Kickstart Your Website Flipping Project with an Aged Domain

by Luke Moulton 33 Comments

Imagine, starting your website flipping project with a domain that already has age, has backlinks, is indexed by the search engines – and may even have accumulated PageRank! Buying an aged domain can potentially give you a leg up when building a website to sell.

So how do you discover aged domains to buy? There’s an app for that!

Noble Samurai have recently teamed up with DomainFace to build a powerful aged domain finding tool called Domain Samurai (aff). Domain Samurai is a free tool which will help you find new and aged domains based around a keyword. The DomainFace module is also capable of  provide extensive backlink analysis with the addition of a paid subscription.

Following is a walkthrough of how Domain Samurai can be used in conjunction with DomainFace to find aged domains.

Choose a Niche

Choose a niche

Glancing at the Flippa tag reports page, “hosting” is a popular niche for buyers on Flippa, so let’s start by searching for “hosting” related domains. After I’ve opened Domain Samurai and setup a new project, I enter my keyword “hosting” into the seed keyword box on the domains tab and click the Find Domains button, then I select the Aged Domains tab to view the results.

Domain Analysis (free version)

View domain backlink profile

Let’s take a look at CheapestDomainHosting.com. I’m interested in this domain because it’s a keyword domain (something someone would type into Google) which can help with search engine rankings for that particular search phrase.

While the free version of DomainFace only provides PageRank details, upgrading to the paid version (see below) provides extensive data.

Domain Analysis (paid version)

Domain backlink profile

The paid version of DomainFace provides plenty of useful data to help analyze the domain’s age and credentials. For the particular domain I’m assessing, I can see amongst other things:

  • The domain is 7 years old
  • It’s been indexed by Yahoo and Bing
  • It has 2 backlinks in Yahoo and 5 in Bing

Before I decide if I’m going to buy this domain, I’ll do a little due diligence to make sure I know what I’m buying.

Due Diligence: Wayback Machine

Due Diligence: Wayback MachineThe first thing to do is check the Internet Archives Wayback Machine to see what sort of past the domain’s had. You wouldn’t want to buy an aged domain that’s previously hosted adult content, for example! The Wayback Machine shows there’s been some content on the site in 2004/05 and further investigation suggests it was a fairly “thin” site with little content and few pages.

Due Diligence: Keyword Research

Goolge Keyword Tool

Next I’m going to use Google’s Keyword tool to check how many searches the keyword “cheapest domain hosting” receives per month. Although 1,300 phrase match searches per month is nothing to write home about, for the sake of the exercise, let’s push on.

Bidding on the Domain

Name Jet

DomainFace tracks domains listed for sale on Sedo, SnapNames, Pool, NameJet, Flippa and GoDaddy so your bidding experience is going to differ depending on the provider. In this case NameJet is taking care of the bidding – which is where I enter my bid.

Building a Website Around Your Aged Domain

Yahoo Site Explorer

Assuming I win the auction, the next step is to build a website on my new aged domain. An important consideration when building a new website where once-upon-a-time an old one lived is to try to add all the page URLs that previously existed (or at least 301 redirect them to new pages).

To discover most of the pages that lived on the domain try using the Yahoo’s Site Explorer – if the site hasn’t disappeared from Yahoo’s index you’ll be able to see all the old URLs. The other option is to use the Wayback Machine.

Note: Do not copy any old content you find on the Wayback Machine. The previous owner has implicit copyright over this content.

What’s Next?

Once built, you should try to hold on to the website for a couple of months and build up a history of traffic and, ideally, revenue. Should you decide to sell your website – on Flippa of course! – you’ll achieve a much better result if you can provide historical statistics. When selling your site, make sure you explain in your listing how you purchased the domain – most buyers will do their due diligence and find out that the domain’s had more than one owner anyway – so be transparent from the beginning.

You can Download the Free version of Domain Samurai (aff) and start discovering aged domains. But be careful, it’s extremely addictive!

Learn More about Aged Domains

This post discusses how to find aged domains but doesn’t cover what aged domains to buy. While domain Samurai provide some great learning resources, you might also like to check out the following:

33 Responses to Kickstart Your Website Flipping Project with an Aged Domain

  2. Flippa Chick says:

    I caught the aged domain fever a month or so ago, and after purchasing an aged PR 2 domain, whose page rank I thought I would lose, I’m happy to report that I was only dropped down to a PR1, but due to my domain’s age and on-page/off-page SEO, I can literally rank with little effort for quite a few keywords.

