Tutorial: How to Buy a Quality, Page-Ranked Dropped Domain

Digital Pointers:​

• Do you wonder exactly what to look for when buying a dropped domain?
• Ever wonder what "fake PR" means?
• Do you want to know what makes a PR "valid"?
• Do you worry about getting scammed or cheated when buying domains?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above, you've come to the right place. I'm hoping to create Digital Point's best tutorial on how to buy quality Page-Ranked domains...but I need your help! I'll show you what I've got so far...please leave your feedback/tips/tricks/etc.

How to Buy a Quality, Page-Ranked Dropped Domain​

1. Registration
   
   • Where is the domain registered?
     - It costs a good deal of money to transfer between different hosting companies (i.e. Namecheap to GoDaddy), so make sure you have an account with the company where the domain is currently parked.

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   • When does it expire?
     - If it's right around the corner, you'll have to consider that cost.

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2. Page Rank
   
   • What's its PR?
     - What the seller claims is the current PR might not be correct. Double check with iWebTools' Page Rank Checker Tool

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   • Is the PR valid?
     - The only way to verify if the PR is valid is if it's cached in Google. Test if it's cached by entering "info:www.mydomain.com" (without the " ") in a Google search. If a result is returned, the PR is valid. If there is no result returned, it might still have that PR, but there's no way to verify it. Verified=Valid.

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   • Is it fake?
     - Fake PR occurs when a dishonest seller redirects the domain to another website with different PR. Instead of seeing the PR of the domain you're researching, it would show the PR of the site it's been redirected to. Check to see if the domain is redirected with this tool: http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank.html If the domain is redirected, avoid it at all costs, and consider reporting the seller.

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3. Backlinks
   
   • How many backlinks does it have?
     - Check with Yahoo's backlink checker tool: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com. First-time users will have to register.

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   • How many different domains do the backlinks come from?
     - The more diversified the backlink profile, the better. If you have hundreds of backlinks, but they all come from one domain, your domain will be less likely to hold its PR.

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   • Do the backlinks come from Page-Ranked sites?
     - Consider looking at how many of the backlinks originate from Page Ranked sites, and what their Page Rank is. The more Page-Ranked backlinks to the domain, the better.

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   • Are the backlinks still there?
     - Sometimes when you're exploring backlinks in Yahoo's Site Explorer, you'll find that some of the backlinks have been removed, or are from broken pages. Make sure the majority of your backlinks are still current. This research can take time, but it's worth it.

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4. Domain Age
   
   • How old is the domain?
     - The older, the better. Google generally considers old domains to be credible and they have a better chance of maintaining their PR.

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5. Other Factors
   
   • What's the search volume for the domain?
     - High search traffic is great for any domain.

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   • What is the domain's traffic?
     - Free traffic never hurts, right? Throw some adsense on it and maybe make some easy money.

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Good PR and Domain Tools:

http://www.iwebtool.com/tools/
http://www.smartpagerank.com/


Was this tutorial helpful for you? What am I missing? Please post suggestions and feedback below...I'd really love to hear from you. Thanks!

- NewIQ
My SEO Blog


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This was really helpful, thanks! I bought a domain that lost it's PR, but it was my fault...it had almost no backlinks.

 

Great tutorial, I will vote very helpful.

 

Great tutorial! I wanted to learn more about most of the points you listed.

 

Thanks for all of your feedback and voting! Are there things I'm forgetting? What could make it better?

 

you need to post similar content to hold it, use archive.org

 

That's interesting. I assume you'd do that so the inbound links are from sites relevant to the content on the blog? I hadn't thought of that.

Make sure if you're scraping content you do it on a separate server though, if you have other domains, you wouldn't want to taint them if penalized.

 

How to know this for dropped domains

Gr8 guide.

 

The only way I can think of is to ask them to send analytics reports...but those aren't always available. I know there are other tools out there, but I don't know them.

Does anybody else?