Hey!

Two posts in the same month, it must be your birthday.

Super short intro today because a BUNCH of these names are ending in like… an hour or two. So shut up! Stop reading this, go buy domains!

Also, I wrote about Google’s recent May 2020 Core Algo Update here. Go read it when you’re done bidding on domains.

Domains With Authority

PLEASE! For your own sake, do some due diligence on these before buying. I only kick the tires like “yep, this is a tire.” Didn’t even check to see if the thing has an engine. I’m not responsible for your impulse buys!

BeatMuseum.org - ends 5/25

DR 45 with 1,000+ links. Some serious “art” authority. Not the hottest niche ever, but because of that, not a ton of inventory passing through the expired auctions, so this is your big chance.

Just under $5k, ends in a few hours. Has links from every site you can imagine! Go ahead and imagine one—which one did you pick?

Pornhub?

It doesn’t have a link from there, sorry. But, like, a bunch of other places!

BoingBoing, KCRW, Miami.edu, NYTimes, All Wikipedia Languages, BBC, etc.

A *Three-Pack of Authoritative Tech Sites With Terrible Domains

* each domain sold separately.

Ceedo.com - ends 5/25

DR 35. Used to be “lightweight visualization platform for mobiles” but now it’s… not that.

Domainers will recognize that this is a terrible misspelling of the auction platform “Sedo.” Non-domainers will just be like “damn, that’s a stupid domain that you’ll constantly have to spell for people if you really build your brand there.

Links from: StackOverflow, Entrepreneur, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, PCMag, TechTarget, TechRadar

RFC-Base.org - ends 5/25

Time-stamp servers? This shit is over my head. An awful domain to build a brand on, but my god, some of the best tech-related backlinks I’ve seen in doing this newsletter for about a year… DR 65, only at $1300+ currently (will not stay there, be assured)

Links from: Microsoft, NGINIX.org, Apache.org, Oracle, iCANN, Cisco, Python EYE BALLS EMOJI

MircScripts.org - ends 5/25

I’m not sure WTF a MIRC Script is, but the site is a DR 35 with ~450 referring domains. Good, tech-related backlink profile:

Links from: RedHat, Oreilley, TeamSpeak, AnandTech, TechSpot, Frontier.com

Currently at $1300+ with a couple hours left.

And Now, Back to Some Non-Tech Names

WiredCosmos.com - ends 5/25

Space domain! DR 22. Ends today

Some strong science domains from NatGeo, Smithsonian, etc. At $200 now, probably goes for… $700…ish?

YourHotCar.com - ends 5/25

No, you are.

What?

DR 37, ranking for a hundred or so long-tail car “specific model” body kit type keywords. Obvious car part build out site. Cha-ching. Easy. Doesn’t have an amazeballs backlink profile here—which is fine, no reason it should. But what it does have is a bunch of auto-related backlinks of sites I never heard from, which is… appropriate.

Currently a bit under a $grand.

MediaBrix.com - ends 5/25

DR 49, a mix of links from sites like Entrepreneur.com, AdWeek, BI, VentureBeat, AmEx, Angel.co — you get it. Business links.

Slightly under $1,000 currently. Probably goes for a bit more than that, as the brand is decent, almost, and a lot of media/ad/tech/marketing companies can spin some SEO gold from this hay.

MarsHillChurch.org - ends 5/26

DR 49. Get you some religious links! Like the art links from a site I wrote about above, solid religious links are in short supply, so here’s your big chance. Links from ChristianityToday, ShareFaith, etc. Solid pick up, currently at a few hundred bucks.

While we’re on the topic, this tweet:

Laura @_SaturnReturn

Obsessed with this image.

May 24th 2020

126,941 Retweets654,460 Likes

haha, what?!

CuteThingsFallingAsleep.org - ends 5/26

This is the kind of thing it probably doesn’t cost THAT much to build, and can go insanely viral (like this one did—ton of big media links).

Speaking of viral, this is the kind of content we all need right now, stuck at home. Rebuild this thing, get a bunch more media links, make some people smile, and low-key link to your bitcoin casino.

DR 34 — $400 right now, probably goes for just under a thousand.

FlexTimeLawyers.com - ends 5/26

Oh shit, y’all. A legitimate lawyer site. Links from some super-relevant sites like: AmericanBar.org, FindLaw.com, WAPO, UPenn, WisBar.org, TheModernFirm.com

I know throwing this auction to a bunch of SEOs is like:

But there it is. Get yo LAWYER links. Currently at $400, expect it to go WAY up. (Not currently ranking for any KWs, but is pretty well indexed).

