What's the best SEO way to benefit from your competitor's shutting down?
-
Hi !
Our main competitor is shutting down (website will be offline) at the end of the month and we are negotiating with them to buy their domain name: the idea would be to take advantage of their good rankings in the SERPs to redirect traffic to our pages (we're planning to crawl their site or get their sitemap and redirect th category / product pages to ours).
The question is: for how long this strategy will be useful: days / weeks / months? (= for how long their pages will continue to appear in the SERPs from the day we enable the 301 redirections to our site?)
Thanks in advance for your help!
And if you have better suggestions, we're up to hear them of course..
Cheers
-
Thanks Thomas!
At the end, I have the feeling that we won't have to bother that much with that because the price they will ask is too expensive / not worth...
But it's still interesting to have some insights about this topic and I hope it helps / will help others
-
Look at how many people are actually finding them via Google or any search engine and subtract that from the amount now and you will get your number
I would not count on any branding alliance between you carrying over or people thinking that you are them
you must put a lot of effort into that.
It's simply going to be taking them back links and that's the only important thing you should really be worried about other than that you should just retire the domain honestly
If you don't want that domains back links this is really not worth it in my opinion.
-
You have to do a street for 301 redirect to your site from the purchase domain. You may get some links this way it might not be the most ethical way of going about it
This is what you have to look for when you're assessing a domain brother chores or somebody else's
- the quality of the domain
- the quality of the page
- the position of the link on the page
- number of links pointing at the page where the link is found
- social signals of the page.
If you purchased this domain and redirect it to yours you will game everyone who types in that Tomine and all the back links from that company you should make sure it has no negative back links prior to doing so
Other than what I stated above and you were coming benefiting from having that domain 31 redirecting to a meeting giving it everything it has almost 90 something percent of it
You really have to establish rather not to high-quality domain before you 301 redirect to what you've established outside while you come in you want to purchase it the purchase then 301 redirects to your website
Two relative pages only you can use this tool to assess the back links it's very good
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/competitor-backlink-analysis-in-excel/
so as
http://seogadget.com/categorising-your-links/
Of course is use
ahrefs
majestic SEO
&
OSE
To check the demesnes back links if it has that links pointing that is no good to you and all. You want to make sure you're redirecting a domain that's high-quality. You really do not want more than one domain and a competitor is really somebody that you could just get rid of right now however if you should choose 301 redirect to be very careful
If you need help with this I strongly suggest using a recommended search engine optimization partner Moz
I hope this is of help to you sincerely,
Thomas
-
I see...I don't think you will know the answer until you actually implement.
Good luck and let us know how things go.
Carla
-
Yes we're competing on the same keywords and the websites architectures are similar, which doens't mean that we will be able to redirect all the traffic to the corresponding pages easily...
We know the traffic they are actually getting via search engines... but I would like to know for how long this traffic would be redirected to us...
My guess is that in 5 - 10 days, their domain won't "send" us traffic anymore (due to 301 redirections or due to low rankings because of the lost backlinks -> their main backlinks come from their other websites).
-
Ahh..I see. They should give you access to their Google Analytics. The traffic they receive should be similar to what you will gain if your web architectures are similar and are going for similar keywords. Is that the case?
-
Thanks Carla for your detailed answer
We already know the domain we want to buy is not receiving (lots of) spammy links.
The reason we want to know how long will it continue to appear on the SERPs is to know how much traffic (= money) it can bring to us, so we can decide how much is the domain worth...
-
Hi Pedro,
If you redirect the purchased domain to your permanent domain all the incoming links to the purchased domain will be pointing at your domain. Therefore if they have spammy links your website could go down.
I do not know how long the purchased domain would appear in the SERPs but I wouldn't worry about it too much if you redirect all the Urls to your new domain. For example
www.purchaseddomain.com redirects to www.pedrosdomain.com
www.purchaseddomain.com/seoservices redirects to www.pedrosdomain.com/seo-services-portugal
www.purchaseddomain.com/seoservices may appear in the Serps but when a user clicks on it they will get redirected to your website.
I did not use any specialized platform to buy the domain. Just trust and a little luck
I hope my answers helped!
Thanks Carla
-
Hi Carla,
Thanks for your answer.
