A well-prepared website sells or leases faster and with fewer surprises. You do not need to relaunch it, rewrite it or add anything new. You need to make sure the domain is safe, the site is clean and online, and you can show a buyer the evidence of what it is: real traffic, real links and a real business behind it.
The ten steps below take most owners an afternoon or two. They are useful whoever you deal with in the end, whether that is us, a broker, a marketplace or a private buyer.
Why does preparation matter for a site you no longer run?
A buyer of a dormant website is buying evidence. The business has stopped, so there is no profit to look at. What is left is the traffic the site still gets, the authority links it earned while the business was real, and the brand that still ranks. If you can show those clearly, the due diligence is quick. If you cannot, every buyer has to guess, and guesses tend to be cautious.
Preparation also protects you. Many dormant sites are lost not because nobody wanted them but because the domain lapsed, the site was hacked, or the owner could no longer get into the registrar account when it mattered.
Step 1: Check where your site stands
Start with a quick look from the outside. Ahrefs offers a free Website Authority Checker that shows your Domain Rating, and a free traffic checker that shows estimated search traffic. Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ score of a site’s backlink strength on a 100-point scale.
Remember that Ahrefs traffic is an estimate. Ahrefs itself says its data “is just an estimate and can’t be treated as the actual search traffic data of a website”. Search Console shows your real clicks.
Our free website value check puts these numbers together and tells you whether the site looks lease-worthy, borderline or not yet. For context, the minimum we look for is a site still indexed on Google, at least 500 monthly organic visits as estimated by Ahrefs, at least two or three strong authority links, a brand that still ranks for some of its keywords, and an owner who can transfer the domain. Our guide on reading Ahrefs metrics explains each number in plain English.
Step 2: Renew the domain and turn on auto-renew
This is the single most important step. An expired domain loses its website first and can lose the name itself soon after.
Under ICANN’s Expired Registration Recovery Policy, your registrar has to warn you at least twice before expiry, roughly a month and a week out. After expiry, the policy requires the registrar to interrupt the domain’s DNS for at least the last 8 days you can still renew, so the site goes dark. At GoDaddy, an expired domain is listed on its expired domains auction about 26 days after it lapses.
Renew for at least a year and switch on auto-renew with a payment card that will not expire soon. A buyer will not want to start a deal on a domain with three weeks left.
Step 3: Confirm you control the domain
Log in to your registrar account. Check that you, or your company, are the named registrant, and that the contact email on the account still works. If the domain was registered by a former employee, a web agency or a co-founder, sort that out now. It is much easier to fix while everyone is still reachable.
If the company that owned the site has closed or is in liquidation, the person with the right to sell may not be you. That is a question for a lawyer or the appointed administrator. This is general information, not legal advice.
Step 4: Fix hacked or broken pages
Old sites on unmaintained software are easy targets. Open your site on a phone and a laptop and click through the main pages. Search Google for your domain and look for pages you did not write, especially in other languages or about unrelated products.
If you find injected pages or strange redirects, clean them before you contact any buyer. Update or replace the software, remove unknown admin users, change every password and check the result again. We do not take hacked or penalized sites, and most careful buyers will not either. You do not need to update old content. Leave the pages that earned links exactly where they are.
Step 5: Export your Search Console data
Search Console is the strongest proof of traffic you have, because it comes from Google itself. Its Performance report offers “Last 16 months” of data, and to keep anything longer Google points to the Search Analytics API or bulk exports. Older data drops off, so export it now.
Google notes that “many reports provide an export button” for both the chart and the table. Download the queries, pages and dates views and keep the files somewhere safe. If you never set up Search Console, add and verify the property now so you have data to show. Our guide on proving traffic with Search Console goes into more detail.
Step 6: List your strongest authority links
Buyers want to see the trust a real business earned: coverage in the press, listings from trade associations, links from universities, suppliers or local government. Make a short list of the two or three best, with the page that links to you and the page on your site it points to.
The free Ahrefs tools show some of your referring domains. You likely know others already from the business’s history: the newspaper feature, the industry award, the council directory. Our guide on what counts as a strong authority link shows how to find and judge them.
Step 7: Gather proof of the business behind the site
A website with a real business history is worth more than one without. Collect what shows that history: company registration records, press coverage, old product pages, screenshots, and your Google Business Profile if you had one.
The Wayback Machine helps here. The Internet Archive says it has preserved more than one trillion web pages, so there is a good chance it captured your site while the business was running. Save a few dated snapshots.
Step 8: Prepare read-only access for a buyer
Exports can be edited. Direct access cannot. Only a property owner can add users in Search Console, through Settings, Users and permissions, then Add user, choosing Owner, Full or Restricted. Restricted is the right level for a buyer who wants to verify your numbers before signing.