GigaPXL.org - ends 5/26

A high-resolution photo project. Some big ole tech/biz links, like: Adobe.com, NYTimes, BBC, Wired, ScientificAmerican, SlashDot, Fool, MacRumors

Over $1k already. A solid photo-focused affiliate site (or whatever) domain, even on a .org.

brcactaceae.org - ends 5/26

Not sure what this means, but just putting this on the list if you need some big Brazil links/authority. DR 21, ranking for +800 KWs.

SFGov3.org - ends 5/27

Some kind of… official San Francisco site? Some city group or something.

Big, juicy links on a shit domain: CDC.gov, FastCompany, NewsWeek, Recode, NerdWallet, DC.gov, ThinkProgress

DR 47, currently at $200+

DogDomain.com - ends 5/31

A DR 33 with just under 30 KWs “currently ranking for.” At $200 with over 6 days left, but a dog-related domain with some dog authority… I assume there’ll be a big fight over this from the… millions? of pet-related affiliate site owners.

Seriously, I think people want to start an affiliate site and you don’t know what make it about… glance around the room… coffee cups? No. Chairs? No.

💡💡💡 Perfect.

Domains to Build a Brand On

Gorilla.net - ends 5/31

You know how I feel about .net — but gorilla is a strong KW. Lots of people agree: currently at $3.5k

Brier.com - ends 5/27

An alternate (and not very popular) spelling of briar. Not super valuable unless you own both, but still a dictionary word and short, so will go for a lot of money and be a sexy domain to build a brand on (just not my fave though. Briar.com on the other hand… Swoon).

WorkflowAutomation.com - ends 5/31

Long domain, but perfect brand if you do this kind of work already…

~

That’s it for this episode of domains and gifs (sorry not sorry for the dog one).

Hit me back, say hello, tell me what you’re up to, etc. And click “like” or whatever so I can get internet points and move up the Substack ranking… super important to me.

Suuuuuuper.

Until next time…

Sean

Hey!

It’s me, that guy that doesn’t post things consistently.

How’re things?

Me? Oh, you know…

EXISTENTIAL CRISIS.

I’m here to distract you and distract myself with domain names! Names you can buy and build a business on to help give you the illusion of pushing back against the inevitable entropy that’ll one day see all our precious energy scattered and returned to the cold, unfeeling universe from which we came, and to which we’ll return.

But like I said, until that happens you can have a little fun, build a business or two, find some success, and buy some… I dunno beef jerky? What do super-successful people eat? I’ma stick with beef jerky.

Links You Should Read

This Week in SEO #116 — recently written by me over at the Smash Digital blog. Learn about SEO! See an SEO joke I made!

The Time for a Website Migration is Now — Nick LeRoy makes some good points here, that may or may not apply to you. The gist of it is: things are wild right now anyway, if you’ve been putting off combining two sites, switching to “https://,” jumping to that baller domain you acquired through my awesome list, you might as well do it now when the world is chaos.

Domains With Authority

Remember, kids. Do your due diligence. I’m only glancing at these through a dirty shop window, here, if you’re gonna put down some real Benjamins on a name make sure it hasn’t been spammed to death previously…

RAPTR.com - ends 5/17

Big money! DR 66, 11.5k links.

Some of the anchor text is around “gaming card,” but when I dug into some context via what other sites were saying when they link to RAPTR.com, it sounds like it was a social media play for gamers.

Womp. Guess that didn’t work out. However, this domain… this has a lot “gaming” energy, a very hot industry (especially right now) with a TON of authority to help you launch something smart that makes a lot of money. Give the domain a B- as a brand—raptor is cool but raptr is a cliché, know what I mean? In the low thousands now, with about four days left. Good opportunity here…

PromoMagazine.com - ends 5/19

DR 62, a thousand+ links. Used to be some kind of ad publication or something, talking about marketing. Has some phenomenal links. If you have a marketing/business brand, this could be a really solid acquisition. Decent brand… better than “raptr” anyway.

TheHostingNews.com - ends 5/18

ANOTHER DR 60+ site, but this one is currently below $100. That makes me suspicious, but 1) the site has a few pages indexed, and 2) the referring domains aren’t redirected through another URL or something…

Anyway if you’re dumb enough—wait, I mean, DUMB enough to try and get into the “best hosting” niche you might as well start with a super solid brand and 1,000 links, right?

Do a bit of extra diligence here, just in case.

CeramicIndustry.com - ends 5/17

DR 57 and some amazing .gov/.edu (and other) links, and ranking for hundreds of KWs.

Just over $100 currently.

