Archive for December, 2008

Where’s the best place to find an established website for sale? Some of the registrars and web hosting companies have their own auctions. If you spend enough time scouring these auctions, then it’s very likely you’ll come across a good deal. But, what’s a good deal look like? Would you know it if it was staring you in the face? And, what criteria is important to know about the site before making an offer?

Instead of buying a new domain and going thru the painfully long task of searching for a domain name & building/promoting a site from scratch, I prefer to go thru an auction to buy an established domain.

Here’s a checklist of several factors to investigate before making your offer.

Guide to Buying Established Websites:
1) Find a subject matter you like. Sounds obvious. But, people looking to make money can be drawn to website with a subject matter they have no interest in. If the subject matter of the site is something you like, then the odds are you’ll be much more interested in working on it.

2) Make sure it has a Google PageRank 3 or more. This is also good if you’re business model is selling blog reviews, textlinks, display ads, etc. It also adds a bit of credibility/respectibility.

3) Clarify if their are any liabilities associated with the site. You don’t want to buy a site, and then find yourself wrapped up in legal issues which prevent you from working on the site. And, possibly court-ordered to tear the site down.

4) Are their Forum moderators that will remain (if a discussion forum). If not, this could present a problem of maintaining the forum. Certainly extra work to recruit forum moderators, and possibly an additional cost to compensate moderators.

5) Does the website need a Windows server or Unix box? Do you need an additional web host?

6) Does it have a CMS (Content Management System)? Will you need to build a CMS? Do you need HTML skills? Do you need database skills? Will you need to hire a programmer?

7) Check the site using the link: command in Yahoo to check inbound links.

8 ) Check in Google the related: command for sites associated with it. Make sure it’s not in a “bad neighborhood”.

9) Understand that the site will need attention (possibly hours of work, improvement, marketing, etc).

10) It’s possible to negotiate with the seller a lower BIN (Buy it Now) price before the auction ends.

11) Check the Whois information.

12) Look for less competitive niche sites. Good for keyword rankings, and monetization of traffic.

13) Check the Web Analytics. Especially, if an ecommerce site, or if they are monetizing thru adsense (ads).

14) If it’s an ecommerce site, then what contracts are in place for inventory & fulfillment of products?

15) Is the content unique? Or, is it a scraper site?

16) Make sure they save all the files & databases on a CD and send it to you.

17) Perhaps use an escrow agent like Escrow.com. Paypal is also good, but you can’t dispute a sale unless physical goods were transferred, so have the seller FedEx you the files on a CD.

18) Does an email list come with the site? Is a newsletter format included?

19) Is it optimized for Search Engines? Do you know what to look for? If not, consider asking an SEO Consultant how much of their time, effort and cost will go into making it Search Engine Friendly.

20) Consider paying 50% upfront, and the remaining 50% upon receipt of the files.

Domain Auctions:
Afternic
Sedo
GoDaddy Auctions
SnapNames Live Auctions

Auctions for Buying Established Websites:
Digital Point Forums.
Sitepoint Marketplace.
ebay.

Website Brokers:
BizBuySell.
Website Broker.

Photo Credit: Josh Sommers

The blocking & tackling of SEO is Content & Links. I’ve discussed a Link Optimization and why advertisers should stop paying Google. But, Links are just half of the equation to champion keyword rankings. The other half of the equation is Content. Quality & Quantity.

Once you’ve made your site search engine friendly through a technical SEO analysis, it’s time to build content on to what you have. Google likes content-heavy sites vs content-light sites. Think about the 7 page brochure site vs the 500,000 pages on a news site.

Generally speaking, the more pages of content, the better. Better for keyword ranking. Better for users. A Content-rich site is a good thing. Especially, in combination with a properly structured link campaign. The ole’ 1-2 punch.

As you buildout content, you should create Content Silos. Just like a farmer has a silo of corn, wheat, or whatever, so should your website have tightly grouped themed categories of content.

Page Structure:
1) Title tag
2) Description meta
3) Keyword Meta
4) H1 tag
5) A few paragraphs of crawlable, text content.

Using these 5 areas on a webpage, you can buildout multiple pages and create content silos. The navigation, sidebars, and advertisements can all stay the same on each page, as long as the 5 things listed above are unique. The few paragraphs of crawlable text should be optimized by SEO Copywriting.

Google is looking for the subject matter expert to rank #1. The more webpages you have on your site about a particular subject will make your website resource-rich, and appear as the subject matter expert.

Content Building should be an ongoing investment which adds value for your site visitors, will help you champion keyword rankings, and will drive more traffic to your site.

