Any experiece with Buying Domains?
-
Hi!
My company is looking to purchase a domain that is more relevant to our business. The company that we are looking to purchase the domain from was actually bought out a few years back and no longer brands itself by that particular domain.
Does anyone have any experience buying domains or working with domain brokers? My preference is for a broker but I am open to hearing any suggestions. In the past we had approached this company to purchase the domain and it just didn't work out.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
-
Thanks! I will check out SEDO, I've looked at GoDaddy but wanted to see if there were any other companies providing that service.
-
Just to add what EGOL mentioned in his post from ways back, with something else EGOL mentioned recently
in http://moz.com/community/q/advice-needed-on-a-potential-domain-purchase, with something that is really important in this day/age in SEO to consider: "However, if it is a long-established site with enormous amounts of domain queries, backlinks, brand mentions, likes, etc. then my concern would start to go up."In other words Good history is good for your domain, but its hard to come by these days, no history may also be good, bad history is really bad. And more and more you find companies with bad history selling their domains to get rid of them. History = some of the things EGOL mentioned, with big emphasis on back-link profile quantity and most importantly quality.
Hope this helps
-
I wrote this Moz post a long time ago but the details (and member comments) are still relevant.
http://moz.com/blog/ten-tips-for-buying-a-website
The only thing that I would add is.... If you are buying a domain today it would be a good idea to do a Panda, Penguin and Unnatural Links risk assessment.
Good luck.
-
Vince,
We have had several clients purchase domains owned by other companies, so I'll recommend to you what I told them... Visit http://www.sedo.com/us/buy-domains/domain-brokerage/ and get them into the mix of becoming your broker, especially if the company who owns the domain is a little tough to get in touch with. Out of the 6 clients who have had to purchase domains from others, 2 went at it on their own and the others used SEDO and enjoyed the experience.
Also, check out GoDaddy's Domain Brokerage services here http://www.godaddy.com/domains/domain-broker.aspx.
Hope this was helpful. - Patrick
-
I've used both sedo.com and escrow.com in the past to buy domains with no issues. Through either, there's an escrow process to ensure the domain is transferred properly, so no one gets ripped off.
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
-
Domain Transition: Leaving low quality content behind
We're in the initial stages of planning a domain transition / rebrand. We're considering 301'ing our low and high(er) quality content split to two different domains. One for the low quality, one for our high. Best practices normally tell you to not split your content between between multiple domains. However, what if the majority of pages on your site are thin/outdated, and attract low volume/long tail? Does it make sense to bring that low quality/volume content over the new domain, when you know you'll never have the resources (nor would it make sense to) mass improve the quality of these pages? I'm concerned the quality of these pages are affecting our overall domain authority. Some background on our site/business: Current site has 15,000+ pages. 98% of our site is a product directory of professional/enterprise business management software. While a small handful of our product pages have quality original long form content (maybe 50-100), most of the product pages are a combination of: thin, outdated, overly sales-y content provided directly from product developers, and/or catch only very low-volume/long tail organic traffic. 95% of our pages attract fewer than 20 visits/mo, 90% of our pages attract fewer than 10 visits/mo. We have a small business of about 10 employees. Most of which don't maintain our site. It's unrealistic for us to genuinely improve the quality of that many pages. Nor does it make sense to improve most of these pages, as they'll attract only very low volume keywords. Individually these low quality pages don't bring in many customers, but on aggregate they do. 70% of our organic conversions come from pages with less than 20 visits/mo. A few questions: Is this content negatively affecting our domain authority in any way? While I don't believe we've been hit with a penalty, Google knows that on average our pages aren't very helpful to many users, and I'm concerned that affects our ability to rank with pages that matter. None of the content was mass produced in any form of scraping efforts or anything nefarious like that. Would there be any negative/positive affect to offloading these low quality/volume pages to a different domain during the rebrand?
Branding | | dsbud0 -
Examples of Domain Change for Big Brands
Hi I am trying to put together a case study with big brands that have changed their domain names over the last 2 years. So far I have: t-mobile.co.uk -> ee.co.uk guardian.co.uk -> theguardian.com Are there any others you could think of? It'd be much appreciated! Thanks, C
Branding | | Carlos-R0 -
Moving to a new domain
Hi, We are about to rebrand. This means we need to move all of our content on to a new domain. I want to make sure this process is as smooth as possible and we don't lose too much by way of rankings. I have read this page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html and plan on following the instructions to the letter, but was wondering if anyone had any additional tips? Also, the article linked above is OLD. From 2008, is there anything'new' that I should know? Thank you (in advance) for any help you can offer, it is much appreciated! Best wishes, Amelia EDIT: I forgot quite a big element when first posting this question! We are merging two existing websites into the new URL. The two sites are for two different products we offer, but we'll now be offering both products under the same URL.
