First client update - first site is aged, 7000+ backlinks

[greyhat]

Hey guys im back!

So i posted the other day about getting my first two clients. Got some pretty good ideas and even made a few friends! All good

Anyway... ive been doing some digging and the first site is an aged domain (i already knew this it has been bought of a big national company that went bust). There are 10000+ inbound links according to my SEO software.

Some of these are very good links.. In content reviews and such from big sites.

The business is pretty much doing what it did before so i imagine a lot of the links are still relavant.

The site has been dead for a while. It is on the way back machine from around 2002 onwards... At the moment the owner has stuck up some wordpress e-commerce thing which i am replacing with opencart.

I am YET to see the analytics so i dont know what terms the site is currently ranking for.

Wat do?

 

[nanexo]

Hey guys im back!

So i posted the other day about getting my first two clients. Got some pretty good ideas and even made a few friends! All good

Anyway... ive been doing some digging and the first site is an aged domain (i already knew this it has been bought of a big national company that went bust). There are 10000+ inbound links according to my SEO software.

Some of these are very good links.. In content reviews and such from big sites.

The business is pretty much doing what it did before so i imagine a lot of the links are still relavant.

The site has been dead for a while. It is on the way back machine from around 2002 onwards... At the moment the owner has stuck up some wordpress e-commerce thing which i am replacing with opencart.

I am YET to see the analytics so i dont know what terms the site is currently ranking for.

Wat do?

Answer: Semrush.com

 

[iamjon]

Firstly you can get a reasonable idea what the site is ranking for and it's traffic by using the new (and awesome) SERPs analysis feature of ahrefs.com

I think you get 15 requests free per day so should be plenty to have a dig around with. If you're interested in the existing link profile, you can verify the site with MajesticSEO and Ahrefs and then run detailed reports for free with those.

Then, with the knowledge you already have, can you see what the site is currently optimised for

10,000+ links sounds great but the referring domains is the more important figure really.

In a situation like this I'd be doing the keyword research and competitive analysis as though I was approaching it as a brand new site. Then you can work out where the opportunity for traffic is going forward.

At this point you need to look after your own interests and move forward based on what you've agreed as deliverables and not necessarily what's best for the client.

I.e. if your deliverables are rankings, then you should be picking phrases that you know you can rank for, if your deliverables are links, then don't even report on rankings and just deliver them links.

Get ranking and traffic data ASAP (at their lowest point) so that you can report the biggest improvements possible

Work out main competitors and use the free Ahrefs reports to dig in to their backlink profiles.

 

[greyhat]

Some good info guys. Sorry for the late reply not getting my notifications (again?) anyway, yeah thanks a good little reference for me here its appreciated ill report back!


EDIT: can mods move this to traffic and content please? sorry!

 

[shawnhag]

good stuff greyhat, with a nice aged domain and a killer backlink profile you have a nice headstart. could be way worse: you could have inherited a new domain with a recent penalty and your customer could be blaming you.