how to buy an undervalued website on flippa with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:00] Throughout the past 10 years, I've built and sold websites in various niches.
[0:04] Some I've built from scratch, but more recently,
I've been picking up developed websites, driving
[0:09] more traffic and sales, and then flipping 
them for a profit.
[0:12] Now, when you find a good website, it can
save you a ton of time and money, which in
[0:17] my opinion, can beat building one from scratch.
[0:20] But how do you know if a website is worth 
its asking price?
[0:23] I mean, sellers want to make as much money 
as possible
[0:27] and as a buyer, you want to get it at the lowest cost.
[0:30] The simple answer is to find undervalued websites
so both parties are happy.
[0:35] And in this tutorial, I'm going to show you 
exactly what to look for
[0:39] and how to buy a website that's worth the investment.
[0:42] Stay tuned.
[0:42] [music]
[0:47] What's up marketers?
[0:48] Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that
helps you grow your search traffic, research
[0:52] your competitors, and dominate your niche.
[0:54] Now, I'm sure you've heard of sites like Flippa
and GoDaddy Auctions.
[0:58] And these are just a couple of places where you 
can buy domains,
[1:01] developed websites, and businesses of all kinds.
[1:05] But the problem with buying these is that there are 
a lot of people inflating traffic and reported revenue.
[1:11] In fact, many of these people will go as far as buying 
fake clicks to manipulate their Google Analytics data.
[1:17] Now, the last thing I want you to do is get scammed, 
or even feel like you got the short end of the stick.
[1:22] So today's tutorial is all about finding and buying 
undervalued websites so you can save time, money,
[1:30] and get a head start to more traffic on the cheap.
[1:33] But first, we need to discuss what "undervalued" means.
[1:35] And full disclosure, this is just the way
that I do it, so watch the video and let me
[1:40] know if you agree or disagree with me in the comments.
[1:43] Let's get to it.
[1:44] First, let's talk about commerciality of the niche.
[1:47] On sites like Flippa, you'll often find websites
about jokes or downloading illegal content.
[1:53] To me, this automatically disqualifies sites simply 
because they're not easily monetizable or legal.
[2:00] So you generally want to look for websites
that have commercial value.
[2:04] And this is somewhat subjective depending
on what you plan to do with the site.
[2:08] So use your best judgement.
[2:09] Second, is understanding a little bit about
the value of a website.
[2:13] And I think it's obvious to say that in general, the more 
profit a website generates, the higher its value.
[2:19] But again on the buy side, the more profit
a website generates, the more it'll cost you.
[2:24] Now, even though a website doesn't generate any 
or much revenue, it doesn't mean it's worth nothing.
[2:30] So personally speaking, I like finding websites
that have potential to drive a lot of traffic
[2:35] based on data and are not generating a ton of revenue.
[2:39] Now, it's important to note that there are
additional layers that most professional brokers
[2:43] will look at like EBITDA and discounted cash flow.
[2:46] But I feel like talking about these would
only confuse or even mislead some of you.
[2:50] Afterall, we're talking about super-
undervalued websites.
[2:54] And for that reason, I've purposefully left
out additional details that I don't think
[2:58] would add much value to this tutorial.
[3:00] Alright, the third thing we need to talk about
is the type of traffic you should aim for.
[3:05] Greg Elfrink from Empire Flippers, a company that buys
and sells online businesses, said in a blog post:
[3:11] "High-quality traffic is good, regardless of its source.
[3:14] I always urge people to diversify their traffic
sources to gain several marketing mediums,
[3:20] thereby producing quality leads and sales
for their businesses."
[3:24] He goes on further to say:
[3:26] "While Facebook Ads can be awesome, SEO traffic
is almost always better from a selling perspective.
[3:32] The reason why buyers love SEO is that unlike
most other marketing channels, you don't need
[3:37] to monitor the campaign actively.
[3:39] Once you rank in Google for your chosen keywords,
there's not much more for you to manage,
[3:44] aside from going after other keywords."
