Urgent Website Advice Please

[Eddie1974]

Evening

An hour ago, i recieved an email from a competitor in my trade.

I apologise for being cagey, but ive been told to keep this under wraps, so i cant give all the details.

This guys website is no1 on page1 of google for specific keywords in my trade. He wants to downsize (he owns several firms) and has offered me 1st refusal on the domain name and site.

Ive got a meeting with him at 10am tomorrow, and its a 1st come 1st served offer, so i need some really urgent advice as ive never done this before....and i dont want to lose out by letting someone else buy it!

Are there any burning questions i need to ask?

Also whats the best way for me to find out exactly how many searches he gets per month (or what else should i be looking for).

Again sorry for not giving all the info but thats part of the deal he offered me but I dont want to get my fingers burnt buying a duff site!

CAN YOU HELP.

 

[ADS-MARKETING]

I would ask for a Google Analytics report of the traffic to the site for the last twelve months.

Why is he downsizing? Quite an important question!

 

[J-Wholesale]

We had a similar contact from a small business a year ago. They were selling their site and wanted us to make an offer. They weren't really a competitor of ours, more a one man shop, but in terms of Google position, they were number 2 and 3 for a couple of very strong phrases, so we were interested.

We asked to see raw log files for the past year, and as they were also selling their customer database, we asked for a breakdown (numbers only), of customers who had placed an order (as opposed to opened an account) in the past year.

We thought we were being reasonable, considering they were looking for quite a lot for the site, but we never heard back from them, and their site and business remains unsold, sitting idle, and slipping in the rankings. The fact that they never even got back to us was suggestive that the business might have been over valued - something the log files and database figures would show.

The bottom line here is you need the log files. Without the raw log files (not some excel spreadsheet they put together themselves), you can't believe a word they tell you.

 

[Eddie1974]

Thanks for the tips, im going to email those points off to him tonight so he knows what to expect in the morning.

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Just remember this, when the seller is pushing you for an immediate answer and suggesting that you need to move quick or lose out... be suspicious.

If there genuinely is a lot of interest in his website/domain then he will not want to rush the sale. He will want to speak with all interested parties and play them off eachother to inflate the price. If he wants you to make a decision on the day, chances are that nobody else is that interested.

More speed less haste.

 

[WebU]

Make sure he owns the domains, & will transfer that ownership to you. Checking domain ownership, for your domain or anybody else's, is easy. For .co.uk and .org.uk just go to www.nominet.org.uk and enter the domain in the "Whois" query box." For other domains go to any site that offers a "whois lookup" : we usually use www.dnsstuff.com

 

[Clinton]

I manage a forum of people who purchase internet businesses on a regular basis and have considerable expertise in the due diligence process.

I'll touch on a few points here, but there's a lot, lot more than this to consider.

1. Don't worry too much about the domain name ownership - you'll use a good legal firm or escrow anyway and pay only on the domain (and site control) reaching you.

2. Not everybody has analytics, but almost everybody has log files. I say almost because not all companies have hosting that gives them log files and in the majority of cases hosts don't keep raw logs for more than 30 days.

3. You can analyse raw logs with several free programs out there, you'll find 123 Log Analyser etc much more illuminating than plugging the figures into Excel. I wrote this on understanding and analysing logs if you're interested.

4. Logs themselves reveal very little of the whole picture. What if he's getting millions of visitors but he's paying for them (and hasn't told you that he has massive PPC costs every month)? Or they are all from the wrong country? Or he hasn't filtered out spider visits and it's actually 9999 spiders and only one human?

5. Don't go by what you see as the #1 in Google. Google is doing personalised searches and since you've visited this site before they may show you this one as first but show me this site on page 100.

6. If you're buying the site get proper contracts drawn up to state, among other things, that he owns all design, copyright etc on the site and that all of it is transferring to you.

7. Never continue hosting the site at the current hosting. Always move it to a different host. I've written this on moving sites.

