Should I buy this website ?

[weddinginvitationuk.co.uk]

Hi Folks,

I have been looking to set up a niche craft site (related products and same suppliers to what I already sell) and start from scratch with a new domain, I have done the key search term research on wordtracker and there are a couple of domains that in my experience would be OK.

In my research however, I have found business for sale which is basically a shell of what I am trying to set up, it has a website (not ecommerce) which has a Google page rank of 1 and is ranked very poorly for the key search terms I wanted to rank for (page 5 and page 13)

I have been told that new websites can be "Sandboxed" for up to 1 year so is it better to buy the exisitng website/domain and have it rewritten or should I start from scratch ?

I would appreciate your thoughts

[SFD]

I think it depends what the cost of the existing website is.

I would opt for rewriting the established website but starting a new website wouldn't be the end of the world and you can use PPC to start generating traffic straight away.

[UKSEOAgency]

Hi,

Without further details on many aspects, the current websites age, price etc its very hard to give you any solid advice. If you wish to keep these things off the public forum please feel free to pm you and i will be happy to advise.

Kind Regards

Nathan

[fisicx]

The longer a site is estasblised the more trust you will build up with google. There might be a bit of a glitch during the transfer/rebuild but the magic figure is the date when the site was first registered. It will nearly always triumph over a new site.

You mention PR1 - forget it. It means nothing and in any case the PR number applies to a single page not the whole site.

[weddinginvitationuk.co.uk]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick replies, for obvious reasons I don't want to give to much away, basically the business format at the moment is that it attends consumer shows and does OK - the ecommerce element has never been explored.

I am only interested in the website option and the seller has indicated that they would want around £500 - £1000 for this . In effect all I would buying in a domain name that is about 2 years old and is in Google

The question being if I had the site rewritten as an all singing all dancing ecommerce site how much quicker would this turnaround (move up the rankings) than if I started from scratch? - the exisitng site basically has 16 backlinks, and is more a diary of shows and a few new products than anything else

I appreciate this is a bit "how long is a piece of string" but I have been sandboxed before on a site, and wanted to move things along a bit on this project

[fisicx]

A new ecommerce site on an existing domain could (if the content is top notch) get indexed and ranked fairly fast. On the other hand, if you are just flogging the same stuff already found on umpteen other sites then there is no incentive for google to even visit.

I'd still work on 6-12 months to get fully indexed and ranked.

[quikshop]

Unless the existing website is already well indexed on Google and has a domain name you really want, I would go for setting up your own online presence with your own domain name.

Yes it can take a while to get a brand new website indexed on Google, but as long as your Ecommerce software is good enough then you should see fairly quick progress getting listed for searches on product-specific and less generic search terms.

[darren atkinson]

Hi

My choice would be to buy the 2 year old domain, making sure it stays live (with relevant content on it) at all times, then develop your new site.

Make a decision on whether you prefer a new domain name or could use the 2 year old one. If you are happy with the old domain simply launch your newsite on it, otherwise launch on a brand new domain and 301 the 2 year old domain to the new one.

As long as the content on old and new is related the new domain will inherit the aging benefits of the old one.

With the old one only having a few backlinks the boost to the new one will not be massive, however if you carry on building links and marketing after launch things should start moving quicker than begining from scratch with a brand new domain.

In my opinion £500 for the old site is a good price.

Hope this helps,

Darren

[DesignsOnline]

You ned to get someone to carefully check the existing links to this website.
If there are a lot of links to it from decent websites then for the established links and the domain name alone it is well worth the money.

You need to check where the links point to on this website, for example if the links all just point to the domain: http://www.xxxx.com (<- just for example) then they are great links and the changes to the website structure wont effect them.

However on the other hand if the links point to a specific page such as http://www.xxxx.com/page-keyword.php if you dont have that page on the website after you have re-written it the link will be lost or wasted. So you would have to set up redirects for the links to point them either to the coresponding new page, or just to the homepage.

If you need more help then let us know,
Warm Regards,
Joe

[edmondscommerce]

In my experience google eats up new domains really quickly these days if you apply a few simple techniques so the sandbox thing really isn't something to be afraid of any more.

If that's the only reason to buy this old domain for £500 then it seems to me its a bit over priced!