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News and Miscellaneous

I’ve got like… four different and really interesting projects that I’m working on at the moment relating to SEO/domain names/marketing-ish? Of course I’ll share the specifics when I can via this list, but I can’t share much at the moment, except this:

RankTheory: An Occasional SEO/Marketing Publication.

Unlike this newsletter which has a super-tight focus on the intersection of SEO and Domain Names, this site will be a place for me to publish long form and infrequent essays on deeply researched/studied/reverse-engineered SEO topics.

The site only has one post live at the moment: The Story of FlattenTheCurve.com — how I took a hand-registered domain to one million + page views in a week.

There’s an email list there you can sign up to be notified of new posts, but honestly I’ll probably always call them out here as well…

So please check that post out! Let me know what you think :)

Follow me on Twitter here: @seamarkey

Here’s the list:

Domains With Authority

Remember kids: do your own due diligence before bidding on these names. I am not responsible for your bad decisions. I’ve tried to outline any reason something may not be valuable or might have a possible trademark conflict, but it’s on you to be sure before bidding.

Quick reminder:
DR = domain rating, a logarithmic measurement of domain authority from Ahrefs.com
RD = the number of unique referring domains

ISFA.com - ends - 9/21
DR 28 | 771 RD | Links from: BBC, WAPO, FootballFancast, WikiZero, SoccerGaming.com, WorldFootball.org

500+ pages indexed, ranks for over 700 keywords (low quality, but still a good sign).

Used to be something called the Internet Soccer Fans Association which focused heavily on soccer news and betting lines.

This one is currently at $500—I think, because it’s a solid 4-letter dot com which has value on its own.

However, when word spreads that this is a SOCCER SPORTS BETTING SITE with a backlink history and some authority, that price is going to shoot up. With the way that sports betting is blowing up (whether through increasingly legalized betting in the US or through fantasy sports apps), I’d bet (ha ha) this goes for quite a bit more.

Maybe you’ve already got a betting site of which soccer is one small part of many different sports—in that case, rebuild this site, give it some time, and then 301 the root domain to your /soccer page.

If you do NOT have a betting money site already but are looking to build one out, you’d have a tough time finding a better opportunity than this. Rebuild the site, hammer it with soccer-related news, get some sports/better affiliates going and just double down on drive traffic via organic traffic.

Please note: the backlinks here are… not as high quality as the names I usually cover here. This should be obvious if you know anything about SEO—no one really links to betting sites naturally. There’s a few niches like this (dick pills, CBD, casinos) where it’s really hard to get legit links. So everyone just builds garbage links and it works (check the backlinks of top-ranking sites in any of those niches and you’ll see). So, keep that in mind if you’re buying this site, you’re buying some risk in the form of lower-quality links.

But… it’s gambling/betting. All the cool kids in this space have similar backlinks.

ColdCases.org - ends 9/17
DR 31 | 197 RD | Links from: NYTimes, TheGuardian, LATimes, CBC, History.com, Esquire, DemocracyNow, RadioPublic, PublicRadio.org, TheRoot

From the old site’s about page:

The Civil Rights Cold Case Project is an unprecedented collaboration bringing together the power of investigative reporting, narrative writing, documentary filmmaking and interactive multimedia production to reveal the long-neglected truth behind unsolved civil rights murders, and to facilitate reconciliation and healing.

A legit site with a great mission. Not sure why it closed, but it’s a GREAT .org domain with a ton of hard-to-get news/media links.

Not sure how useful it’ll be to your money site (I’m guessing you probably don’t have a money site focused on somehow monetizing cold cases?), but this would honestly make a great brand for a media company that produced cold-case/murder-mystery type of content (podcasts, probably)—with apologies to the very solemn mission of the original site.

Should go for mid-three figures, I’d guess.

EverydayLinuxUser.com - ends 9/18
DR 45 | 976 RD | Links from: LaunchPad.net, Wikipedia, Fandom.com, TenCent, StackExchange, USC.edu, Lenovo, RaspberryPi.org, Softpedia, InformationWeekly

Looks like this site might have had a “coming soon” landing page for a while, which explains why it is not currently ranking for any keywords.

Before that it was a Linux authority site (not really a surprise given the name):

Still, it’s got a pretty respectable backlink profile for anyone in the technology space. The domain name is kind of limiting—you wouldn’t want to build a general tech site on this domain, but for a temporary rebuild and eventual 301, it’s fine, and should send along some really strong authority to your site.

Currently around $500

TheCenterOfShopping.com - ends 9/18
DR 45 | 291 RD | Links from: Shopify, Forbes, BBB, BI, Fortune, MarketWatch, Crunchbase, DenverPost, SeekingAlpha, AJC, AL.com

THIS is how you do it.

This site used to be an informational hub on all kinds of ecommerc/retail stories, including a bunch of statistics that every news/marketing blog in the world linked to for one statistic or another.

I’ve got this on the list because it’s a solid ecom/shopping related site that would be a decent pick up for some kind of marketing agency or similar, but also as an illustration. If you don’t have a page or two like this on your authority site what are you even doing.

DO YOU EVEN AUTHORITY SITE, BRO?

Get after those “<niche> statistic” queries and get you some chunky-style links from the authority-givers on high: the DR 90+ news and media websites.

