Does a domain's PR and backlinks transfer?

[bougatsa]

Hi,
While checking domains on Sedo earlier i noticed that few parked domains in niche i'm interested in had good Pagerank and backlinks.

Do the PR and backlinks remain after transfer?

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Google now resets both PR and backlinks. Or is that just for expired domains?

Would be really grateful for any insight / clarification

 

[Frog]

The longer a domain has been sitting as parked, the less likely the links are still to be passing benefit.

If you buy a website that has backlinks, and you keep the content the same, the chance of it not continuing to rank as before is close to non existent.

If you buy a dropped domain, immediately change the topic of it, then start selling links or filling it with spam, then its likely to get flagged and penalised...

 

[bougatsa]

Hi Frog,
Thanks for the reply.

So, in terms of looking for sites like this, the best you can do is to find an actual website that still is a website (with PR and backlinks) and try to transfer the website over and build on it from there? Keeping the theme/topic the same.

Regarding parked domains / expired domains is it a bit of a hit or miss - sometimes you can benefit sometimes not?

As I said above, I thought I read somewhere that this was being clamped down on by Google because it was being abused - people buying expired high PR domains, resusitating them and then abusing the PR/linkjuice with redirects etc.

I suppose I'm just wondering if it's still possible to find a good parked domain/expired domain with PR and backlinks, resus it and flesh it out again, with the same topic as it had previously, and get a head start.

Anyone got any recent experience of doing this successfully?

 

[Frog]

If you buy them when they dropped or have been parked for a while, its a gamble. A good indication of them still being able to pass benefit is do they rank for their url (if its semi competitive) or if they rank for their page title etc. From experience of doing this, some will end up dying and some will stay good.

If you restore the sites content to as close as possible as before, you stand a significantly better chance. If you can get the old content from archive.org that would be best (but slight legal issue there potentially).

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...=new+york+properties&aq=f&aqi=g6g-m4&aql=&oq=

For that one, we bought the .co.uk and just paid a writer to create a bunch of content. Its on topic as can be, and that site still ranks.


Sometimes you can get away with really pushing it - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1216&bih=656&q=kod+zero&aq=f&aqi=g-m9g-ms1&aql=&oq=

That one belonged to Coca Cola in turkey, I put a gambling blog on it as a test and it was fine... I'd have expected that one to get burned though, I just wanted to see how long it took. I think its been like that for 2yrs now.

 

[bougatsa]

Superb Frog!

Great information, you know your stuff.

With the .co.uk I notice you're not monetising it yet with adsense or anything (apart from links out). Is that because this is a recent transfer and you're going easy?

Did you go to the bother of looking at the links coming in to the domain and try to 301 them in any way?

PR5 on the .org is awesome!

Thesis is the new Kubric, btw! I use it all the time too now.

 

[Frog]

With the .co.uk I notice you're not monetising it yet with adsense or anything (apart from links out). Is that because this is a recent transfer and you're going easy?

We won't do anything with it for 6 months or so - got tonnes of them in the "holding" stage. Really you want to make sure its not going to die, before you bother spending any real resources on it. Right now I've spent $60 on content and $99 on a logo, so no big loss otherwise.

Did you go to the bother of looking at the links coming in to the domain and try to 301 them in any way?

I don't normally 301 domains I've bought, that is more likely to kill them. If you are going to 301 I'd put the old site back for a few months first, at least.

PR5 on the .org is awesome!

You've lost me here, what domain are you referring to?

Thesis is the new Kubric, btw! I use it all the time too now.

Thesis is okay, but I don't like the fact you need to make a logo for it... woothemes.com and elegantthemes.com are quicker to use to make holding sites from.

 

[bougatsa]

You've lost me here, what domain are you referring to?

My mistake, it's a .com isn't it. Too muck coffee today!!

Thesis is okay, but I don't like the fact you need to make a logo for it... woothemes.com and elegantthemes.com are quicker to use to make holding sites from.

I agree, it's a bit fiddly at times but it's got great features, especially SEO. No need for extra SEO plugins with it. Once you get your head around using the customfunctions/custom css files it's very powerful.

Getting back to domains, do you catch them yourself? Or buy them in an aftermarket somewhere?

I was using Scrapebox last week and managed to track down a few websites / domains with tasty PR and backlinks.

Great information Frog, much appreciated!

 

[Frog]

I buy them in the aftermarket, don't catch them myself. Paying $200-300 for a pr5 generally...