Buying a Top Ranking Website

[MartinH]

Say you had a site that was 1 year old and was currently ranking on page 2 for the usual competitive insurance terms such as “car insurance” etc. A site which is ranking in the top 3 for the same terms has come up for sale and you could be looking at the thought of having two sites in the top 10, giving you more chances to grab the customer. The top 3 site is well established and over 6 years old. Would you:

a) buy the site?


or


b) would you use the money instead to promote your own site and get it into the top 3?


Look forward to your responses guys.

 

[An Oasis]

I'd do bugger all until I knew why the site ranked. Provide some more details and the topic might get interesting.

 

Say you had a site that was 1 year old and was currently ranking on page 2 for the usual competitive insurance terms such as "car insurance" etc. A site which is ranking in the top 3 for the same terms has come up for sale and you could be looking at the thought of having two sites in the top 10, giving you more chances to grab the customer. The top 3 site is well established and over 6 years old. Would you:

a) buy the site?


or


b) would you use the money instead to promote your own site and get it into the top 3?


Look forward to your responses guys.

OASIS is right..

Analyse it to death before doing anything.

Look at all of the links and view the sites the links are coming from.
How relevant are those sites, and how much traffic do those sites come from

Get a break down of traffic fromm the owner..preferably from something like analytics, so at least there is a common basis for understanding what it means.
So how much traffic is repeat(direct), from search engines and for what phrases, from other referrin sites and so on. The offer for sale gives you a great opportunity to view inside what you want to achieve

Discover whether the owner has satellite sites used for linking and traffic, eg pages on web2 properties, and ensure they are included in the deal if that is where the links are coming from....I have heard of scams like this, where the outlying sites that are giving the ranking are owned by the same party, and once the deal is done, the owner flips the links over to another new site of his mking!!

In the end....

If what is driving that position is good quality links from good sites, then take an estimate of how much it would cost and how long it would take to reproduce them... If the price is in hundreds or low thousand for expensive keyword ranking, its a steal, so do it . that is the "zero basing" view.

The other way to look at this is purely on an "investment view"..
What is the traffic worth ...taking a sensible view of likely conversionof that traffic to sales, and the profit on each sale... If the payback period from that calculation is measured in months, then again, it is a good investment.

 

[MartinH]

Thanks for that info admagic. I would defintely look to get more information from the owner before going further but i just thought i'd ask. Here's a bit more information: the site gets about 500 visitors daily, is listed in all the top direcotires (yahoo, dmoz, etc), has apprx. 3000 backlinks and the owner is looking for about 50k. This investment could probably be made back within 12 months if the traffic stayed at a similar level. Although the conversion rate could be improved as currently the site doesn't target making a sale but is more aimed at using ads/banners for revenue.

The original site has about 1500 backlinks and you could probably get a similar amount of links quickly but it could take 6-12 months or longer for them to take effect in the serps.

Is that enough info or would you like more?

 

[JustOneUK]

re: Backlinks - are they going to be there AFTER you buy the site?
re: traffic - where is it mostly coming from?

 

[MartinH]

Backlinks - owner says only some of the directory ones are paid, rest were free, with some link exchages.

Traffic - about 80% from natural search on Google for various terms, 10% PPC and rest from Yahoo/MSN and other SE.

anything else guys?

 

[WebPageOne-Solutions]

I would Ask to see evidence of the conversion rates i.e sales generated from the online presence.

50k for a website is quite a lot of money, 50k for a successful online business is different.

If you already have a well designed website, which is capable of converting visitors into customers, you would spend considerable less the 50k to obtain high ranking search engine positions.

Be advised that even a high level of hits/visitors does not always equal the same ratio in conversion rates.

Good Luck

 

[Astaroth]

I would be exceptionally concerned that a top 3 ranked site for "car insurance" only received 500 visitors a day and £50k is a tiny amount to pay for such ranking on the term - insurers are giving £100+ for affiliate sales at the moment and spending silly money on SEO etc.

Personally I would have a lot of alarm bells ringing that things arent really adding up and would certainly want to ensure that there are no black book techniques being used for a short term gain to sell quick and then it will disappear into obscurity once the issues are spotted.

 

[sabian1982]

You could also consider renting it out for a set monthly fee - that way you generate in income whilst keeping the site....

 

[I, Brian]

Yep, very good points. If we're talking insurance keywords then there's a very good chance the top ranking site is either buying links, or else has other net assets it's leveraging to provide links.

So thoroughly ensure you research as to why the site is ranking first!

Also remember that rankings are never guaranteed - today page one could be tomorrow's page 3 - and vice versa.

 

[cmcridland]

I'd be very careful before buying the site. 500 visitors per day really isn't that great considering the price and with 80% of traffic coming from Google all it needs is for Google to decide that the site is no longer worthy of its high position and you'll be left with a worthless site.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

What about the main side, is it making profits and how much, what do the last few years accounts show, Why is he selling, does he have any staff and would you need them, would you run the two compnies seperatly or combined, A lot of people would be very happy to have 500 people in their shop each day: what % are buyers and what % likely to be return / repeate customers next year.

 

Thanks for that info admagic. I would defintely look to get more information from the owner before going further but i just thought i'd ask. Here's a bit more information: the site gets about 500 visitors daily, is listed in all the top direcotires (yahoo, dmoz, etc), has apprx. 3000 backlinks and the owner is looking for about 50k. This investment could probably be made back within 12 months if the traffic stayed at a similar level. Although the conversion rate could be improved as currently the site doesn't target making a sale but is more aimed at using ads/banners for revenue.

The original site has about 1500 backlinks and you could probably get a similar amount of links quickly but it could take 6-12 months or longer for them to take effect in the serps.

Is that enough info or would you like more?

Thats very low traffic for a site in the top 3 in a high competition area.?

Earl

 

[JustOneUK]

Hi again Martin,

I'm not sure there is really an answer for you one way or another (after all Sift purchased this place for a cool £¼M)

If you work on your own site ...50K can go a long way in the right hands however ultimately it's hard to draw a conclusion without seeing the site/knowing the details.

I think the bottom line is to ask someone to investigate the site for you. If it's not a well known highstreet brand (ie: naturally builds links and has high exposure) then I don't see why it can't theoretically be 'copied', you would also need guarantess that the seller won't suddenly become your competition.

50K is a fair amount to part with for a website however in terms of a business it's pretty cheap, as you say you can make the money back in 12 months all being well.

Q's: You mentioned that 10% comes from PPC - what is the cost per month for that? why do it if it's already top 3? what makes you think you can make the site convert better?

You also take into consideration the downside/worst case scenario...what happens if it makes less.. can you cover/carry the loss, and what about long term investment if you do buy the site - it may slide away into oblivion if you don't have a plan to support it's current SERPs position.

Going back to your original question I would consider buying it all things being in place.... 500 hits/day is definately a bit worrying though if it really is a top keyword.. I can get more than that for my VERY empty jokes website that ranks nowhere in the SERPs.:|


just some thoughts
James.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

James

He said 500 visitors a day not hits, there is a massive difference

 

James

He said 500 visitors a day not hits, there is a massive difference

I took it he meant visitors ,Still very low for a top rank site in a competative area 5,000 a day would be a more reasonable figure.


Earl

 

[JustOneUK]

I took it he meant visitors

I did mean visitors

Thanks for picking me up on that Chris - and thanks for mindreading me Earl, I feel all violated, kinda dirty and abused