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Selling a Web-Powered Business

Twelve Tips That Will Help You Achieve the Highest Possible Exit Price

With blood, sweat and tears, you’ve built your web business into a thriving moneymaker.

Sure, you could keep running for years to come, but maybe you’d prefer to cash out and enjoy a little rest and relaxation, or switch gears and jump to an entirely new startup concept.

No matter what your current situation, the time will come when you will want to execute an exit strategy for your web business. It’s never too early to start thinking about how you will sell the company and maximize the sale price.

Understanding what it takes to sell a web business should be your first step. With that in mind, here are some important things to consider as you start contemplating selling your website and the accompanying business to an interested buyer.

1. Sell The Business, Not Just The Site

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It is likely that you have heard about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal. The question is whether or not this will have a major impact on the search engine landscape. The concern for many online small businesses is whether there will be negative (or positive) effects on their website rankings. Another concern is whether the number of visitors a website receives will be altered.

What happens?

The union of Yahoo and Microsoft means that Yahoo is going to give up their search technology and opting to use Microsoft’s search technology instead. Bing.com will be the power behind organic and the paid search results that Yahoo delivers (with the exceptions concerning the Yahoo premium ads).

Microsoft will be getting access to Yahoo’s search technology and use it to supplement its own technology.

How will this affect your website?

• 1. You should optimize for Bing.com. Since the combined market share of Bing and Yahoo are estimated to between 15-26%
  2. Loss of Yahoo’s inbound link data?.Yahoo will drop its index and this may mean that the inbound link data it has will be lost. It might be important to get a snapshot of the inbound links data before this happens.
  3. The face of PPC competition is changing.Microsoft will be providing the search ads for both Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo will not be offering paid search advertising on its own. This will make it easier to manage ads for Yahoo and Bing on one user interface. This may mean rising bid prices for these ads.
  4. Website closings.The future of the Yahoo Internet directory is uncertain as well as their SearchMonkey and SearchBOSS search applications. Other redundant services such as maps may be eliminated as well.
  5. Two independent search result pages.Since there will still be user choice as to which search engine results pages will be used, it will still be important to optimize a website for both of these.

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A big change is happening to Google search and it is called Caffeine.  Google released Caffeine recently on a limited test basis.  Here is what search engine advice author Kalena Jordan reported in a SitePro News article: Conclusions

• Probably the biggest eyebrow raiser for me was the marked jump in keyword density between SERPS on the old Google and SERPS on Caffeine. In nearly every comparison, the Caffeine SERPS featured site titles and snippets with a much higher phrase and/or keyword density. Coincidence? I doubt it. • It’s definitely faster. Every search query I tried on Caffeine was returned at a faster speed than with the current Google. Impressive. • Caffeine seems slightly fresher. Some of the results I observed in Caffeine SERPS and not in regular Google SERPS were more current. For example, blog posts published within the last couple of days. • Apart from the ego search, old Google out performed Caffeine in the index size category. But this is likely because only a handful of data-centers have Caffeine on board so far. • Caffeine definitely has a heavier emphasis on social media, with results from sites like Blogger, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Profiles featuring more prominently, particularly for name searches. Wiki pages still seem to rank highly in both Caffeinated and Decaffeinated Google.

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