I'm thinking about buying a competitor and 301 redirecting? How much SEO value?
-
I'm thinking about buying a competitor and 301 redirecting their site to mine. The high level stats are as follows. My site has a DA of 46 and the homepage has a PA of 55. 375 root domains, 170,000 links. The site sells millions of dollars worth of product each year. The competitor (who I had never heard of) has a DA of 58 and a homepage PA of 64. They have 634 root domains and 260,000 links. They aren't selling much of anything (less than 100,000 per year). We might be able to operate their site but I'm concerned about maintaining 2 platforms. My question is about the value of buying this site and 301 redirecting it to my site. Would this create long term SEO value or not? Any examples that have been documented are greatly appreciated.
-
I would buy it and keep it as a separate site. If he's buying links it might get penalized eventually so i would look to see how shady the links are and anchor text percentages before buying and ask to see their GA account so you can see if their traffic has remained strong.
301'ing a site that has been doing grey hat link building to your white hat site, i probably wouldn't do that.
-
Well in the first case with my competitor that 301'd to a new site, absolutely, that was almost a year ago, and they are still sittin' just fine.
It does sound like a good buy, since your site is less powerful, but then again, it would depend on the link profile of the sites in question.
If you have a really clean profile, and they have a messy one, you might lose some value of having your site completely "virgin" if you will, to any spam.
Also, even though they have a higher DA, do they actually rank higher than you for any phrases?
If so, how many, and how valueable are they?
-
We rank first page for nearly every phrase we want. However, competitors of ours that have been actively buying links are still being rewarded and it has hurt us a little in the last year. We used to be 2-5 for our key phrases. Now we are more like 3-7 for hundreds of phrases. Is there any evidence that buying a domain with a lot of relevant backlinks and redirecting has created long term value?
-
I have a competitor that bought a site that we had the chance to buy, and they jumped to the top of the search engines (keyword difficulty of 55), and the results were overnight.
In their case they bought a brand new domain, and 301 redirected the site to the new domain.
On the other hand, Another company of mine has a 301 redirect from another site, and we still struggle to rank....
How well are you ranking without the 301?
If it is the difference between average spot 10's for your target keywords, and average spot of 1-5, then you should probably jump all over it...
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Link building | SEO Agency Cardiff
Hello, we have been link-building to the home page for some time now. We believe that we have better on-page SEO than some of our direct competitors. We want to rank for “SEO Agency Cardiff,” but despite building backlinks, building Nap, and writing content marketing, it will not get onto the first page of Google. Despite hundreds of hours spent on it, and all SEO reports saying we are better than some of the companies on there, are there suggestions as to what our agency could be missing? We would be grateful for any SEO advice, as we cant get it onto the first page of Google, despite hundreds of hours, trying get on Google for this keyword "SEO agency Cardiff".
Link Building | | sarahwalsh0 -
301 passing authority?
Does anyone have experience of 301's in connection with SEO or more specifically passing authority? Recently purchased a small business that had three small websites. My main concern is all three websites do rank for some fairly important key phrases, but there is very little direct overlap. I was hoping by using 301's I would be able to refocus the authority to get the main site ranking.
Link Building | | seoman100 -
How much Domain Authority is enough?
I will clean my backlinks removing those with low DA and keeping medium and high DA. Since which number of Domain Authority is good to focus my efforts? Thanks!
Link Building | | estebanseo1 -
Any benefits to having Wikipedia links now they are 'no-followed' (apart from traffic and natural link prof.)
I see that Wikipedia outbound links are all no-followed, is there any benefit (aside from the traffic) for having links here now ? For example is their co-citation and co-occurance benefits. I know there is without the links since from seeing previous Moz content about this saying Google getting good at connecting brand/s and topic mentions on a page (without any links) so appreciate Wikipedia is still good for that sort of thing. And a no-followed link is obviously good for the potential traffic. But is there any additional SEO benefit to having a no followed link on a wikipedia entry/stub too ? (aside from its contribution to your no-followed links which in turn contribute to a natural looking link profile) Cheers Dan
Link Building | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
A competitor is posting to all these blogs!
One of my competitors is posting on blogs like this getting free back links. http://50fiftyclothing.com/blog1/
Link Building | | CLTMichael
http://www.get-rid-of-bellyfat.org/tag/disease/ http://www.medicalinfo101.com/ He is killing the SERP, but how am I suppose to compete when google is rewarding him with great rankings?0 -
Where should I be focusing SEO efforts first?
Hi everyone, I am a digital marketing intern at a small marketing business. They have a really horrible, 1990's ish website which I am currently working with them on a plan to completely redo within a few months. Until then I am fixing some issues on their current site which includes SEOing their current content that will be moved to the new site. They have a ton of issues which include, but are not limited to, missing meta descriptions and title tags, no official keywords incorporated into their content, no analytics or tracking of keywords, a poor use of social media, and duplicate content. My plan was to fix all these issues first, then when the site relaunches really start focusing on the more advanced bits (which include link building). The previous intern spent 99% of his time posting on forums building "backlinks". I've been going through his posts and saw he posted on mainly marketing forums on topics but never included any type of link back to the site in his posts or on his forum profile (his reasoning was he wanted to gain a reputation with the forum first so the admin would not delete his posts or so he'd be able to put a link in his signature). He and the owner of the business say that this is the best and most effective way to help SEO and the owner is questioning whether or not I concentrate on that instead of the other issues. So what do you think? Do you think I should be fixing all these issues first and waiting until the site relaunches to concentrate on forum backlinking? Or do you think it would be more effective to just focus on my energies on forum backlinking? Also - the previous intern also told the owner that Wordtracker was a poor investment and is not useful. I have always thought that was sort of an industry standard. Do you think he's right? If so could you recommend something else? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks 🙂
Link Building | | Grow0 -
301 Redirect Domains with old links
I came across a nice discovery of about 20 old domain names that each have many root domains and a bit of DA. I want to know the best way to utilize them without any type of penalty. Currently, (as of an hour ago) I am 301 redirecting all of them to the most relative pages on a single domain. Will i get the majority of the link juice from the domains? I'm excited to see what will happen here. Thanks in advance, Daniel
Link Building | | seoninja200 -
The Value of Off-Topic Guest Posts
Hi Mozzers! So the dilemma I am facing right now is getting links to deep pages on our site. One possible idea is guest posting on blogs with good domain and page authority. However, what if the blogs have good domain and page authority but they are off-topic or not really related to your site's main topic. How much will these links be devalued and could this hurt you by appearing manipulative? Thanks!
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0