Kind of a boring niche/industry, but in every industry there’s money to be made…

Anyway, this is the kind of boring domain that you can get a bunch of sites to link to without being suspicious, and then 301 it to your money site once you’ve racked up some solid authority.

WindEnergyFoundation.org - ends 5/15

Oh, man. Cash in some bitcoin and get ready for a fight if you want this one.

Speaking of kind of innocuous names that you can get people to link to pretty easily that are ALSO in an industry with huge potential (kinetic) energy… and by energy I mean money. I tried to make a potential/kinetic energy joke but it didn’t work. I’m keeping it in, though. YOLO.

Anyway… at $3.5k with just a couple days left. DR 42, +400 links, and even still ranks for a few (not so valuable) keywords. Amaaaazing link profile. Could be a nice opportunity for someone building a property in the sustainable energy space.

Domains to Build a Brand On

WhatCMS.com - ends 5/15

Interesting opportunity to build one of those “what Wordpress theme is this” sites — I think they make a ton of money in ads/affiliate plays. “What CMS is this?” Perfect name for that query.

ChatterBean.com - ends 5/17

Sounds like one of the made up dopey companies at TechCrunch Disrupt on Silicon Valley.

CrashCam.com - ends 5/13

Great brand name for a dash-cam product. Slightly negative connotation, but if someone does something stupid and crashes into you, you’ll wish you had your Crash Cam on…

SharkGames.com - ends 5/13

Gaming domain. Gaming is hot etc. etc. Decent brandable if you’re gonna put the time in to build something out.

SecurityGuard.net - ends 5/13

.net still sucks, but “security guard” is not a bad left part of the domain name. But .net really is kind of flaccid, brand-wise. You’ll always wish you had the .com…

~

That’s it for this edition of the SEM newsletter. Follow me on Twitter if you want to see me retweet things other people post, or complain.

I’ll see you the next time I get bored trying to manage a bunch of affiliate sites or need to procrastinate on something specific.

If you enjoyed this, shoot me an email to say so, or say hello. Tell me what kind of shit you’re up to.

Until next time…

Sean
sem@seanmarkey.com

Hello again to everyone who subscribes to my list.

It has been like 15 months since I last wrote a newsletter in early February.

How have things been for you?

I’ve barely left the house since early March. I guess if I had to be quarantined somewhere, I could do WAY worse than hunkering done in this empty bit of high desert. The local health department has basically canceled tourism and the national parks nearby (Arches and Canyonlands) are both shut down. This is the entry to Arches Nat’l Park, for comparison:

Wild times…

(please enable images—lots of images in this edition)

Anyway, hope you’re doing well as one could hope to be during an actual factual pandemic. Stay safe out there and wash your god damned hands!

Let’s get to the domains and the SEO…

How Not to Treat Your DR 73 Expired Domain That You Paid $66k For

In early Feb I was going to write about a DR 73 ex-Condé Nast property that was caught @ DropCatch and at auction. In Ahrefs it looks like this:

Anyway, two-ish months later, and here’s how the site looks:

Inspiring!

..what a waste.

#WhatNotToDo

Interesting Things

This Week in SEO #114: I wrote this news-y post for Smash Digital, and it’s a nice 5 minute read of all the most important things from the world of SEO in the past week or so. If you like my writing style, and are interested in SEO, it’s probably worth your time.

This Week in SEO #115: And here’s another, because its been a while. Catch up on recent SEO news with these amazingly well-written-by-a-handsome-genius posts. Full of memes and the usual shit from me.

#FlattenTheCurve - In early March I saw there was a big trend building on Twitter of people talking about “Flatten the Curve.” I checked, and the domain was available, so I bought it, thinking I’d make a little site or something… one week and a million page views later, it was clear the site resonated with a lot of people. It’s easily one of the things I’m most proud of doing —it seemed to really connect with, and help, a lot of people. Here’s a write-up of how it all came about.

Later in the month I hand-reg’d and built How to Start a Bog — but it wasn’t quite as popular…

Follow Me on Twitter for High Quality Content Like

Sean Markey @seanmarkey

Quarantine, day 1: Created FlattenTheCurve.com Quarantine, day 21: Created How to Start A BogWe put the BRO in ombrotrophic.howtostartabog.com

March 30th 2020

1 Retweet26 Likes

All right, enough of that. Here’s this weeks domains!

Domains With Authority

These are domains with existing authority (links built to them) that used to be sites. Please note: I didn’t do a super deep dive on the history of the site, so make sure you do some STRONG due diligence before buying. You cannot blame me for your bad decisions. :)

ComputerNews.com - ends 4/3

DR 50, fairly solid brand (a bit generic but really communicates what you can expect to find on the site) with 700+ links.