[3:47] So to add on to our definition of "undervalued,"
I personally look for websites that don't
[3:51] have a ton of search traffic, but have the
potential to drive a ton of SEO traffic.
[3:56] And I'll touch on this so-called "potential" 
in like five seconds.
[3:59] Now, if you're a beginner to SEO, two of the
biggest things that help you rank in Google
[4:04] are high-quality content, which is easily outsourceable.
[4:07] And the second thing are high-quality backlinks,
[4:10] which have shown to correlate with higher rankings, 
time and time again.
[4:14] And that's the "potential" I'm looking for.
[4:17] So the agenda for the rest of this tutorial is
about finding these undervalued websites
[4:21] that have decent link profiles.
[4:23] And then we'll look for low-hanging opportunities
to increase organic traffic with much less work
[4:28] than if you were building a site from scratch.
[4:31] Let's start hunting.
[4:32] Step 1 is to scrape a list of sites.
[4:34] So for this tutorial, I'll be using Flippa.
[4:37] So I'll go to their website, change this dropdown
to "Website," and run a blank search.
[4:42] Next, we'll need to set some filters like:
[4:44] A price range of 0 to $20,000 or whatever
your maximum budget is.
[4:49] I'll also set the "Age" filter to at least one-years-old.
[4:52] And this will weed out a lot of new domains
that haven't had much time to build links
[4:57] or have likely manipulated their link profiles with 
low-quality backlinks.
[5:01] Finally, I'll run the search.
[5:03] And since we're looking to analyze a lot of these 
domains, let's set the maximum number
[5:07] of results to 250 per page.
[5:10] Now, we're going to scrape a list of domains.
[5:12] To do this, I'll be using a Сhrome extension
called Scraper, which is completely free.
[5:17] Once you have it installed, right-click anywhere
on the page and choose "Scrape similar."
[5:23] Now, enter this piece of XPath code in 
the selector section.
[5:26] And for the Columns, we'll just enter a period.
[5:29] And I'll leave this code for you in the pinned comment.
[5:32] So I'll copy all of these to the clipboard,
and paste them into a Google sheet.
[5:36] Now, I'll go to the next page and do the exact same
thing and continue to do so until I've scraped
[5:41] all websites within my filter parameters.
[5:44] By now, you should have a nice list of websites 
worth analyzing.
[5:48] So let's move on to the next step, which is to
get the SEO metrics for all of these websites.
[5:53] To get these metrics, I'm going to use Ahrefs'
Batch Analysis tool, which lets you bulk analyze
[5:58] up to 200 websites, subfolders or URLs in 
a few seconds.
[6:03] So I'll paste our first 200 domains from our
spreadsheet, and click "Analyze."
[6:08] Now, there are two ways I'll look at this data.
[6:10] First is to sort it by organic traffic.
[6:12] And this way, you're going to find websites that are 
already generating a good amount of search traffic.
[6:17] Now, the caveat is that these sites may already 
be priced high,
[6:22] they might be in a different language where 
competition is lower,
[6:25] or they may be targeting super low-competition topics
in various niches like jokes.
[6:30] The other and often more reliable way is to sort 
by Domain Rating, which is an Ahrefs metric
[6:36] representing the overall strength of a website's
backlink profile.
[6:40] Now, at this point, you just want to skim through
the domain names because this should give you
[6:44] a decent idea of what the website is about.
[6:47] So this one seems to be about WordPress themes,
which might be interesting.
[6:51] I'm not sure what understrap.com is, but seems to
be branded, so I'll quickly click through,
[6:57] and it's another WordPress themes website.
[7:00] And this one is on polo shirts.
[7:01] And I only wear t-shirts as you can clearly tell.
[7:05] Torrentz.io is illegal so no, thanks.
[7:08] And then snoringcanada.com, which is in the
larger industry of health or sleep,
[7:13] seems kind of interesting for me personally.
[7:15] The last one I'll look at for this tutorial is
typely.com, which looks like a decent brand.
[7:20] Let's go to the site.
[7:21] And it looks like they have a free proofreading editor,
which doesn't seem to have a paid plan of any sort.
