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15 Year Old Domain - Crazy High CPC - But Lots of Comp?

by patrich
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am looking for some advice here in terms of using an aged domain. I have, and rank, lots of new sites but not quite sure how much I can push this one. Here is the story:

I have a 15 year old domain, its currently a PR4 and I personally have had this for a few years now. It is in a niche that has insanely high Adsense CPC's, on the low end $10 and at the high end $70 with potentially hundreds of related keywords that fall into these cpc ranges and traffic for each individual term is in the low to high thousands, so they are searched for terms.

The problem is that the terms themselves are fairly competitive, mostly dominated other aged sites that have been in their positions for a long time. Generally, I see ranking pages on the low end at pr3 with a few hundred links and on the high end pr5+ with thousands of links to the page.

Because of the competition I have sat on this website for a while without really doing anything with it, I haven't worked on it well over a year but it does get a few clicks a week on Adsense.

My question is this, because of the sites age is it worth going after these more competitive terms and would I have a farts chance in a whirlwind of ranking it for any of these terms?

Also, I hear people say that you can blast the hell out of an older domain like this without really any issues arising, what is your take on this and how would you approach ranking this site for these competitive terms?

Thank you for all of the advice and help. It is very appreciated.
#comp #cpc #crazy #domain #high #lots #year
  • Profile picture of the author packerfan
    Call me naive, but I just don't see domain age mattering much in the real world. For example, I currently rank #2 for a very competitive keyword. My site is 5 months old. The number 3 site is a true authority site, like 13 years old.

    I have similar examples with other sites, but this one is my most competitive market.

    Just my $.02
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    • Profile picture of the author patrich
      Originally Posted by packerfan View Post

      Call me naive, but I just don't see domain age mattering much in the real world. For example, I currently rank #2 for a very competitive keyword. My site is 5 months old. The number 3 site is a true authority site, like 13 years old.

      I have similar examples with other sites, but this one is my most competitive market.

      Just my $.02
      Honestly that has been my belief as well for the most part. Which is probably what intimidates me the most about the competition. However, I have had many private offers for this particular site and most of the interest is drawn in because of the age of the domain itself.

      The most common reasoning is the age. A lot of people seem to believe that a domain this old could easily be used to throw its weight around and take out some of the tougher competition, if that's the case I want to take advantage of it because I am pretty sure it could make thousands of dollars if it was ranking for only a few of these search terms.

      But if the domain age doesn't matter all that much, then I will just sell it to the highest bidder and let someone else deal with it.
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      • Profile picture of the author packerfan
        Why not give it a go? I mean, it's a PR4 so you've got some link juice to throw around.

        Spend a few months working on it and rake in the dough...
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        • Profile picture of the author patrich
          Originally Posted by packerfan View Post

          Why not give it a go? I mean, it's a PR4 so you've got some link juice to throw around.

          Spend a few months working on it and rake in the dough...
          Yeah, that's kind of what I am thinking. I guess my biggest issue is that I would typically steer clear of this type of competition, I mean I have a couple of sites ranked for very competitive terms, and they required a lot of time and effort to get those rankings, close to a year of solid work.

          I just don't have that kind of spare time these days, if you know what I mean. However, the money is there I mean I have had over $20 adsense clicks on this site in the past and its always nice to see.

          Btw, thank you for your advice it means a lot.
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    • Profile picture of the author InternetJon
      Originally Posted by packerfan View Post

      Call me naive, but I just don't see domain age mattering much in the real world. For example, I currently rank #2 for a very competitive keyword. My site is 5 months old. The number 3 site is a true authority site, like 13 years old.

      I have similar examples with other sites, but this one is my most competitive market.

      Just my $.02
      Just curious, is your competitors site "meaning" to rank for that keyword? Are they optimized for that keyword?
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      • Profile picture of the author packerfan
        Originally Posted by InternetJon View Post

        Just curious, is your competitors site "meaning" to rank for that keyword? Are they optimized for that keyword?
        It's the 2nd most searched keyword in this niche, so yes. But they are more optimized for #1, but I've just started focusing my efforts on that keyword, so we'll see what happens.
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  • Profile picture of the author MaverickUK
    It doesn't matter if the site has 90,000 backlinks if only 10 of them are targeting exact or broad match of your keyword. Take the time to analyse their backlinks thoroughly and see how targeted they actually are - if they're not targeting the keyword you're after, what's the problem with trying to outrank it?
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    • Profile picture of the author patrich
      Originally Posted by MaverickUK View Post

      It doesn't matter if the site has 90,000 backlinks if only 10 of them are targeting exact or broad match of your keyword. Take the time to analyse their backlinks thoroughly and see how targeted they actually are - if they're not targeting the keyword you're after, what's the problem with trying to outrank it?
      Oh, they are definitely targeted. In most cases, its the homepage of the sites that are ranking for the search terms, and they are often the companies that make the product or created the service that are in the top 10.

      Not the exact search terms, but to give you an idea think things like medical billing, invoicing, business management etc. Actually, I just looked and the term medical billing and it has less competition than the search terms I am looking at.
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  • Profile picture of the author patrich
    Also should mention that a lot of the backlinks to sites in these industries are editorial/high value type links. Often given by national or global corporations that are using the companies products or services and so on.

    Most of these companies are not going the standard "seo route", you know like article marketing, blog commenting, etc. In fact, that may be the weakness in this market, as most of these companies are not actively building links and so forth.

    I was just interested in whether anyone had experienced any significant benefit to using aged domains in more competitive markets.
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  • Profile picture of the author MaverickUK
    Ah okay. In my experience domain age factors very little in rankings, however does have a relation to domain trust, which in turn does have some sort of ranking value.
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    • Profile picture of the author patrich
      Originally Posted by MaverickUK View Post

      Ah okay. In my experience domain age factors very little in rankings, however does have a relation to domain trust, which in turn does have some sort of ranking value.
      Pretty much my thoughts on the subject as well.

      I had another offer for the domain recently and again, they were interested in it because of the age/authority which got me thinking that maybe I was missing something here.

      Would someone be less likely to "trip a filter" of some sort in a massive link building campaign with an aged domain? Perhaps that is the interest in purchasing it for its age, because they could scrapebox the hell out of it or something.
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      • Profile picture of the author MaverickUK
        Originally Posted by patrich View Post

        Pretty much my thoughts on the subject as well.

        I had another offer for the domain recently and again, they were interested in it because of the age/authority which got me thinking that maybe I was missing something here.

        Would someone be less likely to "trip a filter" of some sort in a massive link building campaign with an aged domain? Perhaps that is the interest in purchasing it for its age, because they could scrapebox the hell out of it or something.
        People generally believe the older the website, the more backlinks it can take at any given time and is less likely to trip filters as you said. I'm yet to ever notice this personally but I do believe it holds some truth, but nowhere near as much as most people generally believe or point out.
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        • Profile picture of the author patrich
          Originally Posted by MaverickUK View Post

          People generally believe the older the website, the more backlinks it can take at any given time and is less likely to trip filters as you said. I'm yet to ever notice this personally but I do believe it holds some truth, but nowhere near as much as most people generally believe or point out.
          Ahh, I got ya. Thank you for the help!
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