The Importance Of Checking Inbound Links
High PR Site, All Search Engine Traffic
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I came across this auction on Sitepoint today. The site receives a decent amount of traffic and revenue is $900/month, though no information about costs/work commitment are given. But here is the red flag:
all website traffic is the result of organic search engine results.
That's good isn't it? Organic search traffic means no nasty PPC expenses, right? The domain is being advertised as being PR5 too, so that's a bonus. I've already checked the cache of the page for any sneaky redirect jiggery pokery to fake the PR and everything looks ok. So, why don't we delve a little deeper and have a look at the inbound links to this site, as links mean PR and search engine traffic.
Our trusty tool, Yahoo Site Explorer shows us that there aren't many inbound links. This means that the alleged PR5 is due to one or two particularly powerful links. Spider senses tingling. The site is only 3 months old, so the high PR smells fishy.
Incestuous Linking
The first link I find in Site Explorer is one from ibuilt.net and looky here, it's on a PR6 page (according to my toolbar, anyway). There aren't too many links on the page, so this link is mighty strong. If anything should happen to this link, the site being sold would suffer. I know, let's see who owns both domains.
The whois doesn't show anything telling for ibuilt.net (it's the usual Domains by Proxy protection). However, the owner of ithinkorganic.com is iBuilt.net LLC. So the two domains are owned by the same person. They are using an existing high PR site to jump start their new site. The danger here is that the potential buyer doesn't know this.
We already know that the search engine rankings for this site are a critical factor. The auction holder freely admits that this is the source of all traffic. That high PR link is really helping those rankings. If that link mysteriously disappears after the sale of the site, the new owner is goosed. What should the potential bidder do? Personally I would walk away. But if you have your heart set on the site, you could always ask the seller to sign a contract saying that the link will stay. But then you have all the problems of enforcing the contract if the seller lives a thousand miles away in a country that has different laws. It could be that when the new owner takes over the site, the previous owner removes the link, rankings, traffic and therefore revenue plummet and there is nothing the new owner can do about it.
Sellers are are largely a crooked, deceptive bunch...
So you can see the importance of doing your due diligence properly when thinking about buying a site. An exploration into a site's inbound links is especially important if the selling points of the site are PR and rankings, as in this case. If this site gets sold, I have a feeling the new owner is in for a nasty surprise.
Auction Details
**Organics** Niche Organic Farming Supply website w/traffic and sales
iThinkOrganic.com is a PR5 site built using the iBui.lt Website Management system.
- URL: http://www.ithinkorganic.com/
- Established: Thu Feb 05 2009
- Page views/month: 18,000
- Monthly Revenue (USD): 900
- Google Pagerank: 5
- Uniques/Month: 3,683
- Listed: Yesterday 22:01
Description:
This site is only a couple of months old and already has over 30 orders. The solid PR5 has allowed many of the pages to be indexed and I just added 20+ descriptions to the organic soil amendments products which will help improve results even further. Buy this organics related niche website and domain name while it is still available. iThinkOrganic.com is waiting to become a brand name that people recognize. a brand people associate with. Think t-shirts, hats, branded gardening tools, etc. Do you think organic?
Revenue Details:
the gross sales for April 2009 were over $900 earned from sales of organic soil amendments and fertilizers.
Traffic Details:
all website traffic is the result of organic search engine results. Contact me for most recent result as we expect teh latest content additions to increase the traffic even more.
There is some truth to what oyu are saying, however, if you check the context of the link on iBuilt.net you would see that it is a featured site. Then if you check the other sites designed by other customers you would see that the ithinkorganic.com site is one of the better looking sites. There is no reason to remove the site from the featured site listings because it represents a great example of what can be achieved.
I know the owner and the auction is open to conditional bids, so if you are worried about the link being removed, add a condition that is not be removed for at least a year.
Hi Tom!
If it can be guaranteed that the link stay, no problem. Unfortunately there can be no such guarantees. Even if it was stated in a contract that the link should stay, there is no way anyone could enforce it should the link then be removed. It probably wouldn’t be worth anyone’s time, effort and money to follow up.
You say that there is no reason to remove that site from the iBuilt featured listing but I can think of one. The potential profit from doing the same thing with another site. The owner could create another site to feature there, pump up its PR, rankings and traffic via that helpful link and then try and sell that for $7.5K like they’re doing with the current site. Profit is a good motivator for doing that. If the buyers don’t do their research, they’ll be none the wiser and won’t know the reason for their site’s falling rankings –> profits.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on a witch hunt here. I’m just using this auction to illustrate the importance of buyers doing one aspect of their due diligence – checking inbound links. There are many other examples of sellers deliberately hiding information that affects a buying decision.
Another option is for the owner to specify in the auction details all the information that affects the sale. I know that potential bidders would be particularly interested in this nugget. I think that some may even be put off by their dependence on the seller’s actions, post sale.
done, I couldn’t edit the auction details so I added it as a comment.
Instead of charging customers by the hour for web design work, we create and incubate online businesses for resale. We build them on our platform, iBui.lt, implement as many of the features as practical, and help get the site submitted to the search engines. We will make a residual off the hosting fee and be compensated up front for our time, when the site is sold. We are committed to maintaining an ongoing and amicable business relationship with the buyer. This is a website, with customers coming in the door and buying stuff, and it is being sold for what an equally poweful website would cost to develop from scratch (without customers coming in the door).
Your post and article are potentially diminishing the value of the site and for what? Because you want to make an example of a great website that is spring loaded with potential by calling it a scam? Go talk to your local small garden center, they will tell you that they had record sales this year. So what you are calling a bad investment (I would walk away) is really your ignorance preventing you from taking advantage of a great deal!
Tom, I think you misunderstand the point of my post. The site being sold may or may not be a good investment. My focus was more on the presentation of the auction and the details that were absent from it. My aim here is to give potential buyers help when it comes to doing their due diligence when assessing websites to buy. Although in this instance I chose your auction as an example, there are many others in the marketplace that lack the details they should – to the buyer’s disadvantage.
Good luck with selling your site.