Not gonna be cheap, this one…

LFL360.com - ends 4/8

Apparently this was once the home of the Lingerie Football League (though some context from previous leagues shows this was also to the home of the Legends Football League, whatever that is).

Some solid big-media links. DR 30. Ranks for hundreds of (not at all valuable) keywords, so has some juice in the SERPs still. A good sign!

HeathersFrenchPress.com - ends 4/4

DR 55, 1.4k links. Some really good backlinks from news/media sites and some other big prizes like Healthline, Delish.com, CountryLiving…

Used to be a recipe site, but this is 100% a coffee affiliate site. DR 55 and a few months of content + fresh links? I think it’d do well. Currently @ $500 ish.

MyPrintResource.com - ends 4/6

A solid DR 52 ranking for some not-terrible keywords like printing industry news, print industry news, digital printing news, etc.

Almost 600 referring domains from Forbes, HP, Python.org. Not sure what kind of site you could turn this into… something something print on demand? Not sure, but whatever you end up doing, you’d have a nice head start /w this authority and relevancy.

CodingTheWheel.com - ends 4/7

DR 33 with some nice tech/gadget backlinks, such as Springer, AdWeek, StackExchange, Chron, BoingBoing, CodeProject.

Still relatively cheap for the authority ($20 at the time of writing) but I expect this’ll go for a few hundred, which, still a good deal, if you have a tech/gadget microsite you need to build out, or eventually acquire for one of your other properties…

Bonus if you’re in the casino niche, it seems like this site got a lot of press for building a “poker bot,” whatever that is. So if you’re in the market for some clean links in that very dirty niche, this may be a good acquisition.

Street-Papers.org - ends 4/5

DR 40, almost 500 backlinks from WSJ, Pitchfork, Amnesty, TruthOut.org — used to be:

a Glasgow-based charity that supports independent newspapers distributed by homeless and long-term unemployed vendors

Not too sure what you could do with this site, but the URL (which kind of sucks as a brand, tbh) and the subject of the site is fairly general, so I think you could change it over to whatever niche you want probably pretty successfully.

Philica.com - ends 4/7

DR 33, hundreds of referring domains like Springer, FoxNews, Yahoo, Gizmodo, SmithsonianMag. Looks like it was maybe the URL of a science journal? Great pick-up if you’re in the science/health space and could use an infusion of authority. Currently at just under $300, probably goes for $1k-ish.

BotObjects.com - ends 4/5

Wow. This is a great pick-up if you’re in the tech/robotics/3D printing space. Some really killer backlinks here (StackOverflow, Engadget, PCWorld, TechRepublic, GigaOm, PopSci), and a URL that is a decent brand—I’d give it a B+

Used to be the site of a 3D printer, and was picked up by an affiliate marketer who built out a generic tech review site. Not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely not the virgin 3D printing site you were hoping for. I saw nothing alarming in my quick glance, but you should obvious do some heavy research before you… checks price… bid $17. :)

Domains to Build a Brand On

These are domains that would make a great brand. Basically, if you acquire a site with a history (above), you can rebuild and redirect to one of these domains (below), because the only thing better than a site with some strong authority is a site with strong authority that is also a solid brand.

Sunblossom.com - ends 4/3

Damn. I really love this as a brand. Ton of positive connotation. Great plant/botany brand.

DevNet.com - ends 4/10

Sounds like the 20 year-old domain that it is, would still be a GREAT tech/dev brand.

1Media.com - ends 4/5

Has a bunch of auction action. Gonna be messy unless you also get OneMedia.com, probably (“1 media — no, the number one. “The Number One media dot com—no, that’s not our slogan that’s our domain name…”).

CBDSale.com - ends 4/4

Why is this going for +$5k? It has no authority (and a questionable history, content-wise). It’s not a very good brand—do you go to ClothesSale.com for your garments? ComputerSale.com for your electronics?

I guess it’s close to the keyword “CBD For Sale” which may lend it some value? But, eh… I don’t love it.

WorkFlowManagement.com - ends 4/7

Sounds important. Long, but you could probably built a solid website on this domain.

VerticalJump.com - ends 4/3

A+ sports brand for, you know… when we have sports again…

HomerAlaska.com - ends 4/9

I want to go to there…

DropCatch Medical Domains

Bonus section: there are some interesting medical-related .org domains at auction via DropCatch if you’re into that. If you’re not interested in a build out (these domains have no authority), could be a nice mini portfolio of health-related .orgs to acquire.

