It is with a bit of sadness that I have to admit this:  the industry of buying and selling websites can be a bit shady.  But not all the shadiness comes from people who are trying to scam buyers (although there are too many of those people) – some people selling websites simply don’t know what they are doing.

Buying and selling websites can truly be a risky business.

Fortunately for us, the same tools that we use for SEO can be absolutely invaluable when buying a website.  I want to look at some SEO tools, and a few tools that aren’t specifically SEO related, that we’ve found to be extremely helpful in vetting websites for sale.

Are There Other Websites?

Consider the two following scenarios:

Scenario 1: About two years ago I had a client who sold a website that sold various computer accessories. As a part of that sale he signed a two year non-compete agreement.  A year later he came to me with a nearly identical business that had several years worth of history (he obviously had no intention of honoring his non-compete). Needless to say we did not retain his business.

Scenario 2: You are considering a website that generates significant revenue through affiliate earnings.  How can you be certain all of the revenue is coming from the website you are buying? How do you know that the seller doesn’t have other websites that have the same affiliate code?

There are a few tools which are very helpful in discovering other websites that a seller owns or other sites that they may have affiliate codes on.

    DomainTools.com.  DomainTools gives you the ability to see both the history of ownership of a domain as well as other domains owned by the current owner.
    WhoRush.com This tool is similar to DomainTools, but besides just discovering other domains that are owned by a seller, you can look up affiliate codes, analytics IDs, adsense IDs, and more and find out if they are located on other websites.
    ReverseInternet.com. This is a mashup of several different types of tools – a mix of both WhoRush and SEMRush in one service.


Is the Traffic Stable?

Very few sellers will admit that they built their website on a virtual house of cards.  Some of these sellers know exactly what they are doing and are able to build rankings or traffic systems that have short lifespans. Other sellers really don’t know what they are doing, but may have accidentally positioned themselves for trouble in the near future.

Fortunately there are several tools which can help you determine just how well a person is set up for lasting traffic:

    Google Analytics. One of the first things I look to with any website is whether their traffic is well-distributed. Are they getting a large portion of traffic from just a handful of keywords, or do they have a nice mix of social, direct, referral, and organic traffic? Strong referral traffic can also be an indicator of a stronger ranking.
    OpenSiteExplorer.org.  OpenSiteExplorer is a good, free tool you can use to get a basic idea as to how a site is linked and whether it is ripe to be impacted by future updates. The free tool by itself can be useful to examine authority, especially when compared to competition. It can also be used to identify potential dirty link building.
    SEMRush. SEMRush and other similar tools are extremely valuable for measuring a niche’s competitiveness as well as identifying areas of easy growth. This tool can also be used to identify shady link building practices or to validate a natural SEO strategy that is more secure.

Can You Build on This?

The tools listed above will help you make significant headway in determining whether a seller knows their own website as well as make significant headway in judging whether the seller is honest. But despite this, you still need to be able to make the website you are buying profitable and sustainable. Here are some common tools to help with this:

    BuiltWith.com. This is a free online tool that will tell you everything you need to know about the technology behind a website.  Very useful!
    BannedCheck.com.  This, admittedly only applies to Adsense sites, but sellers of content sites are often hesitant to admit if they have been banned by Adsense. If your plan involves taking  a content site with strong traffic and adding Adsense, check this tool first.
    Google Trends. This tool should be obvious, but it is a good idea to know if you are buying into a dying industry. We often see an influx of websites for sale when their respective niches are nearing the end of their useful lives. Google trends can help uncover the next “buggywhip business”.

Be a Smart Buyer

Even though buying websites can be risky, a smart buyer can navigate most of the possible risks. Using common SEO tools and other online intelligence tools, you don’t have to rely on a seller to know what they are doing, and you can help protect yourself from those few people who are just trying to scam their way to a quick pay-day.

What are your favorite tools and how do you conduct due diligence on a seller? Share below in the comments.

This content was originally posted  by "mark-daoust"

For the past two years, financial bloggers have been writing about a small company based in New York that provides loans to people in Columbia and the Philippines. It’s remarkable, considering that most of these bloggers live in countries in which the financial company isn’t even offering a product. But this company is doing something really innovative: It’s using social media monitoring in order to determine a user’s credit scores. This could signal a huge change in the way reputation management, and social media cleanup, works in the future. Here’s what’s happening.

The Impact of Friends

Traditionally, banks rely on a few key indicators in order to measure a person’s creditworthiness. The amount of money a person makes, the amount of money a person owes, and the person’s prior history of attending to financial obligations were the three key points banks took into consideration when choosing to give or withhold money to a needy person.

A company like Lenddo, on the other hand, computes credit scores based on social media factors. The theory is that people who socialize together tend to have the same income and spending habits, so finding people who have friends who are trustworthy means finding people who are likely to pay back their loans on time.

In order to determine this social credit score, Lenddo asks applicants to provide information regarding their social media accounts, such as their screen names on:

    LinkedIn
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Google+

The higher the social media presence, and the more high-quality friends a person has, the higher score the person might receive. In addition, applicants are also asked to designate a few choice people as their “Trusted Connections.” Linking up with people who have already borrowed from Lenddo and paid back the loans on time is just one way to game the system and ensure that the loan is approved.

Broader Applications for Reputation Management

On the surface, it seems unnecessary to understand how a small bank works. After all, few Americans or Europeans will travel to the Philippines just to take out a loan, and those who do might choose to work with a reputable bank rather than an online startup. But for those of us who work in reputation management, this is a bit of an alarming trend.

Typically, when clients ask for help with reputation management, experts look at the actions that person has performed online. Snarky news articles, raunchy blog posts, nasty photographs, and unfortunate press releases are typically the focus of the effort, and SEO techniques are used to either remove these offensive items or drive them down in search results.

However, if the online industry as a whole is moving toward a more comprehensive view of a person’s reputation, this traditional technique may not be effective. Specifically, if a person’s reputation is dependent, in part, on the other people a person knows, comprehensive reputation management might mean digging into the details of the connections a person makes in the online world.

At this point, ethics become a little sketchy. While clients might provide permission for technicians to delve into their lives and amend details that aren’t quite ready for prime time, random friends may not appreciate the added attention. It might also be difficult to determine how trustworthy or helpful a friend is without really digging too deep into that person’s life and crossing privacy lines.

Additionally, people with reputation difficulties might be astonished to find out how long such a cleanup might take, and the costs might be far too extensive for them to bear. People with hundreds of connections might need hundreds of hours of help, and that could be prohibitive for some.

Takeaway Points

As mentioned, there doesn’t seem to be a need for widespread panic at this point. The company providing this service only operates in a few choice countries, and the methods they use may never catch on in the wider world.

However, anyone who works with reputation issues should keep in mind that client connections may very well play a role in cleanup efforts in the future. It’s a message we can, and should, be sharing widely, so our customers can make good choices now.

And we can also lead by example, by ensuring that our own social media connections are with real people we’ve met in real time in a real place. We should also feel free to break ties with people who are acting up (and acting out) in ways that might cast us in an unfavorable light. Just keeping tabs, and ensuring that our friends make us look good, could help us prepare to the next wave of social media monitoring that sites like Lenddo seem to be ushering in.

How might you monitor your social media connections in the face of this news? Or do you think no action is required at all? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section.

This content was originally posted  by "jean-dion" on "searchenginejournal"