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http://flippa.com/blog/domains/buy-aged-domains-due-dilligence/?utm_source=EmailMarketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EmailNewPost


Just the top of the post:
Due to the popularity of one of our previous post on Flipping Aged Domains, I thought we’d have a chat to one of the experts, and the man behind DomainFace, Kenny Goodman.

Originally cutting his entrepreneurial teeth dominating the lead-generation side of some of the most hyper-competitive industries around – Finance, Telecommunications, Nightclubs and Skip Rental (Dumpster Rental), two of the businesses Kenny’s created to date have been valued at over $10,000,000.

What Kenny Goodman doesn’t know about aged domains, isn’t worth knowing, so we asked Kenny to share some of his aged domain buying and due diligence advice.
What should people look for in an aged domain and what kind of due diligence can be done before purchasing?

Choosing a domain name is one of the most important tasks when building a website and most people don’t know they can purchase ready made assets in the form of aged domain names.

There’s a huge stack of un-mined gold hitting the market everyday because a lot of aged domains come with hidden benefits attached which gives them a massive head start in terms of traffic and therefore money. I call these ‘Dynamite Domains’.

The trick is to know what these benefits look like and how to find them because it can make the difference between selling a website for $150 and selling it for $1500.

It’s also really important to know what to avoid so you don’t end up buying a big fat expensive dud!

So I’ll list the dos and dont’s as clearly as possible here:

Keywords – As with new domains keywords are also important in aged domains. Websites with keywords in the domain will find it easier to rank in the search engines than comparable websites without keywords in the domain. This means websites with ‘big keywords’ (keywords with lot of searches in Google or/and cost per click in Google AdWords is high) in the domain will usually have more traffic than comparable websites without the keywords and will therefore sell for a lot more

If for example you are targeting the car hire industry and you want to rank for the key phrase “car hire” then you would ideally want the keywords ‘car’ and ‘hire’ in the domain name. There are several options when looking for a domain

    * Exact Match: The exact match domain for car hire would be CarHire.com or .net, .org etc. or if you are targeting a country specific niche then the country code domain name of that country – e.g. .co.uk for the UK. As you can see this is an exact match as it contains the words ‘car’ and ‘hire’ in that order and contains no other keywords. This is the ideal scenario when purchasing a domain but these are usually harder to find.
    * Phrase Match: If exact match isn’t available then the next best thing is phrase match. An example of a prefix phrase match = MyCarHire.com or a suffix = CarHireOnline.com. As you can see they both contain the keywords car and hire in the right order but they also contain other keywords.
    * Broad Match: If you are unable to find a suitable exact match or phrase match then the next best thing would be broad match. An example of a broad match = HirethisCar.com As you can see this contains the keywords ‘car’ and ‘hire’ but in a different order and it also contains the word ‘this’
    * Semantic Match: An example of a semantic match domain for the same industry would be JoesAutomobileRentals.com. As you can see the domain is in the same industry and automobile rentals is semantically related to “car hire” but it doesn’t contain the keywords ‘car’ or ‘hire’ anywhere in the domain. This would be less desirable than any of the above if all other things were equal.
    * Non Match: An example of a non match domain would be Hertz.com –Although Hertz is a big car hire company it clearly doesn’t have the keywords ‘car’ or ‘hire’ or any semantically related keywords anywhere in the domain and if all other things were equal it would be at a serious disadvantage to any of the above combination.

Domain Usage: What are you using the domain for? This will have a massive affect on your domain choice. If you are creating a review site for the office furniture market and your main key phrase is “office furniture” and you are unable to get the exact match domain then the next best thing would be OfficeFurnitureReviews.com for example.

Age of domain – you can check this manually by looking at the creation date on DomainTools.com. Older domains are better for SEO purposes. [LM: For websites and domain listed on Flippa, we show this in the auction's stats section.]

History – For SEO purposes it’s important the history of the domain is relevant to the niche you are targeting. Worse than a non-relevant domain would be a domain involved in any taboo industries such as adult or gaming – unless of course you are targeting these industries – horses for courses and all that….

You can check the history of most domains at archive.org.

Traffic/Popularity – If you cannot get access to the domain’s analytical data of then the next best thing is the Alexa ranking (Alexa.com). This isn’t very accurate but it does give an indication into the popularity of the domain. Lower numbers are better in this case.

Facebook, for example, has an Alexa ranking of 2 which means according to Alexa it is the 2nd most popular website in the world.....