But I think your case is different since we don't want to replace our domain name by the one we want to buy: we just want to redirect the SERPs traffic to our site. Any idea for how long the bought domain will still show up in the SERPs after the site is down and and the 301 redirects are enabled?
PS: by the way, did you use some specialized platform to buy / transfer the domain? (to avoid to pay without receiving the domain access)
-
Hi Pedro,
I did something similar a couple years ago and made a very silly mistake but an important one. Please review your competitors backlink portfolio and see how many links really have value and how many are spammy. When I purchased my domain, it had a PR2 but I didn't realize that many of the links were black hat. Luckily for me, Google released the disavow tool right after I bought the domain so I was able to disavow the spammy stuff.
If the domain you plan on purchasing has spammy links, I would negotiate with the seller to disavow the spammy stuff before actually purchasing to see what you are really getting
Good luck
Carla
-
Buying there website is not something we are considering due to technology and more complex questions... and not only that their site profile is not very good, their direct traffic / brand is not good neither: all their traffic comes from search engines, directly to category and product pages... that's why I'm still interested to have a better idea for how long they will show up in the SERPs after the site is down and and the 301 redirects are enabled
Do you have an idea? Should we expect days / weeks / months?
-
So you're saying that their link profile is not very good? And you're only looking to get traffic from their existing website? If that is the case then you have to leave their existing website or just 301 redirect the site over to yours which would only last as long as people remember to use that website it would no longer be in the SERPS you could do a 302 but if you want to show up for there trafic not links have a page that tells people the site is now your site click here.
You might not want to pay much with out it being looked at this is not gray hat If you buy there site but if done wrong could be very bad
-
Yes, the goal is not to redirect everything to the homepage but to try to "automatically / manually" get a 301 redirect to our corresponding pages.
Our competitor doesn't have a lot of backlinks (the main ones come from their sites and they will take them off as soon as they shut down) so what we really want to take advantage of is the traffic from the SERPs.... but how long will they continue to appear there?
-
One other thing to remember is switch that who is on that domain name in Google realizes that you've swapped you are no longer that company and that they could change things drastically however you will most likely benefit greatly from the inbound links that are going to be pointing at your domain after their redirected away from this other site the right way I will grab some info on what I mean for you. Give me 20 min
Thomas
-
This is done correctly could be extremely valuable. If your company is selling the exact same product this other company is in your information is relevant meaning that your site is relevant with their sites links would be relevant to be very Valuable and I would use a quality search engine optimization firm to do this job I would not just wing it
If you buy there domain and point it at your site you must 301 to your sites relavent pages not just 301 all to home page.
You could get links for good so that's worth a lot ONLY IF DONE RIGHT
Hope I was of help,
Thomas
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
-
Technorati - SEO Benefit?
Would listing my content / blogs on Technorati have an SEO benefit? A few months ago, I did a piece of analysis on our competitiors' link profiles and then ranked the linking root domains to get the highest scores. Technorati was one of the domains with a high domain authority and is also relevant to our business. On the other hand, I've seen on whiteboard Friday's that directories are losing their importance. My gut feeling is that this is something that is worth doing because it is easy to implement but that we shouldn't expect amazing returns in terms of traffic / page authority scores. Your opinions would be much appreciated 🙂
Competitive Research | | RG_SEO0 -
Looking for SEO consultant.
Hello there, I am looking for a great SEO specialist to help us with ranking ( www.newdesigngroup.ca ) We would prefer this specialist located outside of Ontario. Would be great to develop a working relationship with someone who can provide an expertise on on-going basis for our clients as well. We just re-started this company after a two years break and redesigned the website. I would like to get an expert opinion on on-page and off-page optimization and our marketing strategy. Would anyone be interested? Thank you Dmitri
Competitive Research | | axewarb0 -
Why is my competitor's site ranking #1?
