Buy exact match domain and 301 worth it?

[TVape]

So there is this exact match domain that gets about 500 visitors a day. it has trust flow 17 and citation flow of 23 which is just a little lower than our own website. The website talks about one of our keywords and rank on second page in SERPs.

I am not interested in buying and running that website, but rather just to liquidate all the pages with 301s into our existing domain and onto relevant pages. So the 301s would be to relevant pages.

The question is, would this strategy be worth it in todays SEO world and Google updates?

[Eric_Rohrback]

Before doing that I would make absolutely sure the previous owner didn't do anything that'll bite you down the road... like buying a bunch of garbage links. Do you not want to run that site or do you just want to pull all the traffic they're getting to your site? I'm also curious how you know that site gets about 500 visitors per day; have you seen their analytics?

As long as the site looks clean, and you just want to buy their traffic I don't see why you can't 301 it into your site.

[Toddfoster]

Hello there,

There are benefits to taking this route - you will generate some link juice for your website (less than it currently has obviously due to the 301). You will have to make sure that your hosting is set up separately so you are not risking any kind of algorithmic/manual penalty.

Keep in mind that a redirect will also impact the UX since you don't know whether that traffic is through search visitors, return visitors, or if there are hacking issues leading to ghost visitors. If this traffic is made up of the latter 2 options, you may face branding issues when they are not finding the website/brand they expect when they look it up.

There are many variables, but the biggest I see are these:

1. What is the cost?

You need to know what you're spending and whether the investment will be worth the link juice/traffic you get out of it.

2. What market are you targeting?

If this business is locally-focused, you need to look into the local side/map pack listings and whether this will benefit you. If it is more broadly-situated, this is less of a factor.

3. Are the benefits worth the costs?

17 TF/23 CF are not terrific metrics if there is a significant cost to the website. I would say that this is a buyer beware scenario.

4. Do you have a way of knowing whether the metrics will stay the same after purchase?

Anyone can buy or re-direct links for temporary rankings and remove them after purchase. Again - buyer beware.

I would say you are probably better off generating your own content and building up your site (and link profile) yourself - that way you know what you have and what has gone into the site to generate your own rankings. There are a lot of risks to take for the path you are suggesting and while there are benefits, the likelihood of success would be low enough to make me cautious.

Hope this helps!

Rob