Small business growth strategy: Takeovers

Looking at many online small business owners, always so busy with current operational issues, I have noticed that they are often missing the bigger picture. The majority are lacking any strategy on how to successfully grow their online presence/visibility.

One of the elements that could be easily incorporated in the growth strategy is the website takeover. The big online household names in e-commerce or services providers are always on the lookout for good established websites with some share in a niche market. Especially now, at times of uncertainty in the economy, many websites’ owners may decide to call it a day and put their business for sale.

In the last week I was looking for some of these potential ‘gems’ in my niche. I simply ran through the Dmoz and Yahoo! directory listings in my niche and sifted through the SERPs for some generic terms related to my activity. Did I find anything? You bet. There are a few well-established websites, with great content, strong visibility in search engines and domains registered in 1998, 99. Most of the folks are hobbyists who have been running their sites for almost 10 years now, and have come to the point where their enthusiasm has vanished, or they are struggling with the growing number of competitors, or simply decided it’s a good time to cash in. Finding them might be time consuming, I would recommend emailing webmasters rather than going to straight to auctions. A personal touch can give you some room for negotiation.

Traffic was the main factor in my research. I would be happy to take over some websites with a good number of targeted visitors and page views and a good amount of quality content. How am I going to incorporate the newly purchased website into my strategy? Well, any changes need to be well planned. I would keep the exiting content, slightly refresh the layout (many of pre 2000 websites still have an archaic look), and would keep the existing number of pages.Now, the toughest part is how do I capitalize on the new buy. The key to this question is relevancy. Having thousands of visitors landing on the website does not necessarily give you any opportunity to sell or promote whatever you are offering. Buying a website about car parts and trying to promote your e-commerce bookshop may not give you much return. But taking over a website about book reviews run by an amateur book-blogger would be a good move and it will naturally support your main e-commerce site. If a website has a lot of loyal visitors, or subscribers you want to be extra careful and avoid any revolutionary changes in particular.

Cost. We all know that small business budgets are limited, however investing in buying a website can reward you and your business greatly. Not only are you gaining an extra base of potential costumers, but you’re adding an important asset to your business, which will increase in value over time. Don’t go over the top. Research a lot then buy the best option and wait to see any return before you move on to the next take over. Prices vary depending on the type of website and niche obviously. But it’s possible to get a good deal on a domain and its content for much less than $10k.

Is this ethical? Well if you are buying a relevant website to your primary business and you are going to keep the existing level of quality it seems to be the natural economic order. The strong business takes over the weaker one.

Other points regarding buying an existing website:

• Carefully check the history of the website (whois data, archive.org etc.)

• Get a strong idea of the volume of traffic the website attracts (use free tools like compete.com, quantcast.com, ask the existing webmaster to provide you with traffic numbers)

• Check the incoming link structure of the website (are the links from trusted places, how old are the links?)

• Try not to change much on the domain registration data

• Check the general publicity about your potential buy (any reputation issues etc)

Buying domains can be exciting and addictive. But be careful and try not to loose your main focus: adding value to your online small business and facilitating a health growth.