    This is definitely one route to look into in order to jumpstart your website building efforts.

  3. Danny Batelic says:

    It really is important to hang on to the site for a while and let things settle once you add a blog, so that you’re not caught out when you list your site.

    I recently bought a PR3 aged domain that dropped to a PR2 a week later but a domain that I purchased as a PR2 jumped to a PR4 in the next cycle.

    Although you have no control over when and how google adjust your PR, you want to give your “new site” time to settle, so you’re not having to explain things mid auction if you sell too soon.

    Great advice on copying content. 301 redirects are fantastic, but it’s only a short term solution.

    Ideally you want to create similar content on the existing urls. This will help keep any backlinks that the domain has acquired.

    I agree, build some love into the “new” site and don’t forget income is crucial too.

    If you have a look at the just sold section, sites making money sell really well!

  4. Robert Somerville says:

    Great post Danny, very clear and a great summary of the value of considering an aged domain when building sites for sale or profit.

    Just one more thing about the Waback machine and the age of the site. Preferably, you want to see that the age of first content appearing on the site is roughy equivalent to the actual age from when the domain was registered.

    What you don’t want to see is an aged domain where the site owner has only placed content on the site recently. Google places more value on the age from when it first indexed the site than when the domain was first registered.

    GuruBob

  10. Website Flipping Tips says:

    Good post here guys! Domain Samurai is a great tool for domainers (obviously) but as you’ve shown, is a great tool for website flippers too.

    The only thing I would add is that I wouldn’t get too hung up on PR. There were rumblings not too long ago that Google was doing away with PR – and as most experienced IMer’s know, PR is over rated.

    The key to using this technique and Domain Samurai is to look for aged domains with keyword phrases with as many backlinks as possible. For example, if you find a keyword domain with 15 backlinks but only a PR1, don’t worry about it. All other factors take precedence over PR – which is probably why Domain Face is willing to give that data for free;)

    Travis

    • Clint says:

      Isn’t PR important for the backlinks though? In addition to the relevancy of the links themselves.

      i.e. if the site sells novelty T-shirts and the backlinks are to new sites related to t-shirts that have little to no content and a PR0 or PR1 OR established sites that are entirely unrelated, i.e. pet supplies, and are PR3 or PR4.

      I guess this is where due-diligence really comes into play as you have to make sure that everything has been done with white-hat strategies, in which case, I’d imagine the price of the domain would reflect that, not to mention it seems there are enough pros out there that can pick these off pretty easily that leaves us amateurs stuck with a lot of work and some fool’s gold :(

  11. chikepeter says:

    Hi Danny
    Grate revelation,especially for newbie who want to start a flipping business.But the major factor is what TRAVIS say at last paragraph.

    chikepeter

  12. NiajaRumour says:

    I thought I knew somethings about flipping websites, thanks so much for the this timely post, I am truly grateful, but I have to tell you, you start watching over your shoulder, because I coming after with my testimonial of success!

  16. Jamie says:

    Buying high PR domain and sufficient amount of backlink is investment. It’s worth it and give back the investment much more higher.

    Thanks for the tips

  17. Michael Davies says:

    Great tip on the wayback machine site. I remember checking out that site like wayback, lol.

    I’m planning to keep building new high quality sites and selling them on flippa.

    After getting some sales I will then invest in some aged domains. Then I can focus on building a great website with a higher value.

    Thanks for posting this ;)

    -michael

  18. Russ says:

    I love the clear way that you show the use DS, I guess that to check the searches on keywords it is also possible to use Market Samurai.

  22. Joseph says:

    This is great info. Especially, guys should pay attention to the part of picking the one that’s long tail and checking it on google keyword tool. That’s the good stuff!

  26. Mike says:

    Cool, never really considered the idea of buying a aged domain to start up a website previous to reading this article. Seems so obvious, as long as you can find something suitable to your key words I guess it should work out quite advantageous.

  28. Evoire says:

    Sure that will be nice. Like Mike, I have never really thought of buying an aged domain. I thought all the ranking will be lost when the domain gets new owner.