I don't do any due diligence work any more as...I can't be bothered, I'm sort of retired. But you could use the guides I've written at the previous links and there are people here who may be willing to talk business.

 

[Eddie1974]

Appreciate all the help!

Update..

Following our meeting, ive found out a bit more. Hopefully i can tick a few things off the tips you gave me.

He is downsizing as he is retiring. Family members are taking over the majority of his company, but no one knows enough about this area of the business, so its not something they want to continue with.

Ive been given the google analytics reports and the figures look good, but as before ive been told not to share this info yet, as ive not committed to buying it yet.

He does completely own the domain and has confirmed that it will be changed to my details once the sale is complete. He says that i can pay 50% upfront and he will change the ownership etc, then when im happy all is ok, i can pay the rest.

Clinton, we are not talking about a massive amount of money and so solictors are not needed for this i dont think. Ive known the guy for years and trust him.

He dosnt do ppc, hes site has been around for a long time and has built up a big following because of that (note, my site is only 4 months old - so has a long way to go to catch up to his figures!).

A fella within one of his companies created the site from scratch so again ive checked that he has full ownership.

Hes also throwing in a years hosting FOC, and he says that hes not had any problems with them, so i cant see any reason to change it yet.

I think i am going to go ahead with the purchase, and thanks again for all the advice.


I suppose my next question is 'should i keep his site as it is' or should i set it so it redirects to my site when someone types in his domain, so i get all the traffic?? Is that a good or bad idea?

 

[Clinton]

In a hurry now and will reply in more detail tomorrow, but there are good reasons to change nothing immediately on taking the site over. Don't even change WHOIS details.

 

[Clinton]

Normal service is resumed

I don't buy those 50% down payment deals. I don't see the sense in them. If you trust someone give them all the money in one clean transaction. If you don't know them that well use an escrow service - pay all the money into escrow, let escrow notify him of funds receipt, take control from him, change passwords, tell escrow to release funds. The 50% down is awkward and has the potential for a lot of grief.

When you take over a domain you normally change the registration details to reflect your name, address, phone number and email. But it's not something that's compulsory. Some people believe that Google devalues a site on noticing a change of registrant. It doesn't always happen, but it can happen in some circumstances. So it's safer to keep the reg details unchanged. The minimum you need to change is the registrant contact email as that controls further domain transfers, so do that.

The above applies to gTLDs. If it's a .co.uk or other domain under Nominet, don't take any chances - just change everything over. The risk with losing a UK ccTLD by having wrong owner details is greater than the possible risk from losing some SEO value.

Redirecting the site: You could use the .htaccess file to cause every URI on that domain to redirect to yours, but you'll soon find that the SEs stop sending that domain traffic as, to be fair, it doesn't now have the content on which it originally built its reputation. A better way to capitalise on what it's built is to leave all the content and gradually insert links to your main site, make recommendations within the content to locations on your main site or otherwise promote your main site. (For example, if you have a mailing list, you could insert a sign-up form)

I've always been excited to get my hands on a nice site. It's great fun. Enjoy!

 

[Clinton]

PS: Complete the deal quickly. You've provided no details in your OP but from your posts elsewhere on the forums it wasn't difficult figuring out the town you're in and your industry. Then using the local directory service you've recommended in one of you posts, it was a piece of cake working out your URL. From there it took a couple of steps to narrow down which of your competitors on Google page 1 owns "several firms" and is a family run business, particularly given that his site has "been around for a long time".

No, I'm not interested in contacting him, but just thought I'd point out for everyone else that even when you think you've given no information you could have disclosed too much

 

[PDC]

All sounds good.

Not an expert in this but I might tend to keep the site as is, re write anything there that needs to be changed for your business and obviously the contact information and see how you go. I would think having two well ranking sites with different content coming up in the search results would be more beneficial than just redirecting to your own site in the hope to raise its profile alone.