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
-
What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt
Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Nice Domain Authority but Not Ranking
Hi, A client of mine who owns a website reached out to me. He got penalized a while ago and has long since recovered (not sure exactly, but for sure a year). His domain authority is in the upper 30s but is still not ranking for many of his keywords that he ranked on the first page. I am not so familiar with the technical aspects of penalties and such, but is this a common scenario? Why is his domain authority great but his ranking downright awful? Does he have a chance if he builds great links, or is something else wrong that we can't figure out?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rachel_J0 -
Something happened within the last 2 weeks on our WordPress-hosted site that created "duplicates" by counting www.company.com/example and company.com/example (without the 'www.') as separate pages. Any idea what could have happened, and how to fix it?
Our website is running through WordPress. We've been running Moz for over a month now. Only recently, within the past 2 weeks, have we been alerted to over 100 duplicate pages. It appears something happened that created a duplicate of every single page on our site; "www.company.com/example" and "company.com/example." Again, according to our MOZ, this is a recent issue. I'm almost certain that prior to a couple of weeks ago, there existed both forms of the URL that directed to the same page without be counting as a duplicate. Thanks for you help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wzimmer0 -
Panda penalty removal advice
Hi everyone! I'm after a second (or third, or fourth!) opinion here! I'm working on the website www.workingvoices.com that has a Panda penalty dating from the late March 2012 update. I have made a number of changes to remove potential Panda issues but haven't seen any rankings movement in the last 7 weeks and was wondering if I've missed something... The main issues I identified and fixed were: Keyword stuffed near duplicate title tags - fixed with relevant unique title tags Copies of the website on other domains creating duplicate content issues - fixed by taking these offline Thin content - fixed by adding content to some pages, and noindexing other thin/tag/category pages. Any thoughts on other areas of the site that might still be setting off the mighty Panda are appreciated! Cheers Damon.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digitator0 -
Legal Client Wants to Change Domain Name... What's the best way to pass authority from old domain?
Hey Mozzers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteboardCreations
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition. 2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this. They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name. I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL? Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for? Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick1 -
Panda Recovery Question
Dear Friends, One of my customers was hit by the Panda, we were working on improve the tiny content on several pages and the remaining pages were: 1 NOINDEX/FOLLOW 2. Removed from sitemap.xml 3. Un-linked from the site (no one page on the site link to the pour content) As conclusion we can't see any improvement, my question is should I remove the pour content pages (404)? What is your recommendation? Thank you for your time Claudio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
.htaccess question/opinion/advice needed
Hello, I am trying to achieve 3 different things on my .htaccess I just want to make sure I am doing it the right or best way because I don't have much experience working on this kind of files. I am trying to: a) Redirect www.mysite.com/index.html to www.mysite.com so I don't get a duplicate content/tag error. b) Redirect mysite.com to www.mysite.com c) Get rid of the file extensions; www.mysite.com/stuff.html to www.mysite.com/stuff This is the code that I'm currently using and it seems to work fine, however I would like someone with experience to take a look so I can avoid internal server errors and other kinds of issues. I grabbed each piece of code from different posts and tutorials. Options +FollowSymlinks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eblan
RewriteEngine on Index Rewrite RewriteRule ^index.(htm|html|php) http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^(.*)/index.(htm|html|php) http://www.mysite.com/$1/ [R=301,L] RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
Rewritecond %{http_host} ^mysite.com [nc]
Rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [r=301,nc] Thanks a lot!0 -
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