Buying a site for SEO - how to determine value?

I the process of trying to get some links I came across a certain site, and first I was going to write the guy an email to see if he would link to me, but then I did a bit of research into the site after which I decided to ask if he wanted to sell the entire site instead.

He wrote back and said "Minimum $2500". I'm trying to figure out what to counter-offer (if anything) and what the real value is, but this is my first time doing this and I was wondering if you might be able to give me a bit of advice on how to proceed? Here is the info I've found out about the site so far:

PR: 6
Age: 1998
Inbound links: 1152 (according to Yahoo)
Inbound .edu links: 198 (according to Yahoo)

Alexa shows negligible traffic to the site. Compete shows a spike in May of this year but I don't know why.

There are no ads on the site so I'm not sure what use the guy would have for the site - he can't be basing his price on revenue.

By the way the main reason I'd be interested in buying it is to 301 redirect it to my site so I can take advantage of his site's age and links (which should help with SEO). As far as I know I'd have to get his domain login info because if the search engines see the ownership transfer the site would basically lose its SEO value - correct?

Basically I don't know the value of his site because I'm not sure how to estimate how much a redirect would help my own site SEO-wise.

Any thoughts you have would be much appreciated...

Thanks,

-Does the site have content that could easily be tweaked to relate to your industry?
-Does the site have high rankings for relevant KWs that your organization would benefit from?

If the answers to 1 & 2 are yes:

What would be the disadvantage of making it a lead generation mini-site for your company without redirecting?

It would have to be original content if the existing cannot be tweaked easily, and that would take time to write, but the age of the site could be a great advantage.

One option might be: See if you can do a test run on the site without him/her turning over the controls yet, write some persuasive copy, put a form on the site, offer a free report, and see if you get any leads. Depending on your business, your closing rate, how much a customer is worth to you, you'll be able to see the value fast.

That is asking a lot from the other person though. You could dangle the carrot stick that you'd be willing to pay even more than $2500 if it produces leads.

I have heard that changing ownership info may negate the desired SEO benefit, but have not seen it myself. If you trust the person enough, you may just want to keep his/her name there for a while, and change the info slowly (Org:, hosting, location, phone number, contacts), starting with the FTP password.

What is your business?

Both EGOL and myself have bought domains for the simple reason:

The tangible costs of starting a new domain from scratch and promoting PLUS the cost of lost revenue (revenue if you had a domain today in exposure range... the value of daily/weekly/month lose is what?)

In almost all instances that value exceeds $2500 in a day, or a week, or a month - it's almost certain in even the remotest situations that the cost of 5 months development time "minimum" would exceed $500/month this your breakeven is almost always sooner in purchasing a domain with a breakeven in five months than 6-12 months starting from scratch.

So "IF" you have a tangible plan to make money in short order the $2.5K sounds pretty reasonable.

198 .edu links? *salivatin'*

How many unique .edu domains, and are they editorial links or crap links from forums and student pages?

If there are lots of good .edu links from many unique domains I would buy this site. I would not redirect and would make slow deliberate changes to convert it into an income producer. Redirect your other site to this one if it is on the same theme (unless you have a better site in terms of links).

If I really liked the subject I might work on the site every day.

Thanks very much for the responses. The impression I'm getting is that the thing to do if anything would be to redevelop that site instead of just redirecting the whole thing to my own site... would 301 redirecting it to my own site not have the same effect as if my own site was actually that old and had the links pointing directly to it?



Hmmm maybe it's not THAT good. It looks to me like only about 15 unique .edu domains, and although it looks like they're not "crap links from forums and student pages", when I got to the second SERP page, the results ended at #17, and then said "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ones already displayed."

Justin

If you decide to not buy it, please, PM me .

Fathom said: It is a reasonable price.
Now I will go further and say: It is a price somewhere between good and great.

It seems like the 301 redirect would be a waste...

Redeveloping, making new pages with content relevant to your site and linking to it... would be a better idea.

You are thinking only about the advantages it will have for your website, but maybe you should think about ways how to make money out of this website.

To redirect - is just link get a $2500 link... you can do that on the domain and the ad space IMHO if you don't have anything else to do with the domain would be worth it...

But just to redirect... it's like having a highway going through town and lots of traffic, then someone builds a super highway because the traffic is overpowering the current road structure - and you lose some business as people bypass the town... BUT you buy the super highway and redirect all the traffic back into town again.

I'd rather build a rest stop on the side of the superhighway and double my interests "for townies" and "passersby".





Sorry but a link is a link - edu is pretty good link but I wouldn't say "1" or "1000" are GREAT links for anything beyond an "info site"... PLUS redirecting to another commercial property - how long do you expect any edu to link to a "redirect"?

There's the key... if you redirect, those links will disappear.

When I by a site I base the price on three things... how sexy is the domain, how many links will stay in place after the deal is done, and how is the site doing (or what do I think I can make it do) in a SERP where money can be made.

Many thanks again for the responses - I appreciate it



I don't think I completely understand what you're saying there... if my website is the town, wouldn't I want all the cars pouring directly into my town, instead of having my website be the rest stop which gets only a small percentage of all the cars driving by?

If this other site was similar enough to my own that I though there wasn't much risk of the .edu links getting removed ...THEN would it be worth a 301 redirect to my site be worthwhile?

Basically the way I'm thinking of it, I could either create a link from that site to my site (which would get me one link), or I could redirect the entire site, which would get me over 1000 links - which I thought would be much better for SEO... is there a flaw in my thinking?

Tybi I'll PM you momentarily...

Thanks again

I wouldn't buy a $2500 domain to merely make a redirect... why? because the redirect then is like buying "1" $2500 link.

However, I can see you buying a $2500 domain, moving your current domain there and redirecting the old domain... then the edu's are actually pointing to a website (and not merely pointing to a redirect).

Yep... people may drop links if they see they are being redirected. Especially the edu links. These links if they are qulaity are worth gold. Unis only link to decent stuff and do not tend to like having their links redirected to other sites. ie a competator might notice the redirect and write to all the edus and tell them what is happening. Watch those links dissapear.

I agrree with other posts. Sounds like a pretty good buy to me.

Thanks, I replied you.

I read your post again and I just want to answer this:

"As far as I know I'd have to get his domain login info because if the search engines see the ownership transfer the site would basically lose its SEO value - correct?"

No, you can change the whois information and it won't affect the rankings. I was awared of this some time ago, too... but EGOL ensured I have nothing to worry about. So, I bought the domain, changed the whois info and the rankings are the same as they were.


BTW. You have a nice website, good idea, nice brand... Although you have some onpage issues which you should have a look at. Check out the things I sent you, you will do far better.

Here's an article that I wrote for SEOMoz about a year ago... and the readers chipped in a lot more good stuff...

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ten-tips-for-buying-a-website

I bought a site about a year ago... here is what was changed with no impact on rankings....


* registrar was in outside of USA... moved to USA
* hosting was moved from one company to another within USA
* IP and DNS all changed
* whois changed three times during the transaction chain
(original owner to a company, then to me)

What I did NOT do was immediately slap up my new content. I slowly morphed the site from what it was into what I wanted it to be. Also I did NOT change the theme of the site. Subject matter stayed the same.