What is the optimum way to use your newly acquired domain?

The “Domains for linklove” trilogy:

• SEO and domains
• Buying domains
• Using the new domain (this one)

Once you have an agreement with the current owner to take over his domain you can’t just change owner and content all of a sudden. Search engines like Google know about “buying domains for linklove” and want to demotivate people from using this trick.

Google is a certified .com and .net registrar, so they can do unlimited whois lookups. This way they track all changes in the whois records and see owner and dns server changes. If Google tracks changes in other TLD’s (top level domains like .info) is unknown to me, but wherever they can, they probably will.

Before the domain is totally yours you have to change a couple of things. To make sure Google doesn’t raise red flags, don’t do them all at once. Keep some time between them and if possible change the owner after everything is done.

4 steps to take

• Change the content of the website
• Change the server location (IP) of the domain
• Change the name servers
• Change the owner information

Once the domain is yours and the linklove is still there you can do many things with it. Here are some examples:

• 301-redirect the domain to your other website and have double the love.
• Put up a new site with your own products or affilliate links
• Sell the 301 linklove to the highest bidder or use it for your SEO customers. Keep the ownership of the domain so you can retract the love once they stop paying.

As you see there is alot that can be achieved by buying existing domains. The only hard part is negotiating the right price.

How do you find and buy the right domain?

The “Domains for linklove” trilogy:

• SEO and domains
• Buying domains (this one)
• Using the new domain

The best domains to buy are ones that are valuable but aren’t seen as such by the current owner. All domains you can buy fall under one of the following categories.

• New domains (don’t buy these purely for SEO, because they have no authority yet)
• Deleted domains (old link value is devalued to almost nothing if search engines detect it)
• Domains about to expire (some say domains in the redemption period lose linkvalue, but I haven’t seen enough proof yet to support this)
• Registered but unused domains (always cheaper than used ones, but do they have authority?)
• Domains containing a website (most likely to have some SEO value, but do the current owners see that too)

As you see new and deleted domains are probably less usefull for SEO, so I’ll skip those. But here are ways to obtain the other three options.

Domains about to expire
Domains that are about to be deleted can be found by looking at the whois data on a domain. Some sites alow you to search for expired domains or domains in the redemption period.

See this example for expiring domains containing “links” and try to find your own domains. The only rule is: “Be the first to register the domain as soon as it is deleted”. If you are able to place your new website (or a copy of the old one you snatched from archive.org) before the spider bot passes, search engines will probably let you keep all existing linkpoints. This way of obtaining the domain costs you nothing more than the yearly registration fee.

Registered but unused domains
More than half of all domains registered aren’t used as the main domain for a website. They can be extra domains pointing to the same website or unused domains with nothing more than a holding page. For unused domains there are several brokers willing to auction or sell the domains.

Brokers like SEDO allow you to search their database and give extra information about link value. Most domains sold via SEDO are valued far too high, but sometimes an opportunity knocks on your door. Igoldrush gives advise how to value a domain.

Unused domains can also be found via search engines. A query like “this domain is for sale” inurl:mortgage gives you available mortgage domains.

You can also include “under construction” and “placeholder” in the query. Anything that is a telltale sign of default placeholders for unused domains. When people are already selling the domain it is probably more expensive then when the domain only contains a placeholder or temporary website.

Domains containing a website
Domains most likely to have authority already contain websites. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t for sale. Be the first to make an offer and you could get it cheap.

• When someone discontinues a website they probably don’t realize what they’re throwing away. Keep your eyes and ears open for businesses discontinuing or filing bankruptcy, etc.
• Look in the serps (search engine result pages) on topic related terms for websites that rank high but don’t seem to convert to high earnings and offer to buy the website.
• And if you have alot of money buy your competitors 

Always calculate how much effort (time and money) it would cost you to build the same authority as the website you’re buying. This effort can be seen as the real worth of the domain. Never tell the seller of the domain what you’re buying it for.

After you bought the domain you need to be carefull how you change the content to your own or redirect to your own website. In the next post I will try to elaborate more on this.

Next step: Taking over the domain.

What makes a good SEO domain?

The “Domains for linklove” trilogy:

• SEO and domains (this one)
• Buying domains
• Using the new domain

Search engines like Google measure multiple types of authority. A domain can have both general authority and topic specific authority.

What search engines measure and give weight to might differ per engine and changes all the time. The following things are based on the opinions of other SEO’s and to a certain degree they are backed by my personal experiences. I just haven’t seen enough proof to agree to all of them.

General authority is given to:

• Older domain registration dates (use domaintools.com)
• Older first indexed dates (the first time the search engine indexed them) (use archive.org)
• Older links to pages on the domain (use Y! Linkdomain and archive.org)
• More links to pages on the domain (use Y! Linkdomain)
• More linkpoints to pages on the domain (use pagerank as indicator)
• Relations to other sites with general authority:
  • Links from same domains/pages/paragraphs as these authorities (use Y! Linkdomain)
  • Links from the authorities themselves (use Y! Linkdomain)
• Links from specific page areas and types of content

More specific authority is exactly the same as general authority with the addition of relevance to a topic. So besides the points above you should consider:

• Has the domain or URL always held a specific topic and language or was it used for a different topic earlier? (use archive.org)
• Older and more links (and linkpoints) on a topic (use Y! Linkdomain)
• Relations to other sites with topic specific authority:
• Links from same domains/pages/paragraphs as these authorities (use Y! Linkdomain)
• Links from the authorities themselves (use Y! Linkdomain)
• Links from topic specific pages (make sure the links contain or are near text that is topic related)

To summarize it all, here are some points that make a domain good for SEO.

A good SEO domain has authority, is easy to link to and contains searchterms.

• An older domain that has already build linklove is better than one that hasn’t.
• A domain that exactly matches or contains the keyword is better.
• Some search engines prefer hyphenated names when the domain contains multiple words.
• A domain in the local TLD of the country you want to rank in is better.
• A short domain is easier to type and remember (and easier to link to).
• Prevent domains with possible misspellings, otherwise register all misspellings. 

Tomorrow I’ll help you to find these good domains.

The next step: Buying domains