via a little "Like the Photos? Buy a print" link in the top right corner. In addition, when users get to the website map, all photo listings click back to a page on my photography site that they can purchase prints. And the main navigation also has a link for "Photos" that takes them to my Kansas photo galleries on my photography website as well. The question I have: Is it really bad SEO-wise to have anywhere from 1 to 10+ backlinks on every page from one domain (kansasisbeautiful.com) linking back to mickeyshannon.com? Would I be better served moving all of the content from kansasisbeautiful into a subdirectory on my photography site (mickeyshannon.com/kansas/) and redirecting the entire domain there? I haven't actually launched this website yet, so I'm trying to make the right call before pushing it to the public. Any advice would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | msphoto0 -
New Domain Vs. Existing Domain
Hello, A potential client of mine has been blacklisted because of bad SEO process basically they have over 1,500 toxic links on their site. They have penalised to such an extent that they are now on page 12 for most of their keywords and not ranking well on brand terms either. They are keen to on to a new domain entirely and ditch their current domain when we design their new site. I wanted to get people's opinion on whether this is the best course of action or should we try to salvage the current domain? Many thanks, Mat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Barques-Design0 -
Multiple domains expiring that have 301 redirects to my primary domain. Am I in trouble?
I recently took on the SEO of a large website with http://example.com. My predecessor bought 40 plus domains for specific cities like Jacksonvilleexample.com, Miamiexample.com, etc. ZERO of the additional domains linked to our main website. The domains that were bought basically had our exact same website in terms of content, links etc that mirrored our main http://example.com. I added 301 redirects to help problems that may be a result of this type of structure. Some of the additional domains were indexed and some were not but all have 301's and as far as traffic is concerned I'm not worried about loosing short term traffic. My question: All the domains are set to expire in June and I don't want to continue to have them 301 redirected to my main domain (example.com). I'm not trying to avoid the additional cost of all the domains but I don't see an advantage to having them so CAN letting all these domains expire hurt me from a long term SEO position if I don't renew them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ballanrk0 -
Purchased a high ranking domain and want to transfer my site to the new domain
I recently purchased a highly ranked domain. The link profile is very good and I don't want to lose to many links however I want to transfer my site to that domain. What is the best way of doing this without losing the current rank on search engines? Also how much does the transfer of registrar information impact my SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydop0 -
Multiple stores & domains vs. One unified store (SEO pros / cons for E-Commerce)
Our company runs a number of individual online shops, specialised in particular products but all in the same genre of goods overall, with a specific and relevant domain name for each shop. At the moment the sites are separate, and not interlinked, i.e. Completely separate brands. An analogy could be something like clothing accessories (we are not in the clothing business): scarves.com, and silkties.com (our field is more niche than this) We are about to launch a related site, (e.g. handbags.com), in the same field again but without precisely overlapping products. We will produce this site on a newer, more flexible e-commerce platform, so now is a good time to consider whether we want to place all our sites together with one e-commerce system on the backend. Essentially, we need to know what the pros and cons would be of the various options facing us and how the SEO ranking is affected by the three possibilities. Option 1: continue with separate sites each with its own domains. Option 2: have multiple sites, each on their own domain, but on the same ecommerce system and visible linked together for the customer (with unified checkout) – on the top of each site could be a menu bar linking to each site: [Scarves.com] – [SilkTies.com] – [Handbags.com] The main question here is whether the multiple domains are mutually beneficial, particularly considerding how close to target keywords the individual domains are. If mutually benefitial, how does it compare to option 3: Option 3: Having recently acquired a domain name (e.g. accessories.com) which would cover the whole category together, we are presented with a third option: making one site selling all of these products in different categories. Our main concern here would be losing the ability to specifically target marketing, and losing the benefit of the domains with the key words in for what people are more likely to be searching for (e.g. 'silk tie') rather than 'accessories.' Is it worth taking the hit on losing these specific targeted domain names for the advantage of increased combined inbound links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0 -
Does poor quality on a subdomain affect a domain (with regards to Panda)?
We are considering moving some thin content from our site to a subdomain as a potential "panda" fix. But, we are unsure if Google will treat the subdomain as a completely separate domain or not. Does anyone have any data / Google info that might answer this question? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
What will happen after I 301 this domain?
A while back I created a new website. Somehow my "scratch" copies of the site got indexed even though I didn't have links built to them. (In the future I will use noindex tags when I am playing around with designing). Now, I have three versions of the site online...let's call them TheRealSite.com and Practice1.com and Practice2.com. Practice1.com and Practice2.com now rank #1 for their main keyword. (It's a relatively uncompetitive niche). TheRealSite.com is somewhere lower than page 20 despite having an exact keyword match domain name. I'm assuming that Google considered it duplicate content as it is the exact same thing as Practice1 and 2. I had considered simply removing Practice1 and 2 from the server, but I was worried that if I did that, I would lose my #1 rankings if TheRealSite didn't recover. So, what I've done is 301 redirect Practice1 and Practice2 to TheRealSite. I'm guessing that over time TheRealSite will come back to #1 and then I can just remove the files from Practice1 and Practice2. Is this the best way to handle this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes1