Many website buyers complete their due diligence and wonder if they have verified everything. This causes many buyers, especially inexperienced buyers, to freeze up and refrain from going ahead to close the website purchase. Indecision can kill great investment opportunities. There is a time for due diligence and there is a time for closing a deal.

Every website is different, but they all have similar elements that a buyer should check during the due diligence process. The list below is not an exhaustive list because a website may have additional items that need verification. But, at a minimum, it is mandatory for the buyer to verify these items below.

I have outlined a checklist of 13 items that every novice website buyer or experienced website buyer should check before purchasing a website. Included research tools tell the shopper where to go to research and verify these items.

1.Who is

Check the publicly available ownership information on the domain name. It is important to start by establishing that the seller legally owns the domain name and website they are selling.

This may sound obvious, but as a buyer, this is where you should start your due diligence. Do not assume that the seller is the legal owner of the website. Check it out. If the Whois data is private, have the seller send you emails from the specific domain name to prove ownership.

You can use DomainTools.com for this research.

Whois will also provide you with additional details, such as when the domain name was registered or purchased by the seller of the website. This should match the seller’s claims regarding how long they have owned and operated the website business. You can also check website history using Archive.org, which we’ll discuss below.

2. File.org

It is important to understand how long the website has been online and what it was like in the past. Enter the website URL into the Archive.org search engine to retrieve your historical records.

Archive.org crawls and stores snapshots of web pages. This will tell you when the website was actually launched, which is often different from the domain name registration date. And you will be able to see what the website was like in the past.

This will give you a good idea of ​​the history and growth of the website. The information you collect here must match any claims made by the website vendor regarding website history.

3.Traffic

Check website traffic numbers by requesting read-only user access to the website traffic count. The seller will add your email address to your traffic account, such as Google Analytics. You can view the data, but you won’t have the admin ability to edit any settings.

This way you can log in, click and examine the data to verify that it matches the traffic claims made by the seller.

4. Finances

As with Traffic, you need to check the finances of the website. The verification method will depend on how the website earns and receives your money, as well as how comfortable the seller is giving you direct access to your financial data.

If the website makes money from Google AdSense, such as from Analytics, the seller may give you limited access to the data. You can login and check it. If the website receives PayPal payments, a similar user login method can be used. Most online payment systems have comparable user access features that a shopper can use to verify financial data.

In other cases, you may need to check credit card statements, bank accounts, tax returns, or audited financial statements. In some cases, a vendor may send you records directly from your financial institution.

Some sellers prefer to use video conferencing or shared computer screens (via Skype or GoToMeeting) to log into their accounts and show buyers all the data the buyer wants to see. This way, the seller does not give the buyer direct access to their financial accounts, but the buyer can still view and verify the data.

5.SpyOnWeb.com

It is also important to find out what other website assets are owned by the website seller. A buyer should find out if the seller has other similar websites that could compete with the website being sold to the buyer.

SpyOnWeb.com’s investigation tool provides data on other online assets belonging to the same owner. A user simply has to enter the URL of the website they want to investigate.

Most of the time, sellers will own other websites. It is important for the buyer to find out if all of these websites share costs, such as website hosting. Or if all website earnings are combined and reported in the same financial account, such as having an AdSense account for multiple websites.

In this way, the buyer can clearly separate these income and costs from the website he is interested in and get a clear picture of his independent finances.

6. Backlinks

Backlinks tell the buyer how popular the website is online. The higher the number of backlinks, the higher the website’s ranking in search engines and, in general, the higher the traffic.

Unfortunately, there are numerous backlink checker tools out there and they all offer different results. Therefore, it is better to use all of them to understand the complete portfolio of backlinks pointing to the website.

A buyer can use Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer (Moz), Alexa, and Google Webmaster Tools to check backlinks. The results of each resource will be very different. The buyer can click on the backlinks to find out which websites are linked to the website for sale. Backlinks from high authority websites are very valuable.

7.UDRP

The last thing any website buyer wants is to purchase a website and its domain name only to find out that the domain is involved in an awkward legal situation.

The reason buyers purchase website assets and not registered businesses (such as partnerships or corporations) is to avoid inheriting any business liabilities. Similarly, a buyer of website assets does not want to be in legal trouble that a domain name may be involved in.

A quick UDRP lookup will tell the buyer if there are any pending or past legal issues related to the domain name.

8. Patents and trademarks

The sale of a website may involve the purchase of registered patents or trademarks owned by the seller. If the buyer is going to acquire this intellectual property in the package of the website, he should verify the status of these registrations.

Where these patents and trademarks were registered will determine where the buyer conducts their research. The major public databases are the United States Patent and Trademark Office (United States), the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (Canada), and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (European Union). Other countries have their own intellectual property databases.

A buyer must verify that the website seller is the legal registrant of the patents or trademarks by searching these databases.

9.Copyscape

When acquiring article-based websites, due to the high level of content theft online, it’s always a good idea to do some Copyscape research.

This will establish if the website has unique content or if the content was plagiarized from another website.

10. Domain name appraisal

If the website for sale was created with a premium domain name, it is important to set the value of the domain name itself. An appraisal of the domain name may be required.

Both the buyer and the seller can opt for an in-depth formal appraisal report as arranged by Sedo or Moniker. Or they could do a quick automated assessment using online services like Estibot and DomainIndex.com. Automated reviews tend to be less accurate than formal reviews, but can sometimes provide a reasonable price range for the domain name.

If the domain name had changed hands in a previous sale, knowing the past sale price is ideal for conducting a domain appraisal. This price could be discovered from historical records available on NameBio, Estibot, Sedo or DNJournal.

11. Google Penalty

Due to the great importance of Google search engine traffic for most websites, it is a good idea to verify that the website has not been penalized or deindexed by the Google search engine.

There are numerous free online investigative tools that can verify this, such as Pixel Groove’s Sandbox and Penalty Checker.

12. Registered Users and Subscribers

Most websites have a list of email subscribers or registered members. It is important to review these email marketing accounts to verify the number of members claimed by the seller.

Most email marketing services, like MailChimp and Constant Contact, have features that allow an administrator to add users with limited access. A buyer can be added as a user to login and verify the data. Or a seller can use video conferencing to show and prove these numbers to the buyer.

13. Check the forums

Most of the website owners and users are registered members of forums related to the niche of the website. Visiting forums is a great way to understand what people “on the street” think about the website and its products or services.

A simple Google search for the website’s URL will usually bring up forum pages where the website has been discussed in the past. The great thing about forums is that a buyer can also see the dates that forum comments were posted. It tells a buyer what the world thinks about the website, good or bad, over time.

These are 13 items every website buyer should check during due diligence and these are the tools to use to perform these due diligence tasks. Combine this with a bit of common sense and any buyer can, and will, quickly perform proper due diligence on any website.