[7:27] So at this point after checking 200 domains,
I have 4 that I might be interested in.
[7:32] Rigorous themes, Understrap, Snoring Canada 
and Typely.
[7:36] Now, run the SEO metrics for all sites,
[7:38] and we're on to the next step, which is to spot-check these link profiles.
[7:43] So from the Batch Analysis report, I'm going to click on
the number in the Dofollow referring domains column
[7:48] to see which websites are linking to these domains.
[7:51] And what we're looking for here are linking domains
that look like they would be relevant to the business.
[7:57] And since we're just spot-checking, we'll
also look at the DR of these linking websites
[8:01] to assess "overall quality."
[8:03] It looks like Rigorous Themes, has good followed
links from sites like WordPress, secureserver.net,
[8:10] Access Themes, Template Monster, and more.
[8:13] Understrap also has some good links from WordPress,
Dreamhost, SitePoint, and Comcast.
[8:19] Snoring Canada has links from Bustle, Goodmenproject,
Sleep Phones, and Women Daily Magazine.
[8:25] And Typely has some decent links from G2, The Book
Seller, Educators Technology, and Baltimore Post.
[8:32] Now, how do I know these are all decent links?
[8:34] Well, some of them are recognizable and 
reputable sites,
[8:38] and others seem like relevant domains to each
respective niche.
[8:42] Remember that this step is just about spot-checking,
and not doing a deep dive, because we'll do that later.
[8:48] So all seems good, so let's move on to
the next step, which is analyze traffic trends
[8:53] and organic keyword rankings since we're already 
in these reports.
[8:57] Just click on "Overview" in the left sidebar menu.
[9:00] Then I'll click on the "Organic search" tab to 
see the traffic trend for the website over time.
[9:05] Looking at Rigorous Themes, they've had some
spikey traffic.
[9:08] So consistency hasn't exactly been on their side.
[9:11] And I tend to see this often with sites that haven't 
really optimized their website with SEO in mind.
[9:16] For example, not targeting keywords intentionally
that are related to their site.
[9:21] So let's go to the Organic keywords report,
and you'll see that their rankings are lacking.
[9:25] And from initial glance, it doesn't look like
they rank for any meaningful keywords.
[9:30] For example, "ryan lackey swimmer," which
is from one of their theme demo pages, doesn't
[9:34] provide any value for them as a themes business.
[9:38] Now, this to me isn't a horrible thing.
[9:40] It just seems like a sign of the website not
using their link profile to its maximum potential,
[9:46] considering it has over 3,500 referring domains
and a Domain Rating of 83, which is quite high.
[9:53] So I'll leave this on my list of sites to analyze further.
[9:56] As for understrap.com, they also have solid
domain-level metrics.
[10:00] And looking at the Organic traffic graph,
they've had slow but steady growth.
[10:05] And quickly looking at their Organic keyword
rankings, you'll see that they rank for relevant terms
[10:10] and have built a decent demand for their brand name,
which is tough to do.
[10:14] Let's add them to our list of sites to analyze further.
[10:17] Next up is snoringcanada.com.
[10:19] They have decent domain level metrics, but
look at their Organic traffic chart.
[10:23] If we hover over the graph, you'll see their
traffic got smashed in August 2018, which
[10:29] may have very well been from Google's Medic update.
[10:32] Personally, I'm not passionate about the topic
of snoring so much that I would care to play
[10:37] with this kind of volatility, so I'll actually rule this 
website out and not bother looking further.
[10:43] Finally is typely.com.
[10:44] They've had some decent traffic growth over time.
[10:47] Looking at their Оrganic keywords report,
they rank high for competitive keywords like
[10:52] "free online proofreading tool," and several variants.
[10:55] Now, that we've spot-checked the main metrics
for these domains, let's move on to the next step,
[10:59] which is to analyze the backlink profiles of 
the remaining websites.
[11:03] To see the backlink profile of the website,
go to the "Backlinks" menu in the sidebar.
[11:08] Next, set the link type to Dofollow to only see
the value-passing links for the website.
