www.optimalwebsite.co.uk started this topic @ 19:21 on 11/09/2006
Just a thought, but as Google and others value a website much more if its old, and new sites even if professionally SEO'd can still struggle in the rankings, .... there are a great many examples of old websites with very high page ranking doing nothing online. Has anyone ever considered somehow sourcing the old defunct high page rank sites for new companies? Large no of companies go bust each year and their website could easily be bought and their content replaced.
For example www.kateprice.co.uk - a very old webdesign firm I've come across twice in two seperate searches.... It's written in Adobe Pagemill.... an archaic program no longer in use, but has a very high page rank of 5. No-one visiting the site would currently buy a website from them. Obviously the problem would be if optimalwebsite buys www.kateprice.co.uk I'd have to adopt a name which means nothing to anyone, but it would be one heck of a lot easier than starting from scratch.
Any thoughts on this?
Take care,
Joel - www.optimalwebsite.co.uk
RE: Possible Money Making Opportunity Online?
c2webdesign | 11/09/2006 08:37 PM
Wow Joel you certainly love to a good Google or SEO post 
It is a very good point though. I have seen websites have very good positions with little content, no updates in years, but appear 1st or 2nd for VERY lucrative keywords.
In the past I did attempt to contact the owner of one such site (not related to website design - as I already have quite a good listing already 
) but in this instance proved futile as I heard nothing back.
I was estimating traffic ranging in to thousands a day - and hadn't been updated since 2002!! (quite apparent with a competition with a July 2002 expiry date...!)
Trouble is you may find that by purchasing the domain name and changing the content you could face a nose dive (particuarly if the new content is different to the old)
Just my ha'pence worth!
Dean
C2 Web Design
http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk
RE: Possible Money Making Opportunity Online?
awebapart | 11/09/2006 09:45 PM
In this particular case I think that it is wrong to assume that the site and company is defunct just because the site doesn't look too new. The site has a high google pagerank (PR) mainly because the company has created a lot of client websites and all of those websites are linking back to the web design site. You can check this using the google link: command and entering the site url.
It looks like Kate has carved out a niche focusing mainly on local tourist businesses. Since all of the sites are designed as static html websites, that also means she has a regular repeat income with all those businesses who are tied in to her to update their prices pages on a yearly basis and availability information on a more regular basis. Perhaps this is one of the reasons she hasn't had time to update her own site, having to update many static client websites without a content management system can be laborious. (This is one of the reasons my company is avoiding static web design with our awebapart.com sitebuilder service, since it allows us to scale our client base, and it also allows our clients to update and expand their own websites as often as they want as part of the yearly hosting fee without incurring extra web designer costs).
It also looks like Kate doesn't just do websites but also runs her own holiday business, which may be another reason why the site isn't updated, i.e. it's not a prime focus. Or maybe it's just a case of if it aint broke don't fix it - it serves a purpose, and maybe she hasn't the time to take on that many more clients anyway.
You are right to suggest that people just visiting her site wont be too impressed, but her portfolio of sites are impressive, and word of mouth recomendations also help. So don't rule out a business just because the site looks old. Perhaps you shouldn't consider the business as being defunct, perhaps you should consider the business as a busy one that might want to offload some work to you!
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Paul - www.awebapart.com - 'a web apart'
create, update your website today - the online professional site builder
RE: RE: Possible Money Making Opportunity Online?
...is a pretty good question. I suppose in terms of economics it's worth whatever's someone's willing to pay for it, and the current owner if they have no further use for the website may well be happy to sell it for cheap, especially if they're concentrating on other businesses.
Quick poll then people... what do you suppose Kate Price will sell her site for? No cheating! Dont ask her. In 3 days I'll give her a phone call and we'll see who's right...
Kind regards,
Joel