In today’s Website Shopping Cart Skinny, we look at some of the things to look out for when you are out shopping for a used domain.
Purchasing used or pre-owned domains is slowly gaining popularity. There are certain advantages to purchasing a pre-owned domain (in addition to signing up with a secure ecommerce shopping cart) that could help you get a head start when it comes to ranking on major search engines.
Start Early
You do not have to target only expired domains. Chances are, you may not be the only one targeting a particular domain name. What you can do is put that domain name on an alert or backorder list. Most domain vendors provide such services. You will be notified as soon as the domain name becomes available. Of course you would have to pay a bit extra for the service but a few dollars more for a good domain with “perks” is fruitful investment.
What To Look Out For
The “perks” mentioned earlier are links and PR (Page Rank) that could come with a domain that has been around a few years. Here’s a little shopping cart help: you can easily check the PR and the number of inbound links a domain has by installing tools like the SEO for Firefox extension.
Many SEO experts would tell you to choose number of links over PR (when considering domains) and we’d have to agree with that, since Google themselves have downplayed the importance of PR among the over 200 factors it uses to rank a site.
Certainly, a site which has been around for a few years would likely have quite a few pages and those pages would probably have links to them. So it would be a good idea to find out exactly what those pages are so that you can recreate the exact URLs and take advantage of the available links when the domain becomes available. You can do this by tapping into Google’s cache: Just Google “site:insertdomainhere.com”. That should return a list of pages which the Big G has indexed.
Check For Skeletons In The Closet
It doesn’t get any worse than a blacklisted domain. So to avoid any future heartache, use the Whois link that’s included with the SEO for Firefox tool or you can go directly to www.whois.net, key in the domain and see what comes up. While you’re at it, take a peek at how old the domain is. Google likes older domains and tends to give them more authority. Preferably, try to get a site that’s more than 2 years old.
Final Words
It’s not a must to go out and purchase a used domain. It’s just an alternative that we think you should consider. Some have even turned purchasing and selling used domains into a lucrative business, but it’s a bit risky.
Well, that’s all for this installment of Website Shopping Cart Skinny. As usual, we’d love to hear from you so do leave a comment or two.
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