Conserving Link Equity When Purchasing a Domain
-
Suppose you were interested in buying a successful blog with lots of powerful links and they offered to sell you the domain but none of the content. Do you have any tips for conserving the link equity when buying the domain?
(Note: about half of the inbound links are to the homepage and the plan is to relaunch the site with new content.)
-
Redirect the old URLs to similar themed pages or home page to preserve some of the link equity. Think about a user's experience also if they clicked one of the links from those sources.. better to serve them something if it's in your control to keep them happy
-
I couldn't agree with EGOL more. The best option is to place equivalent or higher quality content, discussing the same topic as the previous article on the URL.
However, I think there are some ways to buy yourself some times if you don't have all of the content that you need. This is how I might personally approach it:
- Create "subject buckets" and divide the content into as many buckets as possible. If it's a well structured blog, then Categories and Tags are going to be extremely helpful for this.
- Find the most powerful URL in each bucket and create an extremely high quality (likely lengthy) article on that URL in which you cover as many topics in that bucket as possible. (Also, pay attention to links that are generating a lot...or any...traffic. The URLs that aren't generating traffic have a much lower likelihood of being changed discovered and removed by a webmaster.)
- 301 the other URLS in that bucket to the high quality post until you can get the rest of the content written. In some cases, (and depending on how varied the topics are) this might be more of a permanent solution that will a.) consolidate your link juice and b.) reduce your total page count (good post-panda).
Also keep in mind that rewriting content is going to be much easier (or cheaper in most cases) than having completely original content written. That being said, make sure the writers know they need to make the article "your own". I'd suggest a service called Vappingo. They don't publish their "re-write" rates on the site, but if you contact them they'll definitely help you out. I had them rewrite some sub-par content I purchased and was extremely impressed by the quality...and I'm picky about content quality.)
-
Thanks! Those are very good and helpful suggestions. One reason I'm optimistic is that a lot of the links are from large media companies that linked to the site in articles. As long as I put similar content there I think a good number of the links will remain.
Do you think Google will discredit all previous links if the all the content is deleted? We will be moving to a different hosting company and I am considering to keep the registrar the same company (but different registration information).
-
The content must have been what made this blog successful. That is what attracted the links... so if the content leaves the links will probably evaporate too.
I bought a website that had some great content that was not owned by the person who I bought the site from. I allowed the site to go unchanged until I had enough same-topic content to repopulate those pages (on the same URL) with articles that were just as good or better.
So, if I was buying this site I would do an inventory of inbound links and get to work on content that will fit those URLs. I would try to delay taking possession until I had the new content ready - if possible. If not, I would get short articles up ASAP and improve then quickly.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Webmaster tools not showing links but Moz OSE is showing links. Why can't I see them in the Google Search Console
Hi, Please see attached photos. I have a website that shows external follow links when performing a search on open site explorer. However, they are not recognised or visible in search console. This is the case for both internal and external links. The internal links are 'no follow' which I am getting developer to rectify. Any ideas why I cant see the 'follow' external links? Thanks in advance to those who help me out. Jesse T7dkL5s T7dkL5s OkQmPL4 3qILHqS
Technical SEO | | jessew0 -
SEO for sub domains
I've recently started to work on a website that has been previously targeting sub domain pages on its site for its SEO and has some ok rankings. To better explain, let me give an example...A site is called domainname.com. And has subdomains that they are targeted for seo (i.e. pageone.domainname.com, pagetwo.domainname.com, pagethree.domianname.com). The site is going through a site re-development and can reorganise its pages to another URL. What would be best way to approach this situation for SEO? Ideally, I'm tempted to recommend that new targeted pages be created - domainname.com/pageone, domainname.com/pagetwo, domainname.com/pagethree, etc - and to perform a 301 redirect from the old pages. Does a subdomain page structure (e.g. pageone.domainname.com) have any negative effects on SEO? Also, is there a good way to track rankings? I find that a lot of rank checkers don't pick up subdomains. Any tips on the best approach to take here would be appreciated. Hope I've made sense!
Technical SEO | | Gavo0 -
Why am I getting millions of links from my root domain to my subdomains?
My site's subdomains (us.example.com, de.example.com, etc.) are showing millions of links (in Google Webmaster Tools) from the root domain. This seems very unnatural to me. Any idea what would be cause this or is this? In addition, I just found out that we deliberately stop googlebot crawling GEO-IP redirects, so that when googlebot tries to crawl our UK, DE, FR, etc. sites, it is not redirected to us.example.com. I'm thinking they may be linked? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | CMcC0 -
Google+ Contibutor to: Link To Main Domain or Content Page?
Which is the best practice for the link to claim authorship for a guest post? I have tried both the main domain URL in the "contributor to" section of my Google plus and the page URL where the post is and both show my picture when testing in the Structured Data Testing Tool. Which is best to use? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | WSIDW0 -
Quality links are beneficial, but are neutral links detrimental?
So obviously a link profile featuring quality / authoritative / relavant in-bound links is preferable, but here's my question: If I'm starting work on a brand new domain, should I build links that one would consider neutral (i.e. from a non-spammy, but unrelated site) or should I not bother and only focus on quality links? Thanks
Technical SEO | | underscorelive0 -
More than one web domain
Hi What is best when considering using more than one domain on a website, what the best policy ? it's a question I get asked a lot, usually because prior to any seo efforts the main domain name purchased is not keyword rich or an abbreviated company name etc. what impact do new domains have on SEO compared to older existing domains- is it worth changing a generic company named domain for a keyword rich domain? if having multiple domains pointing to the site is beneficial how best is it to configure? How do i inform Google? How do both domains get index when there is only one physical site? How should i monitor it, Analytic s, SEO moz? Will the domain compete against each other and effect SEO rank? Are they best used for marketing purposes on external sites, adverts driving traffic to the main site. I'm aware there are lots of questions above, any answers/ opinions , links to further info would be greatly appreciated. cheers
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Redirecting Domains
Hi Everybody, My clients owns a lot of domains related to his website. I redirected them to the website. So his website is: www.vallnord.com but if you type Vallnordski, vallnordsnow, etc etc they will go to the website, but they will not change the url and will keep vallnordski, vallnordsnow instead of going to vallnord.com Not very clear actually, so if you have 20 seconds to type them you will see it very clear. I was wondering if this was a good practice or it is better to actually redirect someone completely (If they type vallnordski.com take them to vallnord.com)? Is redirecting a good SEO practice? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
Image Link
If I have an image that is well optimiswed for a keyword that the page it is on is ranking for but i put a no follow in the image link - is this going to lose the value of the image on that page. A strange question i know but this image i have on my homepage is optimised around a keyword, the image is also a link but when i changed the link in the image to no follow i seem to have dropped rankings for that keyword. Probably consicidence but i thought i would throw this question out there and get some views?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0