Forget Optimizing - Build your own sites to be acquired instead

[Relevancy]

With the aging delays and difficulty of optimizing for search engines, I feel a shift is coming. It won’t be about getting someone’s site rankings, it will be about building sites for yourself and then selling the domain and content to a newer or struggling company looking to succeed in the search market.

If it is taking us up to a year to get real results for new or penalized sites then why not shift our focus to selling our own built-up sites for huge profit?

I run many affiliates stores and sites and I spend a lot of time building relevant content and links. Why not keep doing this, but with an eye to be bought out in the future. If I make 10 good affiliate stores that steal (by steal I mean I have earned the spots) rankings from the big guys and one of my sites draw interest from these big guys to be bought, then I have earned myself a ton of money with an acquisition.

While I wait to be bought, I can still make money with affiliate commissions and Adsense types of advertising.

It is simple, people are not going to pay for optimization projects anymore unless you are a large firm and can guarantee rankings by a certain time frame. We all know those guarantees are BS and only big SEO firms can afford to BS.

[howell]

I have a friend was is using this same approach. He as been very successful in doing this and selling off his sites. The problem is that most companies/businesses want to change the site around to reflect their products/services and when this happens their rankings suffer.

[warza bidul]

After reading about the possibility of sandboxing and more I can't help but think that the idea of selling a domain so that it gets indexed by google faster for the next owner is an activity which is self defeating. If the search engine sees that all the links are new then doesn't it automatically decide that this site may be irrelevant as it is no longer linked to for the topic which it had previously been linked to?

[cryptblade]

It is simple, people are not going to pay for optimization projects anymore unless you are a large firm and can guarantee rankings by a certain time frame. We all know those guarantees are BS and only big SEO firms can afford to BS.

YOU may not, but plenty of other people want the help and are convinced they need the help.

It depends on your definition of SEO and what your expectations are for SEO. I work for an agency and I freelance SEO on the side. Big or small, companies need it, want it, and think it helps them. Not all can afford the big guys. Many are small or medium-sized companies who want to be competitive.

Try telling them they that they are not going to pay for optimization unless it's a big firm. They are willing to pay, but they can't pay big money - and they also dont have time to do all the SEO work themselves because it takes away attention from other aspects of their business.

Your idea is more about a new revenue model for yourself than addressing any sandboxing issues or gaming the SEs. Building up a site and then selling it is no way to beat the SEs. But it's a good business model if you are looking for a new owner who will pay for a revenue-producing site. I've seen this done on ebay before.

[Wail]

The practise of building up a high PR domain and then selling it on was popular many years ago.

The problem is pretty simple. Once the site is sold the previous owner dragged off all the in-bound links they controlled and pointed them at their next project. These domain which had sold for big buckets suddenly dropped in PR and worth.

It doesn't take long for a few horror stories to kill the market off. In fact, that's exactly what happened.

That said; if you're talking about selling off a site rather than a domain then that's a different prospect. As long as you don't promise them x traffic for y more years then its entirely up to the new owners whether they should change things or leave the site alone. To make such a sale you'd need to have accountable records. This is possible for affiliate sites but prohibited by AdSense as you must not talk about the revenue you earn from the program.

[Relevancy]

Yes the idea is about selling the domain, the content, the site, everything.

You can build a high PR site without buying massive links now. Especially with the recent changes in Google. Natural links can happen with content and relevancy. Plus there are hundreds of free directories out there for one way links.

By "Forget Optimizing" I meant forget putting your soul and effort into someone else’s site and put it into your own sites. I will still have clients as well. I am not saying forget optimizing (I like to call it Search Engine Relevancy instead of Optimizing) for other companies. I am saying build your own fortune so one day you won’t have to work for other people. Put your heart and soul into something that will make you rich instead of someone else. Plus if you think about it, it is what the search engines are striving for and if they achieve it you will be safe and secure. Remember if it wasn’t for SEO there wouldn't be engines dancing all over the place to counter what we are doing. They want people to build relevant sites and let them stick to the job of finding you. Sure they get it wrong a lot, but relevancy always wins in the end.

[ferret77]

I have been doing this already

I am actually renting out some of my hotel affilate sites to a local booking/travel agent

actually I think there are tons of people doing this already

of course you actually have to optimize this way, instead of just taking peoples money and making excuses. So its not for everyone

[Relevancy]

I know this is not a new idea. Heck I have been doing it for 2 years now. What I am trying to say with this thread is that it might be time to turn our focus more towards our affiliate or own sites rather then them just being side money. In the long run you will gain more.

[cryptblade]

I know this is not a new idea. Heck I have been doing it for 2 years now. What I am trying to say with this thread is that it might be time to turn our focus more towards our affiliate or own sites rather then them just being side money. In the long run you will gain more.

Okay - I get what you mean. Look after #1 is what you're saying. Use your skills for yourself, build up the sites, then sell it off for $$$ :cool:

That's a great idea! Except, there are still people out there who need help with their websites.

I think this whole online industry, in its infancy, got on the track of relying too much on search engines for traffic and sales. Now that the rest of the business world is catching on, oops, the paradigm is shifting again.

If you have been reading the newsletters, blogs, and industry grapevines, studies are showing that people don't necessarily conduct commerce online all the time. Retail studies show a lot of consumers research online and buy offline.

That brings to my point. I think SEO either needs to be redefined (as I've always thought) or in it's given "anointed" meaning by the masses, SEO is dead.

I think SEO/SEM needs to be redefined as just interactive marketing expert. I mean, it it really is an overall thing. I mean, you have some people talk about adding content, content, content. But really, in the end SEO is about increasing traffic for greater conversion, more sales.

But the thing is, not everyone can put all of that together. So there's always going to be people who need this. I would think that no SEO doing work for others would not have at least 1 site of his/her own.

But do think SEO should be moving in a new direction - and not let the SEs push or dictate to us what direction that is.

[Chris Boggs]

so which one of you did this? cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11153&item=5757051038&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

I guess it was only somewhere above $50K, according to this ad…