Buying Websites Instead of Links as Part of Your SEO Strategy

If you’ve been in the affiliate marketing field for a while, you know the importance of having quality content and backlinks. 

High-quality content and backlinks together help a website or blog to improve organic rankings as well as search traffic. And, of course, more traffic helps you generate more money, and no doubt, that’s the primary goal of all affiliate marketers. 

But creating quality content is hard, and building high-quality backlinks is even HARDER. You need to find niche-relevant quality websites, gather email addresses, pitch out guest post ideas, write the content, and wait for weeks or months to get your post published.

However, nowadays, it’s common to see that many marketers purchase backlinks to minimize their efforts. We did some research and found on average, a single backlink costs around $350 – $1500. Yes, that’s true. 

Now, if you want 10 backlinks, you can assume the price. For 10 good quality backlinks, you have to pay around $8000 – $10,000.

Nevertheless, there will be no guarantee that the backlinks you purchased will help to boost your ranking, and you will start making money.

Then, you may ask what could be the solution? What should you do instead of buying backlinks? Or how could you make sure that the massive amount of money you are going to invest wouldn’t go to waste?

Well, the most straightforward and ultimate solution could be buying a website. Yes, you heard right.

Buying websites is a strategy that has been around for many years. Why? Because it works.

Buying websites instead of building links can be an excellent way to rank higher in search engines and to increase your conversion rates in less time.

In this article, we will explain why buying websites is better than backlinks and walk you through the step-by-step processes on how to buy a website on Flippa.

Buying backlinks for improving SEO is a common practice for many years. Many marketers have seen success using this strategy, and most importantly, it doesn’t take much effort. 

But this comes with risks. For example, search engines like Google already announced buying or selling links go against their Webmaster guidelines. 

(source)

So, here I will explain the pros and cons of buying backlinks to help you understand whether you should implement this technique or not.

If you ever built backlinks manually, you know how much time and effort it takes.

However, buying backlinks can save you hundreds of work hours and effort. All you have to do is find a backlink service provider, choose your preferred Domain Rating (DR), the number of backlinks, then place your order and relax. The team will do all the work for you.

So, in a short time, you can have tons of backlinks. The more you purchase, the more backlinks you will have.

2. Improves keywords ranking fast

One of the most significant advantages of buying backlinks is that it helps to improve keyword ranking faster. This happens because many backlinks providers use bots to do all the heavy lifting.

You can have hundreds or even more backlinks in a short amount of time, which drastically improves your page authority. As a result, your web pages rank on the top of search results in no time.

If you participate in any link-building schemes, such as buying or selling links to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking, you are violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. 

To combat these types of black-hat SEO tactics, Google released a Penguin update back in 2012. The goal of the update was to de-rank websites with spammy or manipulative backlink profiles, including paid links.

(source)

So, you should never participate in any link-building schemes or buy backlinks. Try building backlinks naturally. This takes time and effort, but in the end, it wouldn’t affect your rankings. 

When you are building backlinks naturally, using guest posting, infographics, or broken link building methods, you will have total control of the link. You can choose the link’s location, anchor text, as well as a targeted webpage. 

If you buy backlinks, you can only choose anchor texts. But you wouldn’t know where the company places your links. They can even spam your link on forums, create profile pages, or add your links to irrelevant pages, giving no value and harming your SEO.

When you are buying backlinks, the company can assure you will have backlinks within x amount of time, but not the value.

They give you backlinks according to their packages. So it doesn’t matter to them if the link comes from an irrelevant webpage or with the wrong anchor text.

4. It costs lots of money

One of the most significant disadvantages of buying backlinks is that it costs a lot of money. 

However, not all backlinks are that expensive. Some backlinks can cost you $5-$30, and some backlinks cost $1000-$3000. Expensive backlinks more likely help to improve SEO as SEO experts handle them.

But, how many backlinks are you going to buy? If you want to buy 10 high-quality backlinks, you have to pay at least $8,000 – $10,000.

And, I don’t think it would be a smart move to pay a massive chunk of money for just buying backlinks because you wouldn’t know when you will make that amount of money out of your website. 

Now, let’s take a look at the best alternative to buying backlinks. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Buying Websites

Buying a ready-made website means you will have a functional website that comes with a .com or .net domain name, website builder, content, plugins, themes, traffic, and rankings. 