Measles.org - ends 4/5

Bronchitis.org - ends 4/5

Rabies.org - ends 4/5

Rubella.org - ends 4/5

~

That’s it for this week!

If you read this far down, you’re probably super bored and stuck at home, but… I guess we all are?

Quick bit of news: I’m almost done building a site where you can buy (and eventually sell) domains with authority and domains with authority that also have a starter site, indexed, with some keyword rankings. These sites don’t really fit into the traditional website marketplaces, but are still valuable and, I can personally attest to this both through my own purchasing behavior and the readers of this email I hear from, in demand.

I hope to announce the site in next week’s (or whenevers) email, so def. stay tuned for that.

Until then, stay safe and stay tf home.

Sean Markey

Happy Monday!

Hope your week is off to a great start. Here it’s still cold, but at least we’re starting to get some days without the persistent inversion-fog that has been hanging around for what feels like most of 2020. Here’s a shot from a recent walk I took:

Living way the hell out in the middle of nowhere has its perks, like this view…

Anyway, on to the reason you bothered to read my email: SEO and Domains!

In This Issue:

• Content I loved (and also wrote that you should read)

• Update on that accidental SEO experiment

• Domains at auction that you want to buy

Content I Loved

First Up, an article I wrote on Featured Snippets at Smash Digital.

Second: a really great video tutorial about refreshing stale content by John-Henry Scherck (a really smart SEO that I respect a lot).

Finally, VERY relevant to people who read this newsletter, John Mu talking about how Google handles site merges:

Google's John Mueller said that when you merge two sites together, the domain you are getting rid of and not using anymore will take time to go away in Google's search results. When you do a site move, like moving to a new domain but it's the same content, URLs, etc, then that is much faster.

🍌 John 🍌 @JohnMu

@rameshnair @justinaldridge @sanjusanwal Those are completely different sites - and the query explicitly searches for the old site. This is not a site move; it looks more like you're merging sites. In my opinion, it's fine & expected for us to treat it like this.

February 8th 2020

1 Like

Definitely click through and look at all the tweets in the exchange. Very interesting.

Update on SEO Experiment

Just a quick update (and unrelated to any recent algorithm shenanigans in my opinion, but one never knows), the site I undid the redirect of after 5 months of being acquired by another site—check out last week’s newsletter for more background—is doing well!

Not bad!

Here’s a view of the increasing keyword activity via Ahrefs:

Like I said in the last newsletter—nothing sketchy here, just undoing the redirect because the site I redirected this site too turned about to be a bit TOO toxic in a past life, despite disavowing links and etc.

Domains With Authority

Remember to do your own due diligence before buying, because I am not responsible for any bad/quick decisions you make. I didn’t dig deeply into any of these past making sure they were indexed and had a good link profile. All else is on you!

Emlii.com - ends 2/12

A DR 47 domain with a lot of “general” relevance. Ranking for things like "festivals around the world" and "rarest item in the world.” Will go for high 3/low 4 figures (like 1,000-ish) but you shouldn’t pay much more than that unless you have a CONCRETE use for the site, as it’s extremely broad, and the backlink profile isn’t that impressive. Would be a great domain to test things with, if you can get it for cheap enough.

LinuxForDevices.com - ends 2/12

A tech-focused DR 55 with a lot of really big backlinks might have you itching to bid, but the value here is balanced by the fact that the domain is not currently indexed in Google. Not an amazing buy for the domain/brand along. Currently at high 3 figures, I’d caution you on spending too much on a domain that’s not indexed, as it’s more of a risk as to whether or not it will pass all that much juice to one of your sites (or in and of itself, if you build something on it—you might just be starting at 0 despite what SEO tools say).

AlexandriaNews.org - ends 2/17

DR 55 news site with some strong backlinks (WAPO, MIT, VOX, SFGate, etc) and indexed. Currently ranking for a few worthless keywords, but the presence of those keywords is a good sign. < 500k Ahrefs ranking means the backlink profile is big and strong, like all those milk ads from the 90s promised you’d be if you just drank a big ole glass of cow juice every morning:

A good pick-up if you’re going to invest the time into building out your very own News Site, because then you can just link out to anything you want (as long as you really invest in building out the site with a lot of legitimate, non-commercial, not-for-placing-links-only content.

Got dinged via Medic Update, it looks like, but it was probably just ranking for a bunch of shit it shouldn’t have been, so I would assume (having done ZERO research in archive.org) that it’s not a risky acquisition for a build out as long as you don’t make it into a medical-themed site.

ElonPendulum.com - ends 2/14

University, not Musk.

