I've recently decided to dive into a new niche. Rather than build a site from scratch and have to be uber slow and careful with it for the first 10 months, I'm going to experiment with buying an already established site in the same niche and replacing the site with my own. For the sake of this discussion, let's say the product is "WF memorabilia".
I've found two sites in the same niche that are each 2-3 years old, one is a PR3 with around 10k backlinks in majestic SEO, and the other is a PR2 with around 100k backlinks showing up in majestic SEO. Both owners are willing to sell. Here is the thing, however. Both sites are currently just running amazon store plugins (like associate-o-matic).
When I google "<keyword> <domainname>" those sites do not come up. When I google just the domain name, they do come up.
So for example if one of the sites was sweetwfmemorabilia.com, When I google "sweetwfmemorabilia.com" the site does come up first. However, if I google "sweet wf memorabilia sweetwfmemorabilia.com" the site does not come up at all. Is it penalized?
When I take any of the sites that I have, I can basically put any keyword in there with the URL and my site will come up first. So for instance, I can google "big black strapons mysite.com" and my site will come up first even if my site is about orange juice. These sites, however, are not doing that.
Is it just because the sites are currently running amazon store plugins? If I were to buy the domain, wipe out those amazon stores and replace it with my own site, would I get any benefit from having these nice aged domains that already have some links to them so I can start link building more aggressively than I could on a new site?
Of course, the obvious answer is to try it, which I'm likely going to do either way, but I was wondering if anyone had any experience or insight w/ this.
I've found two sites in the same niche that are each 2-3 years old, one is a PR3 with around 10k backlinks in majestic SEO, and the other is a PR2 with around 100k backlinks showing up in majestic SEO. Both owners are willing to sell. Here is the thing, however. Both sites are currently just running amazon store plugins (like associate-o-matic).
When I google "<keyword> <domainname>" those sites do not come up. When I google just the domain name, they do come up.
So for example if one of the sites was sweetwfmemorabilia.com, When I google "sweetwfmemorabilia.com" the site does come up first. However, if I google "sweet wf memorabilia sweetwfmemorabilia.com" the site does not come up at all. Is it penalized?
When I take any of the sites that I have, I can basically put any keyword in there with the URL and my site will come up first. So for instance, I can google "big black strapons mysite.com" and my site will come up first even if my site is about orange juice. These sites, however, are not doing that.
Is it just because the sites are currently running amazon store plugins? If I were to buy the domain, wipe out those amazon stores and replace it with my own site, would I get any benefit from having these nice aged domains that already have some links to them so I can start link building more aggressively than I could on a new site?
Of course, the obvious answer is to try it, which I'm likely going to do either way, but I was wondering if anyone had any experience or insight w/ this.