Contrary to how it may appear on the façade of things, CPA networks are not affiliate networks. The “CPA” part in their name is what is misleading many. Generally meaning cost-per-action, a widely-spread affiliate payment model, the abbreviation “CPA” is actually not the best way to describe “CPA networks”. The more appropriate name for them is sub-affiliate networks. Whereas a traditional affiliate network (e.g. CommissionJunction or LinkShare) is functioning as a mediator between merchants/advertisers and affiliates/publishers, CPA networks are working as yet another link in the chain between the merchant and the affiliate. I have put together the following diagram to illustrate the difference between a traditional network and a CPA network:

If a merchant were running an in-house affiliate program, the sub-affiliate network will be a link between the merchant and the affiliate, receiving commissions from every sale that the affiliate sends. Be it with an in-house, or with an on-an-affiliate-network affiliate program, the affiliate becomes a sub-affiliate, while the “CPA network” is the affiliate that is paid a “preferred” or “private offer” (read: higher) commission (or per lead bounty, which is the preferred payment model for sub-affiliate networks), and can afford to pay their sub-affiliates a higher commission/bounty than the default commission/bounty that the affiliates would get if they went directly to the merchant. Why “preferred” commission? Because being an affiliate with a large volume of sub-affiliate traffic and sales, they are essentially perceived as power affiliates or “super affiliates”.

This raises several problems. I would like to touch upon the two main ones.

Conflict of Interest

Being an affiliate themselves, the “CPA network” is in direct competition with their sub-affiliates. The conflict of interest is there and no serious affiliate will disclose their techniques and methods to a competitor by working under them as a sub-affiliate. Hence, if a merchant decides to run their affiliate program on a “CPA network”, they should not expect any super-affiliates to join their program. Furthermore, they should be aware of the lower quality of leads they will receive through the CPA network, as opposed to a managed affiliate program on a traditional network.

Shady “Marketing” Practices

History testifies to the fact that it is not uncommon for “CPA networks” to tolerate (or even partake in) e-mail spam, adware, fraudulent “leads”, incentive websites (not the affiliate type you want to have in a program if you’re paying for leads), recruiting other sub-affiliate networks.

Much more can be written on the topic, and a simple search of online discussions on “CPA networks” will yield a plethora of enlightening blog posts and forum threads. To work, or not to work with sub-affiliate networks will ultimately be the affiliate’s and the merchant’s decision. One thing I hope they do is make an educated and well-weighted decision.

Additional Reading:
When Your Network Is An Affiliate And Adware Company.
Seriously considering advertise through a CPA Network.
We’re an “Affiliate Network”.
———–
Geno is the founder and CEO of AM Navigator, an outsourced affiliate program management company, and he was voted the “Best OPM of the Year” for two years in a row (2006 and 2007) by the largest online affiliate marketing community, ABestWeb.com.

The question of SEO vs PPC is really about budget allocation. If an advertiser has X dollars allocated for Search Marketing, then how much of that should be allocated for SEO vs PPC? This is often the case when a small business wants to try Online Marketing.

We can look at this question from another angle. Long Term vs Short Term? If I only have a finite amount of marketing dollars then where will I get the bigger bang for my bucks?

Let’s start with PPC. Say for example a client has a monthly budget of $10K. If they throw that into Google Adwords for a 30 day campaign, that breaksdown to a daily budget of $333. Depending on the competitiveness of the keywords, the budget could run out within the first few hours of the day. And, even if it is spread out evenly throughout the day, it certainly wouldn’t be served for every search query. Then, once they decide to stop running the campaign…poof! Their ad disappears. Done. Finished. Finito.

As opposed to an SEO campaign. You can take that same $10K, and with a properly built SEO Strategy and campaign, you not only will accomplish top keyword rankings. But long after you stopped spending money, your listing (not ad) will still appear in the Search results.

A strong SEO campaign you can “own” the top results. And, if implemented properly, a solid SEO campaign can have long-lasting results because the advertiser is NOT paying Google for every time their ad appears in the SERP’s. Think of it as the “Long Tail of Clicks”. Because, your listing will appear in the top positions, and receive clicks long after you’ve stopped spending dollars.

It really all boils down to what’s the business objectives. Rather than only using one type of search channel (SEO or PPC), it could be that there needs to be an immediate appearance in the Search Results. In that case perhaps it might make sense to split the budget 50% to SEO and 50% to PPC.

Here’s a nice analogy to think of the difference between SEO/PPC.
PPC = renting the land
SEO = Owning it.

Additionally, in the present economic situation, it’s a good time to focus on SEO when many of your competitors may be cutting back.

Bottomline, if you have invested a lot into your website, and you’re in the game for the long-run, then SEO is where your advertising dollars are best spent.

Additional Reading:
Organic traffic is often more qualified than PPC.
Turn to SEO to help beat a bad economy.