Sean Markey is one of the people to listen to when it comes to SEO domains in my opinion. Sean announced yesterday that he is starting a SEO Domains brokerage. So I sent him some questions on all things SEO domains. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Domains with SEO value (purely speaking about the niche-relevant and high-authority referring domains) is measured by tools like Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush with Domain Rating, Domain Authority, and Authority Score respectively. The scores are logarithmic and are tied to the authority and trust-worthiness of the sites linking to a given domain.
So I’m looking for sites with a fairly robust score of around 40+
However, there are exceptions here. If I site has a DR of 25 but it’s ranking for 1,000 keywords, or it’s ranking for five keywords but receiving 10,000 organic visitors per month for those keywords–I’m very much looking for those domains as well.
But for the purpose of your audience, and speaking to just domain names, I’m really looking for some SEO scores of +40 of there is not traffic/rankings to speak of.
Everyone is like “oh this name has FIFTY THOUSAND BACKLINKS.
Instead of “ohhh this name has one thousand referring domains!”
50,000 is definitely sexier than 1,000, but you could have ONE referring domain linking to your site in the footer, maybe they have 50,000 pages, so you have 50,000 backlinks. But that is worth one unit of SEO, not 50,000. (There is some nuance to this, and there are situations where having that many backlinks from a very very well-trusted, authoritative domain can help, but only so much.
To use an absolutely stupid metaphor that no one has ever used before to describe the fundamentals of SEO (and I’m sorry to all your readers for this), but think of it like a sandwich with nine ingredients.
Focusing on backlinks only is a sandwich with nine pieces of cheese. No one wants that, you want variety.
Focusing on referring domains is a sandwich with 9 DIFFERENT ingredients, some turkey, some roast beef, some mayo, a single slice of cheese, lettuce, tomato, etc. etc.
But seriously, a link from a site is one vote of confidence to your site in the metaphorical eyes of Google’s algorithm. You’d much rather have 1 vote of confidence each from 10 different sites instead of one vote of confidence copied 10 times on a copy machine.
I hope that helps the concept stick with people. Always pay attention to the number of referring domains, not the total number of backlinks.
The second thing is to remember these scores are logarithmic. A site with a DR 50 isn’t 10 linear points higher like “oh, this name has 40 backlinks and this name has 50 backlinks–you need SO MANY good backlinks to raise the authority metrics from a 40 to a 50 on most sites, so just know that it’s THAT MUCH MORE powerful when you see a higher number.
It’s why DR 70+ sites at GoDaddy auctions routinely sell for eye-popping amounts of money.
Without taking my tin foil hat out of Ye Olde Google Paranoia Box, I will just say that Google says things that are in Google’s best interest, most of the time, whether or not they are true.
It is true that the easy days of redirecting some low-quality site with fairly rancid juice in the most low-energy way possible are gone, it is not true to say that aged/expired domains do not work.
You only have to look at the next decent DR 60 that goes up @ auction. I know people have a low opinion of SEO practitioners lol, but no one is spending $40,000 on such a name where the aged domain play doesn’t work, and they don’t know what they’re doing.
They can say it’s considered SPAM all the want, but if you acquire such a name and build it right it will still fly. I’m biased, but I’m also right.
Only if it’s a premium name (I will still help you sell that, if I like the name enough and can see it’s value, because I know that build a site on a premium name is an amazing strategy).
If your name has juice or traffic or is ranking for a bunch of keywords, IDGAF if it’s a .horse…
You can reach me through the contact form @ JNPR.com
You can submit your names directly there and I will get back to you–those forms have all the info I need.
I am also a somewhat active shit poster on twitter, where you can find me @seanmarkey.
Finally, and I don’t know if this is overkill, but I do have TWO email newsletters where you can hear more about domains + SEO from me–one is a domain focused newsletter and the other is SEO:
domains.beehiiv.com
https://www.ranktheory.com — this is my longform, infrequently sent SEO newsletter.
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