What to Look for When Buying a Site

What to look for when buying a site is of critical importance. Overlooking any of the key factors this article addresses can result in you ending up with a poor website that does not deliver what you thought it would.

When buying a site the first key thing to look for is whether the site has a high traffic flow. Traffic flow determines the potential income that can be generated from the site. You need to pay close attention to the traffic volume and also the amount of returning traffic as this directly effects the quality of the website. Google Analytics is probably the best tool for doing so though a host of others do exist. Make sure to check that the traffic remains constant as it is often the case that website sellers will bump their traffic count prior to selling to increase its apparent worth. This is easily done through a variety of perfectly legitimate means but it is something you need to take into account when deciding whether to buy a site.

Second, you need to examine the page rank of the website, as well as the search engine results, as a website ranked in the top ten results on the first page of Google has the potential to generate greater income than one lower down the first page. Page rank alone shouldn't be a deciding factor, however higher PR sites are usually valued better.

Third, you need to examine the actual revenue the site generates. Again you need to be careful here as website sellers often list websites as earning x amount per month when the website may have been running a non-sustainable or introductory offer during this time, or may have only been up for one month. So you need to analyze carefully the sustainability of the website. Look at the revenue it has generated over as many months as possible and work out an average for those months. Determine whether it is sustainable or likely to plummet within x number of months. Also determine the amount of work that needs to go into the site on a daily basis as this kind of cost benefit analysis will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Finally analyze the potential areas of growth the site displays as you need to identify areas in which you can improve the income and traffic of the site. If the site is unlikely to offer you chances to earn more income is it worth investing in?

Knowing what to look for when buying a website and following these key steps should ensure you purchase the right website for your needs.