I guess this is a university-specific news publication called The Pendulum. Not a big use-case for building a brand on, but I never know what someone else might find valuable, so, here you go! Currently at $500, so I guess SOMEone has a use case for it…

FierceHealthFinance.com - ends 2/13

DR 48 health/finance relevancy site, should be in demand. Ranking for a few brand-related KWs, which is a good sign, like I said above. All kinds of big, sexy links (Springer, ThinkProgress, MotherJones, AHA.org, TheFiscalTimes, NonprofitQuarterly) — just keep in mind that FierceHealthCare.com is a live site and will probably not appreciate you using old content, so be careful how you treat any builds of this one.

But there’s a lot of value in this one if you can find a way around the “Fierce” part of the brand (which, honestly, I’d be concerned to try and build a lasting brand on).

RottenWiFi.com - ends 2/13

Hmm, really interesting opportunity here.

DR 49 site ranking for hundreds of long tail keywords. Site used to be a WiFi Watchdog app, helping you find the best WiFi spots when you traveled. It also had a blog full of commonly asked question. Here’s a shot at what kind of stuff is ranking:

I could see a really slick rebuild of this site, with all its long tail articles that funneled people back to router or other tech review pages. So you don’t compete on the “Best X” product keyword, but funnel semi-ish interested traffic throughout your articles. Not quite as valuable as if people came to your site searching for “Best X” but also not as competitive. I don’t even know what kind of stuff you could sell… 4G hotspot devices? CPAs for Sprint or something?

Opportunity for someone with some hustle to grab this and get a site up ASAP to start capturing traffic…

NTT.cc - ends 2/17

Used to write about tech stuff (javascript or something blah blah) a million years ago in 2008-ish. Probably been offline for a while, I didn’t check, but you should (archive.org). Has some big juicy tech links (Wordpress.org, ThemeForest, Jquery.com, Moz, SmashingMagazine) but could be a bit of a risky acquisition given how stale the site probably is.

A good acquisition if you don’t have to spend too much on it (currently $12) as whether it does all that much for you remains to be seen…

VALinux.com - ends TODAY! NOW!!

DR 66 with big tech/coding links (CNN, CNet, Wired, Python.org, Oreilly, Kernal.org).

At $1.5k at the time of writing, but will definitely go for more because of that link profile. Due your due diligence before bidding!

WHOIndia.org - ends 2/14

WHO = World Health Organization.

DR 54, strong medical and India-related link profile. A good pick-up if you need to juice one of your other sites. Probably a terrible brand to build any kind of site on…

Domain to Build a Brand On

Nothing really here this week. GoDaddy’s NameCon auction really muddied the waters, and made finding domains that were valuable brands but NOT at auction with a reserve hard to find. Annoying. But… I’ll look again next week!

~

That’s it for issue 3. Happy to hear any feedback/thoughts/etc. you have. Thanks to everyone who responded last week re: done-for-you service interest or possible consulting interest. Still chewing on it all.

Have a great week!

- Sean

Hey!

Here’s another email full of stuff like an SEO experiment and domains that are expiring that you can buy, and what you might possibly do with them.

A big fat reminder to do your due diligence before pulling the trigger on these—as I have not spent an hour deep-diving into each name to make sure it’s spotless, so make sure you do before spending a bunch of money. I’m not responsible for any bad decisions you make!

RE: SEO News Section From Last Week’s Email: I didn’t really like writing about SEO news here so formally, so I’m not going to. I actually do that at another site… a weekly column kind of thing. I’ll put the link here for next week’s(ish) newsletter so you can read about SEO if you’re interested.

In this week’s edition:

• some meta thoughts about this newsletter

• a really interesting SEO/branding/domain experiment I’m doing

• domains at auction

Meta Thoughts About Future Offerings in this Newsletter

I have recently been thinking about offering some extremely limited consulting spots for helping someone/some company find domains that will help grow traffic/authority, help consult on how to actually USE these domains to build the brand, and maybe possibly a done-for-you service.

I dunno. Nothing formal. I’m not start a consulting company or anything (for now). But if you’re potentially interested in paying for this kind of help that I am very clearly knowledgeable about, please shoot me an email—I’d love to chat about possibilities.

Another thing I’ll be trying is posting some domains/sites I’ve acquired or built out here to see if anyone is interested in purchasing. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe I’ll have something in March for this.

Also, if you end up buying a valuable domain here or getting some good tips (or even just being entertained), throw me some money @ PayPal like a finder’s fee. If you want.

