Purchasing an established domain name - Whats the right move?

[higherimages]

Hey Moz community,

To fill you in, we have a situation where we are able to purchase a domain name that has some longevity behind it, has some great inbound links coming to it, and until recently was ranking incredibly well for all of the relevant keywords nationwide. The issue is, the seller took their website down about a month ago and now, since the domain has been sitting there going to no mans lands for that period of time, it has fallen off the map for all of those important keyword rankings.

I'm looking for guidance on the following:

1. If we still move forward with purchasing the domain name, do you believe we could recover those rankings quickly? Or are we better off building from scratch with a new domain.

2. Because of the back links alone, I still feel there is some value in this domain name. The issue is, if we buy it, what do we do with it when we have it? Make that our primary domain name going forward? direct the domain name to a landing page/site that ultimately leads website visitors down a path to get to our website? Something else?

Any insight / thoughts / suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

DH.

[KevinBudzynski]

If the site is down for a few days it's not an issue. Much more than that and it will be difficult to retain any of those rankings. Even if you took possession and build content that is contextually relevant from what was on the previous site, the DA will most likely steadily decline. Also, most likely the domain ownership will change. Google recognizes these patterns (site down for a prolonged period of time and change of domain ownership) and will discount any links. These are mechanism put in place to discourage this activity. I have heard success stories on doing this, but far and few between in last few years.

[higherimages]

Thanks very much. We decided not to move forward with this. Your advice was helpful.