Hi,
I have come across a domain that has expired and corresponding website is listed on the 5th page for a certain keyword .The domain is 3 years old .
Should I buy that domain ?
Thanks and Regards,
Rohit Nirale
It’s not the domain that determines placement on Google, but the website itself. Are you talking about a website or a domain name?
If you buy the domain you wont necessarily have the website. It may be hosted somewhere else. So you will have to check that. Do a whois look up on the domain name.
Thank you all for your replies .
It is a website and when I put in that keyword in the google adwords keyword tool , it has 13,600,000 global monthly searches.
When I put that same keyword in google search the website comes in on the 5th page.
The website has not been updated for 3 years.Last year the website was on the 2nd page.
The domain for that website is about to expire.If it expires , should I buy that domain and then start a brand new website ?
Thanks and Regards
Rohit
You can buy this domain as you said that this site has good SERP, so its good to buy an existing domain instead of purchasing new domain !!
Listen to that advice above…
Just because you are purchasing the domain name doesn’t mean after building a new website that it will hold its position in the SERP’s. You may still be receiving the “link juice” for that domain name, but if the website doesn’t come with the domain and starts returning 404 error codes to Google’s crawlers you will lose ranking pretty quickly.
If you build a site that is based around the same keyword and have it ready once the domain expires and you renew it, you may get lucky and could possibly increase your ranking with the fresh content.
I guess, the best way I can say this is, don’t expect to hold your current ranking in the SERP’s if you are just purchasing a domain name that has been around awhile without the current website.
$10 to register the domain is basically nothing. Go for it, but make sure you rebuild at least a minimal site on the same subject and keywords, using the same page URLs that the old owner used for it. That way you stand a chance to maintain some search engine rankings. Put some ads on it, and hopefully you’ll gain your money back. Either that, or try to resell it.
so do u think a keyword with those many global searches is worth it ?
Depends on the keyword and what you’re intentions are with the website…
Are you just doing a blog? eCommerce?? Corporate website??
If you have a website and content that is worth receiving visits as well as those visitors returning, then you will be successful.
it will be a blog
What is the does the site currently act as?
If you buy the domain and change the site more than likely you will see a huge change. More than likely a negative effect. The domain doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the rank in Google. Though it’s nice to have a domain like cars.com or something simple like that. Those are worth a lot. But just because the site ranks high doesn’t mean the domain name is valuable.
Its an entertainment site .
My thinking is (please correct me if I am wrong) , instead of buying a new domain and building a blog with it , I might get a headstart with this domain.
My thinking is (please correct me if I am wrong) , instead of buying a new domain and building a blog with it , I might get a headstart with this domain.
Unless you continue, even with a blog, building quite closely on the same theme that the site currently has, IMHO you’re not getting a head start, you’re just getting confusion.
Visitors from sites linking to you will not find what they think they were going to get. The search engines probably have ways to determine situations when many links containing say sports related keywords point to unrelated information pages, and disregard or diminish the value of those links. Even if you don’t lose the rankings, the traffic you’ll get would be worthless to you.
You might get a head start at first. But the search engines will probably recognize pretty quickly that its a completely different page and will index your site and if it doesn’t have the same great layout (I’m assuming the old site was pretty well built if it ranks high on Google) and it doesn’t have good content then it’ll definitely drop in rank.
If the domain name suits your topic and there is not much competition, I suggest you buy it. You can always optimize afterwards.
I suppose that domain name was developed for differnt keywords then yours and that is not good option for you at all.
But if you are buying domain name with web site - that could be good idea. Just check using various SEO tools if PR is false or true.
if there is no additional cost, you may get this domain. At least, there is no harm. But if you need pay more than that for a new domain, it may be not worth.