As promised, here’s post number two in my series on what to do after buying a content based site. If you haven’t already, take a look at Part I of the series where I provide a summary of the key activities in acquiring a new website.

Analysis of What’s Hot

I just read that the popular ‘make money online’ blog John Cow is selling, and it looks like there’s already been an offer around $50k which I expect will make for a quick sale. With the strategies I’m covering during this series of posts, an acquisition like this shouldn’t scare you; it should motivate you to take a large acquisition head on!

The first major activity post sale (and during if possible) is a close look at what you’ll be salvaging from the site. If the existing site has Google Analytics or a similar web traffic program this should be easy. If you need a refresh on some of the key features, bring up my oldie-but-a-goodie post How We Doubled Subscribers Overnight using Google Analytics, which is an entirely true story about how to squeeze the most out of web stats software.

Find the Top X Pages

Quickly determine what the top pages at the site are. I use the variable X because depending on the relative success of the site you acquired, there could be hundreds of great pages (less than 5 great pages = what were you thinking buying the site?). You’ll want to pick out pages that have quite a bit of search engine traffic. If you’re using Google Analytics, click “Content” on the left menu. Next up you’ll see “Top Content”; that should make it pretty easy. Click “view full report” and you’ll get something like this:

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EVERY field on this report is important. You’ll be looking at not only what has generated the most page views, but also the pages that keep users on the site the longest, and which pages act as an exit point. It will be important to document these pages as they’re vital to the next step.

Where is the Traffic Coming From?

If you’re lucky enough to be analyzing the old site in Google Analytics this is easy. Just click the page name on the report above and then click “Entrance Paths”. If not, all hope is not lost. Visit Yahoo.com and perform this query:

linkdomain:http://www.yournewsite.com

I recommend Yahoo and not Google simply because I like their SiteExplorer tool:

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Take a look at who’s linking in, from where, with what text, and why and be sure to choose the dropdown “Only this URL” to narrow the links down for each page. If there’s a lot of positive reviews or growing traffic to a page it’s definitely something you’ll want to keep. If you have the time, it’s also worth it to investigate Digg, StumbleUpon, and other high traffic social bookmarking and news services.

This Site Served a User Base, Why Did that User Base Visit?

Answer that question and you’re almost ready for the next step. :) With the above techniques you should have a pretty good idea of what was popular on the site you just acquired, and by looking at the back links and reading what others have said you hopefully have a better idea why. When answering the question I posed above, have you missed anything? Websites exist to serve a certain group of peoples needs. Has the content you’ve identified above served the majority of the user base needs? If not, consider what else the site offers. Digital goods like eBooks, website templates, custom coded plugins, forums and web tools may be an additional reason why users visit the site. Add these to your list of ‘What’s Hot’ and you’re finally ready to go on to the next step.

This next step I call being the Mr. Miyagi of .htaccess. If you don’t find that funny you: A) haven’t seen the Karate kid and/or B) have no idea what an .htaccess file is because it’s too technical.

Not to worry! My next post I’ll cover how you can seamlessly transfer static content from the site you just bought to your site using methods search engines will love. Stay tuned for Part III.

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