Domain Whois and Effect on ranking for domain sellers

[AjiNIMC]

[webmasterworld.com...] this has some good points. Tedster rocks with great answers (Tedster, get me a feed of your posts, I will like to follow you)

Coming back to the point:
I have a friend whom I met again at twitterfestival in Kolkata after the tedxcalcutta (just to say that he is an active webby). He buy domains as he got some good money and then sells it off. In SEO, old is gold but only when

1. The domain was not a parked domain
   
2. The domain had some relevant content
   
3. The domain's whois and design is not changed at the same time.
   
4. when the theme of the site is not changed.
   
5. etc etc
   

How do the domain resellers make the most out of "old is gold" factor from SE's point of view?

Thanks,
Aji Issac

[tedster]

Buying an aged domain name and leveraging its ranking power is a very touchy art. Google can and will reset its power to zero if it gets a whiff of ranking manipulation rather than a straightforward business acquisition.

We're having a related discussion in this thread Query about re-directing an established domain to new name [webmasterworld.com]. My second post in that discussion outlines some of the factors that can trip up anyone trying to leverage a well-aged domain for their own ranking purposes.

These are the kinds of details that can make a difference:

1. URLs and content remain stable for many weeks
2. URLs remain the same, but some new content is added to the pages
2. URLs remain the same, but some all new content is created for those pages
3. Existing URLs remain the same, but new URLs and text content are created
4. Existing URLs remain the same, but new URLs and content with outbound links are added
5. Both content and URLs change, but the domain still remains the same
6. After a waiting period of several weeks, existing content and URLs are redirected to a different but established domain.
7. Domain name is immediately redirected to a different domain, and all legacy content is also moved
8. Domain name is immediately redirected to a different domain, and all legacy content is just gone

From what I can tell, the farther down that list you go (roughly) the closer you get to having everything reset to zero at Google. What they want to prevent is people using a newly purchased domain merely to boost the rankings of another domain.

Do they always succeed? No, not at all. But that is the goal, as I understand it. So you want to send this kind of clear signal: "Yes, I am the new owner but I am only going to pick up where the previous owner left off. All existing traffic is being well cared for."