After buying a website, you will have total control, and you can do anything with your website.

But is buying an existing website worth it, or buying a website is better than links?

Let’s find out!

Here, we will explain the pros and cons of buying an existing website and help you understand if it is an ideal solution for you. 

Pros of Buying an Existing Website

1. You have the choice of choosing a niche

One of the main reasons buying a website is a great choice is that you can choose the niche or topic you are passionate about and have enough knowledge about.

Because to be successful in the field, you need to publish tons of relevant content. So, being passionate about a specific topic helps you to come up with content ideas that could lead you a long road.

2. You have to do less work as someone already did it

Creating a website to start making money requires lots of work. For example, you need to register a domain, buy web hosting like WPEngine, set up the website, install plugins, design your website, publish content, build backlinks, and the list goes on. 

But, when you buy an existing website, you don’t have to worry about it because the person selling the website already did all the heavy lifting.

So, you have to change all the affiliate links and do some minor changes.

3. It’s ok if you have limited knowledge

When building a website from scratch, you need to know how to build a website, design, add plugins, write content, SEO, and lots more.

It would be best to learn each of the basics by watching tutorials on YouTube or reading other blogs.

This will take time.

But, if you buy an existing website, you have to do less work because someone already has done it. So, even if you don’t know about managing a website, you can still make money.

4. You can generate income from day one

This is why most people like to buy an existing website because the cash flow has already been generated. Now all you have to do is maintain it. 

But, if you start a brand new website, you have lots of work to do, including writing content, building backlinks, etc. It’s like you are pouring so much effort, time and money into it but no guaranteed income. 

Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about an existing website as you make money from day one.

5. It’s easier to rank content and keywords for an existing website

If the existing site is already making money, the website content is probably well optimized for SEO. This includes quality content, backlinks, internal linking, etc. 

So, if you publish more content, it will be easier to rank them. 

Cons of Buying an Existing Website

1. Buying a premade website can be expensive

Generally, an existing website costs more than buying backlinks. The cost depends on how successful and how much money a website generates per month.

It’s also important to know that the seller has put too much effort, time, and money into generating income out of the site. So, paying that much amount is worth it, and most importantly, you would be able to earn that amount you have spent in no time.

2. You either gain or lose everything

There is no doubt that buying an existing website is better than links. But the buying website process could be risky if you don’t know the dos and don’ts. 

Fortunately, buying a website with Flippa is entirely risk-free and straightforward. In addition, Flippa makes sure both seller and buyer parties are protected throughout the whole process.

Buyer Success StoryHow A Beginner Made Over 1,670% Return On His First Website Purchase

How to Buy an Existing Website

Now, you know why buying websites is better than links as part of your SEO strategy. So, if you are planning to buy an existing website, there are many things you need to consider.

Because there are many ways, sellers can scam you, provide wrong stats, or even manipulate the data and ask you for a higher payment.

But, you don’t have to worry about it. We will walk you through the 6 essential things you need to consider before buying a website so that you don’t get scammed. 

6 Things to Consider Before Buying a Website

1. History of the website

Before you begin, you need to check the history of the website. It’s crucial because you didn’t build the website, and you don’t know what the website was about years ago.

Maybe the owner is claiming it’s a technology website. But, it’s too possible that the blog was in a different niche or topic or even illegal, such as drugs. 

To clarify this, run the website on Wayback Machine. Here’s an example of how Facebook looked in 2008.

(source)

Archive.org is a free internet archiver tool that has been recording almost every website on the web. So, you can see previous snapshots of the website. 

2. Traffic sources

This is very important because the site may generate low or no income but has high traffic. Generally, more traffic means more money. But, not everywhere. 

The seller may have used bot traffic to scam the traffic reports in Google Analytics. You may not want a website that is flooded with fake or direct traffic, which ultimately gives no value. It doesn’t matter if you have a million page views; you still get nothing out of it.

So, rather than considering Google Analytics traffic as real traffic, check the traffic sources, medium, and demographics. If most traffic sources (>80%) are organic, it’s a good sign, and you can move forward.

Checking domain authority is very important as it indicates how well a website can rank on search engines. If it’s less than “10”, then you should consider looking for another website. 

