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I'm looking at buying a website that is currently part of a network of sites. I want to run it as a separate entity in itself. The site in question has many backlinks, but most of them come from the other sites in the network. As such, I have every reason to believe that these links will be dropped once I buy the site (i.e. it's no longer a part of the network).
My question is, will the sites SERP position and/or PR be seriously harmed by the sudden dropping of lots of backlinks? There will still be a substantial number of backlinks, it's more the sudden percentage drop that I'm concerned about.
Are there any other issues that I should be aware of when buying a site that has been part of a network?
Thanks for your help!
Scenario A: The site is so far ahead of it's competition that, even after losing the network links, it is still in front of the competition. In this case there will likely be little fallout unless the links happen to have really good anchor text & the network ones don't. This scenario seems unlikely.
Scenario B: The network links form an absolute fundamental reason why the SEs think this site is great. then when remove the site will plummet down the serps. This seems more likely.
Why don't you offer to purchase the network links for a period? Or, if that isn't possible then you have to factor in the site traffic & therefore earnings taking a dive until you can replace the links.
Scenario B is more-or-less what I am expecting to happen.
Hopefully the good content will lessen the impact of losing the backlinks and make it easier to move the site up the SERPs again.
On the bright side, losing the network links does make for a good bargaining tool for lowering the price!
I shall ask about keeping the network links for a while; maybe they can remove them slowly, over a period of a couple of months. That would at least give me the chance to build up my own links.