Experiment I’m Doing

Is it possible to buy a real live site with lots of ranking and traffic, then 301 it to a newly acquired domain that’s 10,000 times a better brand but has a history of the dirtiest garbage-water-tasting spammy exact match forum links so that all that traffic and all those rankings go to zero, and then UNDO that 301 and recover some or all of your original rankings on the live site you bought?

I dunno, but I’m gonna find out.

Here’s the graveyard of some page one rankings (with Featured Snippet for a bit!) the site had AFTER the redirect, when Google murdered it:

death emoji

knife emoji

That second one was a very very valuable buying keyword with lots of monthly searches.

There was really nothing fishy with this one, I legitimately bought a live site whose domain I hated, and tried to move it over to an AMAZING industry-relevant one word domain that unfortunately had a history of really shitty link building (before it expired and I bought it).

After everything went to zero I tried disavowing some obviously trash referring domains, but after a month or two of nothing happening, I pronounced the site truly dead for good.

But then I though F-it, I’ll just try and undo the acquisition and redirect. The Algorithm loved the site once, maybe I can resurrect this corpse help it and Google find Zombie-on-Algorithm love.

The Results:

It’s still early, but some interest stuff is happening:

This is the rank-graph for the site falling from #3-ish in early September because I redirected the site to the second site, and the site starting to come back after the redirect was removed. This is for the lucrative buying keyword.

This one came almost all the way back—a long tail review keyword.

And here’s a section of the keywords I’m tracking, and their rankings (which last week were all non-existent because of the redirect/acquisition).

Mostly I’m amazed at how quickly the keywords started ranking again.

Not anywhere close to where they were before, obviously, but a promising start!

I’ll update you on how things go in the future (probably). If you have specific questions aside from what URL is this and if it makes sense I’ll answer them in next week’s(ish) newsletter.

Domains With Authority

Buy these sites to start a new content/affiliate/ecommerce whatever site. Let someone else’s poorly executed good idea be your new well-executed website. You’ll need a GoDaddy auction account or a NameJet account to play.

Do your own due diligence. I’m not a lawyer and not your SEO consultant, so not responsible for your purchases and I don’t guarantee your success. /legal disclaimer

TeaLeafNation.com - ends 2/3
DR 51 | 1.35k RD, Links from: NYTimes, The Atlantic, Forbes, TheGuardian, WAPO, WSJ

Okay, a few things you should know before going after this.

Yes, it is a DR 51 and that’s a sexy number! But the last time this site had significant traffic/rankings (according to Ahrefs, at least) was at the end of 2015.

The site, when it was live, was focused on China.

But do you have to build a Chinese-focused site on this to make it work for you, if acquiring? No.

Here’s an interesting thing: the site currently ranks in the top 100 (just took a big dip because the site was offline when expiring) for “tea leaf.”

“Shepherd” is just Sheep Herd smashed together! No. I mean, TEA AUTHORITY SITE.

There it is. The link profile is mostly from ginormous news sites linking to news pieces about China. It has over 2,000 links from NYTimes and over 700 from TheAtlantic.

Do your due diligence and blah blah etc., but wow, what a killer link profile and brand for a tea-focused site.

If you end up buying this to build a tea site, shoot me an email I’ll share a few thoughts with you on a Skype call (but don’t buy it JUST for that call, you’ll be super disappointed).

Expect to pay a few thousand for this one…

LotusFlow3r.com - ends 2/4
DR 33 | 545 RD, Links from: NYTimes, BBC, WAPO, Wired, NewYorker, RollingStone, PasteMagazine, NME, Grammy.com

If you’re a bit of a domain collector, you might be interested in this one. It was a website set up for Prince’s triple album released in 2009:

From Wikipedia: an announcement of a new interactive website (lotusflow3r.com), proclaiming it would allow fans to "listen, watch and buy" music and videos featuring Prince and guest artists.

Because this is not an obvious slam dunk acquisition, it’s flying extremely low under the radar with zero bids, and just over a day left. Not sure how valuable it’d be as a business play—the site isn’t indexed in Google or anything, but it’s a neat little acquisition if you’re a collector and/or Prince fan.

CompetitiveEaters.com - ends 2/4
DR 26 | 300 RD, Links from: WAPO, TheAtlantic, BuzzFeed, FoxNews, Today.com, Boston.com, Cosmo

If you like your niches super specialized and hot-dog flavored, you’re gonna love this one.

Looks like it used to be THE authority site on competitive eating, and has some really amazing links.