[11:14] Now, the first thing that I notice is that
the top backlinks are all from homepages.
[11:18] And if you look at the far right side, you'll
see "similar" links, which are links with
[11:23] the same anchor text and surrounding text.
[11:26] This is usually a sign of sitewide links.
[11:28] And as Google states on their "link schemes" page,
[11:30] "Widely distributed links in the footers or templates
[11:33] of various sites may be classified as "unnatural links."
[11:38] Clicking through to this domain, which has
4,900 similar links, you'll see that it's from
[11:43] a sitewide footer link that gives attribution
to the creators of the WordPress theme.
[11:48] And since almost all of the links seem to
come from sitewide links just like this,
[11:52] I would personally devalue the link profile a bit.
[11:55] And because I don't feel like gambling today,
I think I'll remove this from reviewing further.
[12:00] Next up is understrap.com.
[12:02] And since they're a theme site too, it appears as though
they have sitewide links from people using the theme.
[12:08] As you can see for this link, they're using
the anchor text, understrap.com.
[12:12] Let's go to the referring page and search for it.
[12:15] So I'll do a find for their domain name, understrap.com,
but nothing appears.
[12:20] Long story short, it's because Understrap
actually hides their link using CSS,
[12:25] which is a hard pass for me as this is bad practice.
[12:29] You can see that if I remove this bit of CSS
code, "display: none".
[12:33] And you'll see the link at the bottom of the page.
[12:36] So with the somewhat shady link building practices that
are going on here, I'll pass right away on this domain.
[12:43] Finally is typely.com's backlink profile.
[12:46] It doesn't seem like they've done a lot of link building,
[12:48] but have some relevant links in addition to scraper 
links which is for the most part, out of their control.
[12:54] But if you remember, they've had some growing
traffic and are ranking for some hyper-relevant
[12:59] and competitive terms.
[13:01] Plus, by buying the site, you'd also get access
to the code for their product.
[13:05] So this is about the only site I'd look at further.
[13:08] So from here, you should do a manual review
of the backlink profile, try and spot unnatural links
[13:14] from places like PBNs, and make an educated
decision from there.
[13:18] As a last measure, I'll go to the Anchors
report, which will show us all anchor texts
[13:23] and the distribution that are used on backlinks
pointing at the website's pages.
[13:27] As you can see, the majority are using branded
anchors or naked URLs which is likely a sign
[13:33] of natural link growth as opposed to link manipulation.
[13:36] This is ideally what you'd want to see from a site.
[13:39] Alright, the next step is to analyze the website
for low-hanging places for improvement.
[13:44] At this point, we want to see if there's a way 
we can improve the website's traffic without
[13:48] a significant amount of effort or resources.
[13:52] So the first thing I'm going to do is run
a website audit using Ahrefs' Site Audit tool.
[13:56] This will automatically search for over 100 predefined 
technical SEO issues.
[14:01] So as that's running, let's see if we can identify 
areas for improvement.
[14:05] So I'm going to go back to Site Explorer and
this time, I'll go to the "Best by links" report,
[14:10] which will show us the pages that have 
the most backlinks.
[14:13] The first thing I notice is that they have links to both 
the https and http version without a 301 redirect.
[14:20] In fact, they have the same issue here on
the secure and unsecure www version.
[14:25] And if I click on these URLs, you'll see that indeed, 
they do not redirect.
[14:30] And if I check the source code, they don't
seem to have a canonical tag either.
[14:35] This isn't the end of the world for the site, but it's 
a super-easy way to fix a technical SEO issue.
[14:40] Another thing you'll notice is that they don't
really have any links to their blog.
[14:45] And by looking at the titles and slugs, they
don't seem to be making intentional efforts
[14:49] with their keyword targeting or on-page efforts.
[14:52] In my opinion, this is probably the weakest point 
of their website, and one of my greatest strengths.
[14:58] So this seems super-attractive for me to help 
the site get more traffic, and exposure for the tool.
[15:03] Finally, I want to get an idea of the organic
search competitors in the industry to know
[15:08] who I'll be up against.