Branding | | CommT0 -
Moving to new domain - Social and Branding Questions?
Hi, We are moving to a new domain because our rankings drastically dropped and we want to "start over". For example - If my company is called Joes Computers and the domain was JoesComputers.com and the new domain which will hold our e-commerce website will be completely different for example - BestComputers.com - which do I brand? Which do I put as suffix in all titles?
Branding | | BeytzNet
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Best Computers
or
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Joes Computers Which name do I take for social profiles? Company or Domain?
(We currently have for the company since it was the same). Please note that our company name is already a little bit known... and therefore inside the website it will be labeled in Logos etc. We would also state "Best Computers by Joes Computers" (as if it is a sub brand or daughter company). Thanks,0 -
High authority brand expanding product line, domain question
Hi MOZers, I've been given a handy little domain puzzle to deal with and would love insight from the community. Here's the situation: We're retailers of one specific, big, nationally known product. Let's pretend it's the Snuggee (IT'S NOT). People search for it and buy it from our site, or from Amazon or other retailers that we distribute it to. We're about to expand to carry a bunch of related, but different products - so from a one-product brand to 5 or 6 different items, relating to different keyword searches. Imagine Snuggee people want to start selling a whole bunch of products that solve the same needs of warming the front of your body and making you look silly. The owners want to change the main domain from [specific product] to [name similar to specific product, but is more general]. What concerns me is how to handle the fame of the branded product in terms of domain names. Current domain, based on that product, has a ton of links and a decent age. Owners are thinking to redirect everything to fresh new unestablished domain. While I know 301s will pass most link value, it will also be a home page that will be about a bunch of products - not just that main known one. In fact, we're considering making a URL for each product as landing page, of which old famous product would be one of 5 or 6 pages. Two main options we're considering right now: Keep old domain as a doorway page featuring just old product, with same look and feel, and from which any links would point to the new domain. Try to keep this as ranking for top result for this search, which should be easy. Unify everything under new domain, with old product being featured on a separate page / subdirectory. Hope that new home page still can rank pretty well for our old product, even though it will be talking about other products now as well. What we'd stand to lose would be the SERP for old products featuring too many big box retailers that sell our stuff and take a chunk out of our margins. The goal is to help us become known for many things, while still being always the best search result for what we're already known for. Which of those two options seem best, or is there another I'm missing altogether? Thank you!
Branding | | advancedSemiotics0 -
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website?
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website? Actually I have been doing guest posts with pen name “Jane Andrew” for “abc.com”(bit old and well performing website). Now I need to post for a new website “xyz.com” on some old domains (where I have already published my articles) so the situation is that I want domains and pen name to remain same but linking website would be different. I had few questions in my mind regarding that and I would be grateful if you help me getting the required information. Is it right from SEO, branding and marketing point of view? How Google interprets this? Is there any harm for the old well performing website or for the new one? And also both websites are owned and managed by the same owner.
Branding | | shaz_lhr0 -
Hotel website domain
I work on a project for a hotel website and look up domain names right now. But I am now not sure wether I should go for a branding of the hotel name in the domain name (e.g. "bellavistahotel.com") or pick the location ("berlinhotel.com") or a mix (e.g. "bellavistaberlin.com). What would be your recommendation? The content (text, photos, videos) I have is a lot about the location and the hotel itself. I want to connect the Hotel page afterwards with Knowem to hundreds of social networks. My tendency is to go for a branding. Is that a good idea? Thanks for the help.
Branding | | reisefm0 -
Use blog.domain.com or socialbrand.com?
I've got a little bit of a dilemma. A company I'm working for has an ecommerce site that is moving to Volusion. It is impossible to add "domain.com/blog" so I am forced to use a subdomain in order to keep consistency. We are starting a push in Social media and have secured shorter handles for the brand to use on the different networks. One of the main goals originally for developing a blog is to build trust but since the domain names are so big (26 characters) and the ecommerce sites already have a good amount of trust building factors in them I am beginning to question my original plan. My question is this: If I go with a shorter brand recognized domain name to develop the blog on which is different than the ecommerce domain (keyword matched) will I loose too much trust and ranking opportunity because of the difference in domains. I know there isn't a golden bullet for this question but i would love to get you your take on it.
Branding | | BenRWoodard0