Anyone who owns a website should take all the steps necessary to make it as valuable as possible whether they’re trying to sell it or not. You never know what could happen in the future and you might have to consider making an emergency sale for one reason or the other. If you intend to sell your website, you will need to evaluate your site and look at your metrics to see if you can make any improvements. The good news is that most businesses can find easy ways to boost their value and make their sites more interesting to buyers. Here’s how you can maximize your website’s value right now.
Understand Website Valuation Methods
If you want to know how to make your site as valuable as possible, you need to understand business valuation methods first. A lot of website owners will prefer to go with an earnings multiple, but that’s not always the easiest or most efficient method. There are other methods like a discounted cash flow analysis, for instance, which could help account for future revenue. So, look up different valuation models and get expert advice on which one would be the best for your website.
Add Intellectual Property
The more intellectual property you can hand over to a website buyer, the higher you can sell the site for. This intellectual property can be in the form of a special guide or manual that you give out to people who subscribe to your list, branded products, or unique content. Speaking of unique content now would be the time to ramp up your content marketing efforts and add more content to your blog if you’ve been neglecting it. Having more content will not only give you more value to pass over, but it will benefit your SEO as well. This brings us to our next point.
Improve On-Page and Off-Page SEO
Having good SEO will also significantly increase the value of your website. Buyers will love seeing that your site has a very diverse and vast link profile. This lets them know that they will be able to capitalize on your efforts and not have to spend too much time or money on SEO at the beginning.
On-page SEO is something a lot of website owners will look at as well, so make sure that everything is as sound as possible. One thing you should pay very special attention to is site performance. Site speed has a direct influence on SEO results and buyers may be worried by a site that takes too much time to load.
Start by upgrading your hosting. This way, there will be no confusion as to what is causing your site to be slow. From then on you can start looking at the heaviness of your fonts and design elements, images, and how clean your site’s code is.
Wait a While
The age of a website will have a direct influence on how much it can be valued. This is why it’s usually recommended that you wait until a site is at least three years old before you can sell it. If the site is getting close to that mark, see if you can wait a few months first. This could be all that’s needed for you to add thousands of dollars to the site’s valuation.
Work with a Broker
If you are thinking of selling your site on a platform like Flippa, then you should think twice. You may get much better offers if you work with the right broker. A broker who has sold your type of site before will have access to a list of people who may be interested in sites like yours. People will feel more comfortable buying a site through a broker as well.
Brokers might also be able to help you with valuation and due diligence and ensure that you don’t waste your time and money working with fraudulent buyers. So, if you haven’t thought about the option, speak with a few brokers today and see how they can help.
These are all things that you can do right away to boost your site’s value. You don’t have to go all out and do a complete revamp of your website, but you do have to do what it takes to make your site look like a great deal.
