Domain Name Purchasing: Some Good Advice From The Pilgrim

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 1 of December , 2007 at 9:27 am

Just when you thought that what could be said about PageRank has already been said, along comes Janet Meiners to prove you wrong.

Awhile back, you might have remember Aaron Wall making comments about how Google isn’t fair because they penalized one of his sites. He told the story of how he had bought a domain name and then lost his PageRank and, I believe, his inbound links as well. You should know that if you are buying domain names then that could happen.

Janet Meiners offers some great suggestions for people considering buying a domain name:

* Be sure the domain has not expired. While you may get PageRank temporarily, it may not last.
* You can buy a domain for some traffic (which many black hat marketers do, to run ads on the site) but the links won’t help you as far as search engine rankings.
* If you want PageRank don’t buy a domain name that has been marked for deletion. During a hold phase the original domain owner has 45 days to re-claim their domain.
* If you do buy an expired domain, keep the heritage content or theme. If you completely change the content you’re guaranteed to lose PageRank and credit for the backlinks.

Personally, I know why Google would lump domain name buying into the category of black hat practices. No doubt, many black hat SEOs buy domain names for the purpose of using their existing PageRank and link reputation to boost their other sites. It makes sense that penalties would arise for those who do this. But does the mere purchase of a domain name automatically make someone a black hat SEO? No, of course.

What if someone is buying a domain name along with the business? In other words, they have no intention of changing the content on the website with that domain name or of using it to network with their other sites. I don’t see any reason why Google would penalize that. But if they do, it would be evidence that Google looks at Whois data and considers it in their reputation and relevance algorithms.

Buying a domain name?
Do your keyword research.

Category: PageRank

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