Pick this one up if you want to revive it and own the competitive eating niche, or if you want to cannibalize all that link authority and build some kind of food-related affiliate site (but honestly, I think this one is wasted if you DON’T recreate and build the competitive eating authority this was and can be again.

poetry in motion…

Resonance-AI.com - ends 2/9
DR 43 | 493 RD, Links from: (read below)

Don’t see a lot of AI-themed sites coming through, so putting this in the mix incase you’re desperate but CAUTION! Many of the links coming to this site are being redirected from Atooma.com, which is no longer forwarding to this site (doesn’t resolve at all), so many of the juicy links you might find will eventually go away.

However, in my experience, the site will still benefit from those links for a while yet to come—maybe long enough to get your whatever AI site up and getting some traction.

MicrobiologyBytes.com - ends 2/9
DR 40 | 1k RD, Links from: NYTimes, Springer.com, Wired, All Wikipedias, PLOS.org, Cambridge.org

Kind of a timely site since the world is starting to fall apart re: Corona.

Tons of links from big news sites, wikipedia in all languages, health/science sites, and universities. Use this one to lend some E-A-T authority (if you follow this particular Spiritual SEO path) to a YMYL site.

Way under the radar with one bid, but many days left for people to discover it.

WikiVisual.com - ends 2/7
DR 33 | 1.41k RD, Links from: TheGuardian, Fandom.com, Ycombinator, Slashdot, MacRumors, BleacherReport, TreeHugger

Won’t come with a lot of specific authority. I guess this was a site similar to Wikimedia, which just hosted a bunch of public domain or CC licensed images. Pick this site up if you’re gonna do some SEO testing with expired domains (recommended!) or if you’re looking to build something very general or image/media focused. Should go fairly inexpensively (currently no bids).

MindControlForums.com - ends 2/5
DR 35 | 1.68k RD, Links from: Boingboing, Snopes, Slashdot, SMH.com.au

Meh. Not the best looking link profile and some cuckoo content about government mind control (from what I can tell from some of the anchor text), but is seeing some action @ GoDaddy (+10 bids so far), but I’m not sure what’d you do with this thing.

Maybe a build out that pushed all kinds of conspiracies to just vacuum up links from big media sites and then 301 to one of your sites that you don’t care much about?

Maybe I’m missing something with this one… when I Googled “mind control” a bunch of marketing articles came up, so, maybe that’s your angle?

IslandLife808.com - ends 2/5
DR 35 | 2.17k RD, Links from: NYTimes, MentalFloss, ScienceBlogs, GoVisitHawaii.com, HawaiiWebLog.com

Has a few bids. Not an amazing link profile, but some nice niche-specific relevancy if you own a good Hawaii-related domain and are interested in doing a build out.

Again, if you end up buying this and want to flip it over to a high quality domain you own, shoot me an email I’ll share some thoughts with you on how I’d pull it off.

Domains to Build a Brand On

Revise.com - ends 2/8

Over $10k already. Gonna go for WAY more. A fantastic one-word brand.

Racquetball.org - ends 2/7

Good use of .org, just begging to be a racquetball affiliate site or, if you can pull it off, a racquetball official association website (or as close to that as you can build). But probably best use here is a high quality authority site. Really like this one for a build out. (Domain has a little bit of authority, but nothing amazing).

No bids @ NameJet, reserve between $500 and $1000.

Revisitors.com - ends 2/5

Great name for a marketing/PPC agency (esp. one that specializes in retargeting).

SugarLab.com - ends 2/5

Cool name for a general brand. Amazing name for a bakery or candy shop.

Unsubscribe.com - ends 2/6

Mmm, Unsubscribe.com

I really like this one as a marketing brand/email newsletter company or service provider—yes, even though it has a slightly negative connotation. I think there’s room to build something really valuable here and kind of change that association (at least insofar as this brand is particularly concerned). I know many others will disagree with me and that’s fine. How’s it feel to be WRONG? I mean, to each their own.

A big name with a big price tag (currently just under $14k with a few days left).

BeeHoney.com - ends 2/8

On the one hand, duh. Honey from bees. But on the other, a really solid and easy to remember brand. Good brand for selling honey (start a site that sells honey, contract with some honey producers, drop(ship) it like it’s hot) or just as a brand that is Honey Bee but reversed. Not a home run, that last one, but a viable brand option. I really like this one as a honey ecommerce store that sells honey, wax/honey-based skin products, etc.

$500 with a few days left, probably goes for a few thousand.

WaynesWorld.com - ends 2/4

Speaking of collecting domains, here’s a fun one with a lot of history.

Not sure what’d you actually do with it because trademarks/copyright/whatever, but you know…

~

That’s all for this time!

If you have any feedback etc., shoot me an email.

Until next week… party on, Wayne!