[15:10] So I'll go to the Competing domains report,
[15:12] to see other websites that are ranking for similar
keywords as Typely.
[15:17] And a few that I immediately recognize are
Slick Write, Hemingway App and Grammarly.
[15:23] Now, since Typely doesn't have a ton of backlinks,
I see this as a growth opportunity to get more links,
[15:29] traffic, and increase the value of the site in 6-12 months.
[15:33] The last check I'd do here in Site Explorer
is to go to the Broken backlinks report.
[15:38] And it doesn't look like Typely has any issues here, 
so that's too bad.
[15:42] But to illustrate what I'm looking for, I'll show 
you on the rigorous themes site from before.
[15:47] If you go to the Broken backlinks report, you can see
all links pointing at the broken pages on the site.
[15:53] And you'll see a couple here which you could redirect 
to another relevant page or recreate the page.
[15:58] This is a really easy way to funnel link equity
back to pages that could use them or to redirect
[16:04] them to other relevant pages on your site.
[16:07] The last and final thing I'll do is go to the finished
website audit and see what low-hanging
[16:12] technical SEO fixes I can make.
[16:14] From the Overview page, I'll scroll down
a bit until I hit the "issues table."
[16:19] This will show you all technical SEO issues 
that were caught.
[16:22] To learn what these issues are, you can click
here, which will pull down a description.
[16:26] And to actually apply fixes, just click on the number
beside the issue to see the affected pages.
[16:32] So let's say that after all of these checks,
I was happy with what I saw.
[16:36] An opportunity to grow a website past what
the previous owner was able to do.
[16:41] So the last thing I'll do is look for areas
to better monetize.
[16:46] On a monetization note, they aren't monetized yet,
so there's a ton of potential here.
[16:51] A couple ideas that come to mind are to create 
a premium tool
[16:54] or to improve their API which is currently in beta.
[16:57] At this point, I'll go to flippa.com and search
for typely.com.
[17:02] And I'll go to the listing details.
[17:04] From here, you'll need to read through the
listing, where the seller will normally explain
[17:07] what they've done and their ideas for growth.
[17:10] And they say:
[17:11] "Users are begging for a premium version with 
more features
[17:15] like a browser extension and mobile integration.
[17:18] I received many requests to sell API access
to the tool and integrate more checks.
[17:24] I have a list of ideas that I'm happy to share
with the buyer."
[17:27] Now, remember, these are all just ideas.
[17:30] So rather than dreaming about becoming the next
billion-dollar company, you need to do market research,
[17:35] and evaluate whether you have the funds, knowledge,
and resources to grow the company.
[17:40] Now, if everything looked good to you and you 
were ready to take on giants like Grammarly,
[17:44] I would recommend contacting the seller, verify traffiс
and revenue if any, and begin the negotiation process.
[17:51] Now, the reason why I like to go through these
kinds of steps is because when I buy a website,
[17:56] I'm looking for growth and longevity.
[17:58] My greatest advice to you would be that if
it doesn't check all or most of the boxes
[18:04] that are absolute must-haves, then be patient.
[18:07] The last thing you want to do is sit on
a site that you have no desire to grow.
[18:11] And I can tell you that money alone won't
be enough motivation to get it going.
[18:15] So to conclude.
[18:16] Even though there's massive potential in
a relatively untapped industry, I don't think
[18:21] I'd buy this site simply because I don't have
the technical know-how to improve the product,
[18:26] nor am I interested in proofreading software.
[18:29] But someone out there is.
[18:31] Bottomline: if you're going to buy a website, 
trust no one.
[18:34] Instead, dig into the data, assess points of weakness,
and buy it for a price that'll be a shortcut
[18:40] to growth and a nice tradeoff for your time.
[18:43] Now if you enjoyed this video, make sure to
like share and subscribe for more actionable
[18:48] SEO and marketing tutorials.
[18:49] And let me know in the comments if you would rather
build a website from scratch
[18:53] or buy one and improve it.
[18:55] So keep grinding away, always do your due
diligence and I'll see you in the next tutorial.

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