I'm about to work for a local business website that offers cleaning services and products. The keyword they want the most is ruled by a very odd site; My client's competitor's site has been around for 7 years. (Less than the average of it's competitors. Less than my client's) Has 1 backlink. Lower PA MR MT & DA than any other in the SERP. It's a 1 page site made with Flash. They do not have FB or Twitter accounts. So I thought maybe they were ranking so well because of their traffic. But neither my client, me or my coworkers have ever heard of this company. And yet, they are ranking #1. And the only thing I notice that might have helped is that the title of their page is the exact keyword and nothing more. Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | Eblan0 -
Ecommerce seo - competitors are using spammy links to rank HELP
After setting up SEO Moz and whilst waiting for it to crawl my site i have checked out my competitors who are ranking for the keywords i am going after. It appears from what i can see in OSE that they are ranking with back links from spammy looking sites and lots of exact match anchor text. I have tried to match a few links with what they have currently without getting myself into anything too spammy but i really don't want to follow how they have done it exactly. The niche i am in is pretty boring but the rewards are great but i am finding creating content and distributing it correctly difficult which is why i need some help. My site is roughly 9 months old and the product descriptions are hand written trying to give as much info as possible with a hint of personality so no cookie cutter back of the box descriptions. i have matched a few of the links from competitors which weren't too spammy and as relevant as i could get to my niche, i have also created articles for some article directories - all of which isn't really getting me very far and i am running out of ideas on how to create new content & the types of new content to help me get back links naturally. If any of you friendly guys could offer me some assistance in setting up a basic seo campaign which would help me target my keywords i would be very much in your debt
Competitive Research | | GarethEJones0 -
What if your content is way better than competitors?
Do you have any suggestions if you are being outranked by competitors even though your page has way better content and better links?
Competitive Research | | Charlessipe0 -
Best way to check a sites traffic that you dont own. (Canadian Site)
We are looking for a way to get the estimated traffic for some sites in our niche. Usually we use compete.com or spyfu, but they only track traffic in the US. Does anyone know a way we can get traffic estimates in Canada? Thanks in advance.
Competitive Research | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Local SEO
Im trying to rank well for a local search. im trying to rank for my city plus lawn care. Its not that competitive, because people in this field dont know about seo. Im trying to just rank well for it can someone give me suggestions to do that. Should i create blogs and use the comments to hyperlink to my page. Im doing research on my competition and seeing what backlinks they are using. and off page seo ideas would be great as well We have a great google places page same with yahoo. We are trying to rank for different city's i rank well for the city i live in and my address is in, but i dont rank that well for other cities. Even tho they are less competitive than mine competitive under 500k results for my keyword
Competitive Research | | fhnhockey0880 -
Isn't unfair that Keyword domain Exactly Match just overpowers every domain and page authority?
Im currently doing a research for a low-medium competitive keyword (SEO Moz Keyword difficult Tool it showed 36% competition, its a one word keyword) in my country. That keyword had a Google AdWords Broad Match of 368.000 searchs and a Google AdWords Exact Match of 33.100 searchs in April. The currently number one site for that keyword have an exactly match for that keyword, www.KEYWORD.com and nothing else. Then I ran and advanced report to that keyword and heres the initial result: This number one site has a domain authority of only 11 and a page authority of 25. The second site have the following domain name -> www.companynameKEYWORD.com.br (its in Brasil, so theorically and .br should worth more than a .com domain right?) Anyway the second site have a domain authority of 37 and a page rank authority of 45. So after this link all the others are like that, www.companynameKEYWORD.com and the domain and page authority is according to how it suposed to be (higher domain and page are ranked better). The exactly same thing happen when I search for a more long tail of this keyword (wich are 2 words) happen. The exactly match are ranked 1st with a very low page and domian authority while the others come first. Some more info about that number 1 ranked site- The layout is terrible and not user friendly. The site took more than 10 seconds to load Have not a single inpage SEO optimization. According to alexa the bounce rate is around 50% Now follows the data from Linkscape data between the 1st and 2nd ranked pages Overal Score - 19% x 38% Page mozRank - 2.04 x 3.95 Page mozTrust - 4.92 x 5.45 External mozRank - 2.04 x 3.95 Subdomain mozRank - 1.81 x 3.45 Domains Linkin - 4 x 163 External Links - 8 x 265 So, looks like that only two things should be 90% of the focus from a SEO perspective. Have an old exactly keyword match domain and youre good to go 😄 Edited 1: About the linkbacks to each page The 1st page in rank biggest page authority linking back (dofollow) have an authority of 36 from a domain authority of 49 The 2nd in the rank the highest dofollow linkback have a page authority of 40 and domain of 85 Edit 2: 1st in rank were created in 2000 2nd in rank were created in 2007
Competitive Research | | bemcapaz1