$300 currently, should go for a bit more. Doesn’t have many pages indexed which is why it isn’t ranking for much of any keywords.

Rebuild this site if you’re in the marketing/ecom space and start ranking for some of those statistics again, then roll this site into your main site for tidal wave of authority.

ProminencePoker.com - ends 9/16
DR 31 | 182 RD | Links from: Xbox.com, Gamasutra, WineHQ.org, MarketScreener, SportsBookReview.com, Qwant.com, IndieDB.com

Careful everyone—this site has a bunch of “poker” related anchor text.

Do you get it? That’s usually a red flag denoting aggressive SEO. But in THIS case it’s because it’s a poker site! So it’s natural instead of just being a super-spammy site. That has subverted your expectations…

Humor!

For real, though, I don’t usually see a lot of legit poker sites expiring. This one is ranking for just over 900 keywords, which is a good sign.

However, there’s a big caveat on this one: Prominence Poker (used to be?) is a game on multiple platforms (Steam, Xbox, Playstation) so there might be some… complications with rebuilding this.

“Prominence” is a generic word, but not a super common one, and so you really should proceed with caution when buying this.

The site also looks to have been a domain landing page for a while, so I’m honestly surprised it is also ranking for some keywords.

As with the soccer betting site, this one doesn’t have a very impressive link profile due to the fact that no one really wants to link to a poker site (even though this was a video game, I guess the same applies?) dunno…

Rebuild this into a poker affiliate site if you’re into that kind of thing, just exercise caution around possible brand conflicts.

YummySoftware.com - ends 9/17
DR 45 | 1.13k RD | Links from: Wikipedia, Github, StackOverflow, CNet, Tencent, Engadget, Ycombinator, AlibabaCloud.com, G2, GigaOm, Softonic, Macworld

Used to be some FTP software. Brilliant backlink profile for someone in the tech/coding space. Generic enough domain to use it for whatever you want within the software space (unlike, say, the Linux site).

Ranking for about 70 keywords—currently at $1200+, should go for a bunch more given that sexy link profile…

Food-hub.org - ends 9/16
DR 45 | 550 RD | Links from: Wikipedia, WSJ, USDA.gov, FoxNews, Cambridge.org, QZ, ACM.org, TheConversation.com, Purdue.edu, Maryland.gov

Hasn’t been live for a while…

But when it WAS live it was a god damned backlink magnet.

Why?

Lots of good info here that presents a good source for journalism to link to.

Now it’s the kind of site that hard-to-build-legitimate-links-for niches grab, rebuild, and link to their site with. This works super well, despite all the people who say “expired domains don’t pass juice.”

These things are fucking industrial-grade juice distributors, but OK. You do you. And do SEO badly…

Anyway, this one might not be super powerful right away b/c it was offline or had a little landing page up for a while (as opposed to a site that was live and being updated right until it expired).

Currently @ $500, should go for a bit more due to the value of the links…

Kaango.com - ends 9/21
DR 71 | 2.25k RD | Links from: Apache.org, Wunderground, ReverbNation, SFGate, SeattleTimes, Utah.gov, Fool, DenverPost, GigaOm, SLTrib, TwinCities.com

Oooohhhh shit, dawg. DR 71! Lots of solid news/media links.

From Crunchbase, the site used to be:

Kaango provides online classified ad software for newspapers and other publishers of online classified listings. The Kaango platform provides web-to-web, web-to-print and print-to-web capabilities.

The software aggregates ads from multiple sources, such as websites, display ads from newspapers, MLS feeds, and other ads that are created online from user's websites. Newspapers, television stations and other media portals can employ Kaango.

Only 38 pages still indexed, ranking for just 2 keywords. That’ll hurt the potential price, but only so much. The reason: it was 301’d to newscyclesolutions.com, which 301’d to navigaglobal.com.

One of the top 3 reasons that domains with juice expire is these redirect chains. The businesses take their eye off the ball and doesn’t think about them all year. It’s happened to me several times now with my live sites and it’s fucking infuriating.

Anyway, this is a good pickup, though the brand name is kind of trash and may present some complications with trademark etc., so proceed with caution.

This would be an awesome acquisition for a marketing/ads company to boost your main property—really would not suggest building this one out as a permanent brand on this domain.

With six days left, currently just over $1k I expect this to absolutely get over $6k, probably goes for $8k-ish.

Domains to Build a Brand On

Detour.com - ends 9/19

Currently over SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS BECAUSE ONE-WORD .COMS ARE VALUABLE MISS ME WITH THOSE NEWTLDs.

Anyway, this one is probably over your budget, but fun to see where it ends up!

Avril.com - ends 9/23

Speaking of shit you can’t afford… this girl’s name/month’s name in French is currently at $20k.

LOVE this one as a brand, but I can’t afford it.

me, trying to participate in the Avril.com auction ^

Shortbread.com - ends 9/22

GREAT brand—could be used for more than just cooking/recipe/dessert niche, but a really really good brand for those niches. Currently just over $1k.

Superior.net - ends 9/16

It’s funny because .net still is not superior…

~

All right! That’s it for this week.

Hope you found something worth buying.

Things to do:

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(Paid subscribers) hit me with any questions about anything related to SEO/Domains/Building sites and I’ll answer them in next week’s newsletter.

Until then…

Sean