What are the pros & cons of recycling an old domain name?
-
Hi,
Old domain name is about books and book buyback. It had about 1000 pages at one time, been around since 2006, and still shows in Open Site Explorer as 86 links from from 46 domains, PA 43 DA 35, spam score of 4. The 4 evidently relates to low number of internal links and no contact info.
The domain name's ownership hasn't changed, but for the last year has either not been up at all or only the homepage in the last couple of months.
Now the idea is to maybe re-purpose it for place rating content... no more book content... totally different subject matter.
Is this an organic search advantage or would it be better to start fresh with a new domain name?
Is Google going to have a harder time seeing it as relevant for a new subject (with good new content) or seeing a new site as important?
Thanks... Darcy
-
Yeah, I'm somewhere in the middle on this one - as Richard said, an off-topic domain with low authority isn't going to buy you much. If you want the domain for the name or something, great - but don't expect much SEO benefit. Google has gotten pretty savvy about ignoring this stuff, as buying and redirecting domains has been heavily abused. I doubt you'd be at much risk here, but you'd probably see very little benefit.
-
Yes it does take some patience to find a nice domain that's relevant and has stats. I wouldn't 301 the other domain to the new domain as a new domain won't be able to handle that many new inbound links which is what your effectively doing by sending a 301 with links behind it to your new domain.
-
Richard and John,
Thanks for the suggestions. I took a look at Doc Cop... pretty cool. Thing is, it almost seems impossible to find something that would be both a good TLD and have age, a good link profile, trust.
Alot of them look like license plates or too specific or just impossible to shoe horn into this particular concept.
What about using a domain name that reads okay as a domain name and then 301 the bought domain into it? Totally crazy, or what?
Thanks... Darcy
-
Re-purposing domains is no where near as safe or effective as it used to be. Your asking for trouble if your going to completely change the topic of the website and expect easy ranking benefits from the old off-topic inbound links. (this is one of the footprints they used to recently de-index low quality PBN's because the sites topic had completely changed after the domain was re-birthed)
In saying that, I wouldn't start with a fresh domain either.
I would do my homework on domcop or register-compass and find an expiring/expired/deleted domain with great on-topic link metrics and start the new site that way. If your niche isn't that big then you may be able to find an on-topic domain with metrics like DA40 - PA45 - TF35 - CF40 for under $500. That would give your new site a huge kick start. Hunt for decent Trust Flow with good topical relevance. If you build a great site under a domain like that your rankings will come much easier than using a fresh domain.
-
Old domains can be good value, especially if you know their history which it sounds like you do. The biggest issue with old domains is tracking their history and making sure bona fides.
Is the old domain re-vamp consistent with previous domain use at all. ie the backlinks and anchor text relevant in any way?
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
-
Root Domain v Subdomain
Hi, Just doing some analysis on a domain, and the (external) linking root domains show as:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
21 to Root Domain
4 to Subdomain The site is hosted under the www. subdomain version and there is no 301 from domain to www.domain Should the site be: Hosted on the root domain instead of subdomain 301 all incoming requests on domain to point to www.domain (subdomain) Any comments and experience on this type of situation appreciated!0 -
Site was moved, but still exists on the old server and is being outranked for it's own name
Recently, a client went through a split with a business partner, they both had websites on the same domain, but within their own sub directories. There is a main landing page, which links to both sites, the landing page sits on the root. Ie. example.com is a landing page with links to example.com/partner1, and example.com/partner2 Parter 2 will be my client for this example. After the split, partner 2 downloaded his website, and put it up on his own server, but no longer has any kind of access to the old servers ftp, and partner 1 is refusing to cooperate in any way to have the site removed from the old server. They did add a 301 redirect for the home page on the old server for partner 2, so, example.com/partner2/index.html is 301'ing to the new site on the new server, HOWEVER, every other page is still live on that old server, and is outranking the new site in every instance. The home page is also being outranked, even with the 301 redirect in place. What are some steps I can take to rectify this? The clients main concern is that this old website, containing the old partners name, is outranking him for his own name, and the name of his practice. So far, here's what i've been thinking: Since the site has poor on-page optimization, i'll start be cleaning all of that up. I'll then optimize the home page to better depict the clients name and practice through proper usage of heading tags, titles, alt, etc, as well as the meta title and description. The only other thing I can think of would be to start building some backlinks? Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RCDesign740 -
Cross domain canonical and hreflang
Hi Guys, So we are close to launching our new site and just need to be sure that our canonical, duplicate issues are sorted before launch. So here is our current situation. The current site is on trespass.co.uk. Then new site will be on trespass.com. The new launch is global and we will have the 3 stores within magento all in english. Trespass.com for the UK
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trespass
Trespass.com/US for US
Trespass.com/ROW for all other countries On trespass.com we have the following: On trespass.com/US we have the following: On trespass.com/ROW we have the following: This is how the magento developers.design company have set it up but am I right in saying the canonical tag for each store (/ROW and /US) should point to Trespass.com as the only difference is in the pricing £ $ and euros? Thanks for your help0 -
Which Domain is better
Which domain is better for SEO. vehiclewrapslasvegasnv.com Or vehicle-wraps-lasvegas-nv.com Thanks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
URL or Domain length
Hi All, I am wondering if google still does give importance to the length of the domain or url. If yes then how much is the acceptable length of a domain and URL. Many Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
Consolidate 150 domains to 1
Hi! Just as the questions tell we are looking at a project where we might have to consolidate 150 different domains into 1 (of course with a corresponding page on the new domain). We aim at preserving as much of the linkjuice as possible from each domain. Any advice on doing this propely? I, of course, see a risk of opening the new domain and just redirecting (301) the old domains to the specific page on the new domain but is there any right or wrong way of doing this? I might add that each domain has a more or less unique linkprofiles in terms om linking domains, number of linking domains and such. Our dear friend Cutts has some information on this topic, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7M22teF3Ho but he only talks about 4 domains - which of course seem like a bit more natural occurring phenomenon. But what about 150 of them? Anyone got any advice? Is this as much of a no-go that I feel it is? Thanks! Edit: There domains are all owned by the same entitiy, share the same GWT and such.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bebetteronline0 -
Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking?
Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking? or it dosen't really matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Radomski0 -
Keyword Rich Domain Redirects to Brand Name But How Will SEO Work For It?
If i have a keyword rich domain name, but i redirect it to a brand domain name, will doing seo for the keyword rich domain name be effective in showing up on google under that domain, for the keyword i do SEO for? or does this cause a conflict for spiders/robots as soon as they realize the page they want to check out is getting redirected to another domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lafurniturestore2