Do not add anyone until you are talking to a serious buyer, and remove them if the deal does not go ahead.
Step 9: Get the transfer code ready
When the deal is signed, the domain may need to move. Find where your registrar issues the auth code, sometimes called the EPP or AuthInfo code. Under the ICANN Transfer Policy, if your registrar has no self-service tool it must provide the code and remove the transfer lock within 5 calendar days of your request.
Check for locks too. A registrar may deny a transfer within 60 days of a domain’s creation or of a move between registrars, and it must impose a 60-day transfer lock after a change of registrant unless you opt out before the change. Do not send the code to anyone yet. Our guide on how a website transfer works walks through the full sequence.
Step 10: Choose your route and get it in writing
With your file ready, you can compare options properly. A cash sale pays you once. A lease-to-own deal pays monthly, with us roughly $300 to $500 per site until the agreed price is paid in full, and the monthly route pays a higher total than our cash offer. Our guide to a lease-to-own deal month by month shows how that works from start to finish.
Whatever you choose, sign a written agreement before any transfer. Keep copies of everything you prepared, since your records of purchase, costs and payments matter for tax. Our guide to taxes and paperwork by region covers what official sources say.
Decide now what happens to customer data. Order records, customer accounts and mailing lists are usually not part of a website deal: export what you are required to keep and delete the rest before handover, unless the written agreement says otherwise. Data protection rules vary by country, so confirm your duties with a qualified adviser; this is not legal advice.
What should you avoid while preparing?
Some well-meant changes make a dormant site harder to sell or lease. Avoid these until a deal is signed:
- Deleting old pages or products. A closed store’s product and category pages are often the ones that earned links and still get visits. Leave them online, even if the products are gone.
- Changing the URL structure or moving to a new platform. Moving pages to new addresses can break the links that point to them and lose traffic you could otherwise show a buyer.
- Letting hosting lapse to save money. A site that is offline cannot be checked, and every week dark is a week of traffic history you cannot get back.
- Redirecting the domain somewhere else. Pointing the old domain at a new business or a social profile replaces the evidence a buyer wants to see.
- Sending the auth code or logins before a signed agreement. Access should follow the written terms, never come before them.
If you are not sure whether a change helps, the safe default is to leave the site as it is, keep it renewed and keep it clean. A buyer can always decide what to update after the handover.
A preparation checklist at a glance
| Item | Where to find it | Why a buyer cares |
|---|---|---|
| Domain renewal date | Registrar account | No risk of lapse mid-deal |
| Registrant name | Registrar account | Proves you can transfer |
| Clean, loading site | Browser and a Google search | No hacked pages |
| 16 months of performance data | Search Console export | Real clicks from Google |
| Two or three authority links | Ahrefs free checker, your own records | Evidence of earned trust |
| Proof of business history | Company records, Wayback Machine | Shows a real business ran here |
| Auth code location | Registrar settings | The domain can move when signed |
What to do next
- Renew the domain today if it has less than a year left.
- Export your Search Console data and save it with your link list and history file.
- Send us your site for a free valuation and we will tell you whether it fits and what we can offer.
Frequently asked questions
How do I prepare my website for sale?
Start by renewing the domain and turning on auto-renew so nothing lapses mid-deal. Then export your Search Console performance data, list your strongest authority links, fix any hacked or broken pages, collect proof of the business that ran on the site, and confirm you can get the transfer code from your registrar. With that file ready, a buyer can check the site in days.
Do I need to relaunch or update my old website before selling it?
No. Buyers of dormant websites expect the business to have stopped. What matters is that the site is online, indexed, clean and transferable, and that you can show its history. Rewriting content or redesigning pages before a sale usually adds cost without adding value, and changing old pages can even remove the content that earned its links.
How much Search Console data should I give a buyer?
Give as much as Search Console holds, which is 16 months in the Performance report. Export it before you start talking to buyers, because older data drops off over time. You can also give a serious buyer Restricted access to the property so they can check the numbers themselves without being able to change anything.
What if my website was hacked?
Clean it before you look for a buyer. We do not take hacked or penalized sites, and most careful buyers will not either. Remove injected pages and unwanted redirects, update or replace the software, change every password, and check that Google shows your real pages. If the problem is beyond you, a security professional can clean it up.
Can I prepare my website if the domain is about to expire?
Yes, and renewing it is the first step. Under ICANN rules your registrar must warn you before expiry, but if the domain lapses the site goes dark and the domain can later reach a public auction. Renew for at least a year so the domain stays safe while you find a buyer and agree terms.
Find out what your website is worth before it expires.
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