The higher the domain rating website you have, the easier it gets to rank the keywords and attract sponsorship opportunities. 

You can check a website domain authority through SEMrush, you can see part of the SEMrush analysis on Flippa listings, with the option to purchase the full report.

It’s crucial to check the website’s backlink profile as backlinks help to increase domain authority.

4. Keyword ranking

The more keywords rank on the search engines, the more traffic the site gets. And more traffic means more money.

But, not all keywords will help you to generate money. So, make sure the website you are going to buy has some ranked keywords that could bring you sales. Some of the higher convertible keywords types are list post, comparison, alternatives, how-to, etc.

Go to Google Analytics to find out what are keywords that bring most of the traffic.

5. Revenue streams

There are several ways you can monetize your blog and make money out of it. The most common sources are affiliate marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads, native advertising, digital product sales, services, courses, etc. 

As a buyer, you need to check how the seller monetized the blog. It’s essential because the seller may have used multiple ways to monetize the blog, which could be unknown to you. So it’s like a preplan of how you are going to monetize your blog. 

6. Talk to the seller

Finally, before you hit the “place bid” button, you should talk to the seller. You can have questions that the seller didn’t mention on the page, or you may want to view the Google Analytics traffic.

To start with, write down all the questions written to the seller. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

How to buy a website on Flippa

Now you know what things you need to do before buying an existing website. After that, it’s time to buy a website.

Here are the step-by-step processes below.

Step 1, Start researching

First, go to flippa.com. Then enter a keyword or business type that you are interested in. 

For example, I am searching for a sports-related blog. You can see all the sports-related websites that are available for selling on Flippa. 

Now go through each website and focus on some critical metrics, such as website age, monthly income, site type, country, monetization method, platform, etc. 

You can add many sites to watch so you can go back and review them later.

Step 2, Do the research 

Once you shortlisted the websites, you need to do some research on them. I already covered what things you need to check before buying an existing website. 

Here’s a quick recap:

  • Website traffic in-depth details
  • Domain authority and backlink profile
  • Revenue streams
  • Site info
  • Domain info
  • Seller’s notes

Go through each of the details the seller mentioned, and if you have questions or doubts, don’t hesitate to ask.

Step 3, Place your bid

The next step for purchasing a website is to place a bid. This process works like an auction. Whoever places higher bids gets the website. 

I suggest you place a minimum bid to get listed on the buying list. Then wait for a few days; if the price goes up too much, you can stop bidding. 

Step 4, Release the payment

If you won the auction, it’s time to release the payment. But don’t worry about getting scammed. 

Flippa has partnered with Escrow services to ensure the buyer’s payment is secured in a third-party account during the files or asset transfer.

So, the seller will only receive the payment after the transfer of the assets is completed. You can also request a refund if you find a dispute over something. 

Step 5, Move your site

Once the transaction is complete, you will be provided all the details, including website files and hosting. 

Most of the sellers offer you a one-year free hosting, but I wouldn’t recommend that. The performance and support could be inadequate. So, it would be better if you move your website to another hosting. Similarly, transfer the domain name to your account. 

It’s also recommended that you upgrade all the software and plugins once the transfer is completed.

If you are stuck on something or don’t know how to find a good quality website at a lower price, here’s an in-depth video.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/WTi8b01YJXE

Wrapping Up

Backlinks are crucial for improving your website’s SEO as they represent how strong and authoritative your website is. The more backlinks pointing to your website, the more organic traffic you will get and generate more sales.

However, building quality backlinks are quite hard, time-consuming, and cost you lots of money over time in order to grow your new website. 

That’s why buying an existing website could be a better choice – especially if you can’t wait to make money from the next day. 

In this article, we have explained why buying a website is better than links, explaining their advantages and disadvantages, and how to buy an existing website the right way.

So, if you are planning to buy a website, head over to the flippa.com website and search businesses using a keyword that you are interested in. And, Good Luck on your journey!

    Jyoti Ray is the founder of WPMyWeb.com, specializing in affiliate marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He writes or has been featured on JeffBullas, SurveyAnyplace, SearchEngineWatch, and more. You can read his guide about to how to start a blog learn the tactics and strategies he used to build a successful blog. You can connect with him on Linkedin.

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