Investing in web properties is a very profitable Internet business tactic. Sometimes buying an established website can give you a kick start in terms of search engine rankings and Internet market presence. This guide will help you in evaluating, buying and optimizing an existing web property.
Before You Buy...
Evaluating the value of a web property is not a simple task. The value of a web property is different for everyone. You see, the value of a web property is closely tight in with your business plan for it. For example, if you are planning to go into the automobile niche, it would be a bad idea to buy an established website that is in, say, the health niche.
It is a good practice to have a sound business plan before buying a web property. But what if you suddenly discover a web property on sale with great potential? You can, of course, develop a business plan for it. However, the business plan has to be done before actually buying the web property.
Evaluating the Potential of a Web Property
Since a web property operates on the Internet (duh), its market penetration is directly related to the quality of its on-page and off-page search engine optimization. Let's say you have a business plan for automobile niche, you are basically looking for:
- Domain names with keywords such as cars, automobile...etc.
- Domain age, the older the better.
- Domain with clear IP. (e.g. not banned or blacklisted)
- Back-links with anchor text related to your keywords. The more competitive keywords the better. (When you do market analysis for your business plan, you should have developed a list of keywords that you want to target)
- Current search engine standings (SERP rankings) of targeting keywords related to your keywords.
- Good internal structure of the web property. Is the internal structure (e.g. URLs) SEO-friendly? The number of existing pages...etc.
How Much Should You Pay?
The SEO value of the web property is what you are really paying for. This is the question that you should ask yourself - how much time, effort, and cost is it going to take for you to build up a similar site?
Taking It Over
Now that you've made up your mind, with a solid business plan, you've decided to go ahead with the purchase. Making sure the transition is as transparent as possible is extremely important.
Step 1: Keeping the Website Structure Intact
For an existing website, there could be hundreds, thousands, or even more pages indexed by search engines already. Also, there could be hundreds or thousands of back-links linking to these pages. Therefore, it is crucial NOT to mess up with the internal pages of the web property.
If you are buying the domain only, it is a wise idea to setup a temporary web host and clone the web property before taking it over. If you are buying both the domain and the website, it is also a safe practice to do the same and make sure the same website, with the same internal structure, works 100% on your web host before pointing the domain to your web host.
In short, take it slow and ensure nothing is lost.
Step 2: Optimize the Website with On-Page SEO
If the web property already has good on-page SEO, then you can save up a lot of your time and effort on this part. Make sure that the internal pages are properly on-page optimized from search engine perspective.
Step 3: Monitoring
When you take over a site, you need to make sure that you insert your tracking pixels (Google Analytics Tracking Code) to the website. Also, it would be a good idea to check for unwanted external links from the internal pages.
Things to Keep in Mind
After you the web property under your possession and live on the web, it is important that you continue to work on building links for it. (off-page SEO) Remember, when you rank high on search engines, your competitors are always analyzing your website and trying to beat you down. Search Engine Optimization takes consistent effort; if you stop, you will fall behind.
Additional Reference: Effective Link Building, Must Read SEO Resource
Aaron
SEO Entrepreneur
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