Buying a Close Out Domain for SEO

Now, in this post, I will tackle on the things you can do on how to benefit from a close out or aged domain.

Close out domains simply refer to those domains whose owner had failed to renew its registration. Now, a lot of people are buying these closed out domains especially if they are aged ones. Meaning, they had been parked for a certain time or the owner just wanted to get rid of it.

Before you buy a Close Out Domain… Prepare a Business Plan!

Well, do not get excited and buy those aged close out domain, you better think of a business plan first! Why? Because you might end up buying it and getting it close out AGAIN because you do not have a business plan. It make sense to have a business plan because, in the first place, why had these close out domain in Auctions? – because their owners failed to plan for the long haul. They won’t sell these domains if it has been giving them income, right? So, lie low for a while. THINK! Make a strategy and make a plan on and after you have bought that close out domain you want.

Now…how can you benefit from the close out domain you’ve bought??

The 301 Redirect the Old Domain to Your Existing Domain

This is the easiest thing to do on how you can benefit from your close out domain – you can redirect the old domain to your existing site! Well, this tactic will obviously work if both the close out domain and your domain are in the same niche. Otherwise, redirecting it would be useless.

Just imagine buying an ADULT CLOSE OUT DOMAIN and redirecting it to your PET SUPPLY SITE??? This redirection would probably raise eyebrows among all the search engines. Quite comical really!Wink So make sure, when you buy a close out domain, it is, as close as possible to your niche.

Reconstruction or Creating a Micro Site or OVERHAUL the old Domain to Redirect to Your Existing Domain

Compared to your first option, this is harder and might take some time. Though this is better. You can just update the content of the old domain and sell/offer the same product you’re selling on your current site. In this way, you are leveraging your profit and time. The best thing that might happen here is that these sites of yours will rank alongside SERPs.

NOTE: Be sure that these two sites will not end up with the same content or else you will have duplicate content issues.

The problem that might arise here is that you will end up maintaining two sites which will be demanding and you might end up hiring another admin to maintain the other site.

Well, that’s it! Let me know if there’s update in google about it and let me know your views about this issue as well.

Does your Domain Age Affects SEO? (Especially if you bought an OLD domain)

Just posting this forum entry that I posted before in a webmasters forum.

Well, I’ve discussed a little about it on my previous post here. But one thing is clear from that post of mine: DOMAIN AGE is important in SEO.

In this post, we’ll dig in a little deeper on how and why DOMAIN AGE affects SEO.

There are TWO reasons why an OLDER DOMAIN is good for SEO and why it makes sense for GOOGLE to give credit to older domains.

1.)Well established and well known sites have older domain names, thus, it follows that older domains should be well-established and a very reliable source as well

2.)Spammers do not aim and are not interested in growing their site for the next 3 or 5 years, they drop and leave their domains whenever they like. In connection, google treat a new domain as something that is likely to be just spammed after a length of time.

Well, this belief came from the patent that GOOGLE released in 2005, “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data”

“…the date that a domain with which a document is registered may be used as an indication of the inception date of the document.”

“Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains… Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains are rarely used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when the domains expire in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.”

These paragraphs surely give you a good idea that domain age is significantly important in ranking your website on search results. 

BUT…

There are cases that a really old domain was:

1.unused or parked for a certain period of time.
2.used for illegal or illegitimate purposes for a very long period of time and was just released or sold to another owner (whitehat owner), without a change in the registration date.
3.frequently used by NEW and well established companies by the old 301 redirect from an older domain

So now, what is really the stand of DOMAIN AGE when it comes to SEO?

As I have mentioned on my earlier post, buying an OLD DOMAIN AGE will give you its linking profile as well (the backlinks established, page rank, etc). Giving you an edge in GOOGLE ranks when you are the owner of an old domain. So buying an old domain is good for SEO so far…

But, there are those OLD domains that carry POTENTIAL problems. Especially, those OLD DOMAINS that was, unless you know it, was used illegally and illegitimately before. So, buying an old domain can be more of a problem than an asset in page ranking. 

So what should you do if you are still planning to buy an old domain?

Simple, you need to check its history and make sure that it carries all the good things for SEO and not those potential problems that might give you. 

My advice?

I think it’s still better that you start your site from scratch. Buying your own NEW domain. Though the first months would really be difficult and you will never see your website on the first page results, doing extensive link building and quality content will give you a fair results in no later than a year.

This is my belief and NOT my STAND. Kindly give me your thoughts about it.

Choosing Your Domain Extension: Why .COM?

This is a post I posted way back when I was a forum administrator for a webmasters forum.  

Choosing a domain extension used to be easy and fast. But with all the domain extensions that you can select, it gets harder to choose. Sure you can just go and register your company name as your domain name, but what about the extension? Which one should you select?

In this short post, I will give some fair amount of idea on why is it that a .COM extension is very much preferable than other domain extension.

Gone are the Days when .COM and .NET are the only Option

Obviously, a .COM extension remains the default option as well as .NET when choosing an extension. But what happens when some other domain is parked there? Should you think of another domain name and pursue the .COM extension? Or settle for the other extensions such as .BIZ, .NET, .INFO, etc.?

.COMmercial is STILL the Must-have

If someone had gotten first with the .COM option, then it would be better that you change your domain name and still pursue the .COM option. Why? Well, two reasons:

FIRST: that is what people are used to when typing a web address. Also, when you switch to another extension such as .BIZ or .NET, chances are, your site visitors, when they want to revisit your site, will end up typing .COM, thus, directing them to your competitor’s site.

SECOND: simply because .COM are the kind of results returned by GOOGLE.

NOTE: .COM is highly recommended for those website that are more on sales or those that are into the internet to make profit or for commercial use. (affiliates, etc.) Well, I am not discouraging you from other extension, but if your domain is available for .COM, then grab it. Unless, your website is designed not for making sales or profit, like a foundation, academic, etc., you can select the extensions below.

Also, getting your domain with a local extension can boost your page ranking in local search results. So if your server is, say, in Canada, then it makes sense to get one with a domain.ca as one your website. It will give you more boosts in penetrating your local market rather than competing worldwide, like in US for example.

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These are some of the other commonly used extensions that you can choose:

.ORG – represents the word ORGANIZATION and this is primarily used by non-profit organization and trade groups
.BIZ – is usually use for small business web store and sites
.INFO – more like a resource site where information can be obtained for use. 
.MOBI – for credible resource Web sites that is usually built for easy viewing of files or on mobile devices.
.TV – is for rich multi-media websites and commonly used by the media and entertainment industry.
.NAME – specifically designed for personal use. It is like your own personal email address that display photos and personal information of a certain person

Other extensions include the abbreviation of the server’s country such as:

.CH for China
.TW for Taiwan
.US for United States
.PH for Philippines
.IS for Israel .AM for Armenia
…and many, many others.