SMX Advanced 2008
Stephan Spencer. Moderator
Panel:
Gab Goldenberg, SEO ROI
Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl),
Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoemoney Media Group
Jeremy Wright, B5 Media
◊◊◊Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoemoney Media Group
Jeremy Schoemaker couldn’t appear in person so he sent this video presentation. http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/06/04/buying-sites-for-seo-video/
Jeremy Wright, B5 Media
B5 Media buy’s websites for eventual revenue based on their unrealized potential.
Evaluation Metrics
·Core metrics:
oExisting traffic
oUniqueness
oRevenue
oFeed subscribers
oGoogle Page Rank.
·Secondary Metrics:
oAge of the site
oStability
oAge of the domain
oAmount of content
oExisting search engine optimization metrics
oStability
Other questions:
·Is it or can it be a blog?
·Does it cover a unique niche?
·Does it add non-core value we can put a number to?
·Does it have a real brand name in its industry?
Tools they use to valuate blogs:
Mistakes You Can Avoid
- Always verify traffic (Google Analytics, SiteMeter, Omniture)
- Don’t believe the potential someone else pitches you on, arrive at your own.
- Don’t deviate from your playbook (though your playbook should include some flexibility for lager purchases).
- Don’t be afraid to buy partners early if you see early success
- Avoid properties that depend on specific personalities being bought in for the site to retain its value to you
- Watch out for “inflationary schemes”.
- Buy early, buy often, admit failure quickly.
◊◊◊Gab Goldenberg, SEO ROI
Content is extremely undervalued. You want to look for indices of high quality Web sites.
Google is “submarine crawling” where they query a search form or execute JavaScript to find deep web content that isn’t linked from the site itself. If you can find out where Google is doing this type of crawling, you can assume that the content is trusted by Google.
How do you find these sites?
Do a [site:] search. That will work for one site, but what if you’re looking at an entire industry? You can look for a footprint.
A footprint is an identifying characteristic that many web sites share. If you look at a CMS, there will be footprints attached to it. He shows us the following footprint for a high quality WordPress blog.
If you change the WHOIS and the hosting, you can get the PR values reset.
To get around this you can use a trust. A trust is legal mechanism where one person holds legal title to property while another person is the beneficiary of the property. This allows you to take control of the site without changing the WHOIS information.
Contracts Includes:
·Intent to create a trust
·Certainty over the property hosting, software, etc.
·Hosting is part of what you’re buying.
The single greatest value you’re buying when you get a site is the domain. Realize that.
◊◊◊Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl), www.stuntdubl.com
Finding Old Sites
·Think like an old site: If you were an old site, where would you be? That’s how you come up with the creative queries.
·Automate the process
·Keywords such as “Closing Up Shop”
When you’re contacting the site owner:
·Be Credible
·Be brief
·Be lucky
When you’re valuating a site, look at:
·Domain age
·Links
·Theme
·Traffic
·Revenue
·Look for no monitization
Negotiating and Closing a Site Purchase:
·Lowball, but don’t offend
·Get a price
·Counter
·Agree
·Sign Agreement
·Escrow Service
·Transfers – files and WHOIS
Question and Answer
Tools:
·Domaintools.com – Historic Whois
·Premium Drops.com – Cost $24.95 per month
·Some URL shortening services let you buy data from them
·Get good with your advanced query operators
As always Connections is happy to answer questions and assist you in any way we can to get your e-business up and running over the competition. Contact us at service@ConnectionsIS.com.
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