What to do, if anything, about links?

[wonder_lander]

I recently won an auction for a domain that had dropped a week earlier.

I've setup a landing page with a "contact us about this domain" message but I thought I'd add Google Analytics and MajesticSEO so that I could see what traffic the domain was getting. (The site on the domain has been offline since 2009).

I can see from GA that the site gets direct, referral and search traffic and when I've ran it through MajecticSEO it reports : 174,000 External Links from 3000 domains.

Should I do anything about these links and do they add any value? The URL used to belong to an online and high street national retailer and people are looking for homewares.

I want to keep the homepage with simple contact details in case anyone is interested in the domain but could I create a customised 404 page to show affiliate links to other similar retailers?

 

[JMOT]

sounds like a catch...

 

[wonder_lander]

It's a domain I've wanted for 10+ years that I've actively pursued for 4 years.

The company went into administration and after agreeing to buy the domain from the administrator they came back and said they didn't own the domain. Needless to say it was renewed, I think by the hosting company, but once the company was finally dissolved this year I asked nominet to suspend and drop the domain.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to catch the domain but thankfully the person who did put it straight into an auction which I won at a value less than I'd agreed with the administrator!

 

[ratboy]

The nice thing with lots of old backlinks is that whatever you do with the domain in the future will be picked up by Google very quickly and will rank with little issue.

Used to own massive.co.uk - that was owned by Massive Attack during the gulf war (they dropped the "attack" part) - same thing happened - we used it as a web design firm and it ranked easily with no work at all.

Nice little bonus!!!

 

[Blossom]

Either recreate the URLs of pages with the most links to them, or set up 301s to your homepage to make use of more of the juice

 

[addz123]

I've heard dropped domains with lots of old links can be worthless as Google devalues/resets the links, especially if a new owner relaunched the site with new content, years down the line.

Was thinking of doing something similar until I found this out.

 

[DaveLeeds]

It's a domain I've wanted for 10+ years that I've actively pursued for 4 years.


Unfortunately I didn't manage to catch the domain but thankfully the person who did put it straight into an auction which I won at a value less than I'd agreed with the administrator!

Congratulations, your perseverance seems to have paid off.