Should I Redirect This Ranking Old Domain?

I'm about buying a site that's in my niche and with a perfect country targeted domain... but am confused as to what to do with it... We've already agreed price, couldn't complete transactions today due to personal reasons.

Below are a few details of the domain

-DA/PA 18/21
-UR/DR very low 6/2.8
-Banned by adsense in 2017 so can't use adsense

The good

Exact match with my target country for example say my niche(or sub niche) is 'french foods' the domain is frenchfood.co.uk if my target country is the UK.

the domain has some quality backlinks some of which include 2 nofollow links from wikipedia.

Studying the organic search data on ahrefs, I discovered the site was positively impacted by the recent update, while the impact presently isn't much, the search traffic according to ahrefs doubled. Historically, the site has had search traffic of 28k+ at different times in the past.

For most keywords which it ranks, it's on the first page, mostly between position 1 and 5, the rest are spread between 6 and 10 or few in the early second page.

My dilemma...

Since it's the same niche as mine and my site isn't ranking as much as this though I've recently started serious work on mine...

1.should I 301-redirect the domain to mine and make sure to import the exact ranking posts and build their permalinks to be exactly as they've always been on the SERP? I'm considering this because I can't use adsense on the site while I have adsense on the other. It's not an affiliate site, it's more of a content site.
2. Should I leave it as a standalone website and work on both of them simultaneously?

If I redirect to my site will my site take up it's positions on the SERP once I do the changes stated in 1 above?

I can provide more details.

thanks very much as I anticipate your help

It depends on why it was banned. It depends on the niche and if there is a high risk of ban.
And I don't feel the metrics are that great. If it was an expired domain, you could purchase it just for the sake of testing it. But dealing with it... doesn't seem too great. Maybe for $10 you can give it a go unless as I said, the niche is very susceptible of ban (given the adsense TOS) + the niche has a huge CPC. Then it could be interesting.

SirLouen said:

It depends on why it was banned. It depends on the niche and if there is a high risk of ban.
And I don't feel the metrics are that great. If it was an expired domain, you could purchase it just for the sake of testing it. But dealing with it... doesn't seem too great. Maybe for $10 you can give it a go unless as I said, the niche is very susceptible of ban (given the adsense TOS) + the niche has a huge CPC. Then it could be interesting.

Click to expand...

it's not an expired domain, it's been live since 2017 was ranking high but adsense got banned(I didn't bother asking why) then owner stopped working on it, the niche is not one that could attract ban easily. And am buying it for much more than $10, sometimes last year when it was ranking high I approached the owner he told me $1.5k but now it's much lower than this, very much lower but not in the region of $10.

thanks for your input

I need more inputs please... would conclude the deal tomorrow

I would leave both seperated. I would push the content with some pbn links, and see how the rankings react to it

If you could monetize the site with other networks. Then, it won't be a bad idea to work on both of them.
But if adsense is the only possible means to monetize the site, then you can either 301' it to your own domain. (There is the possibility that your site might not take up the previous position).

If it is me, I will buy a fresh domain and redirect it. If anything happens, you can easily remove the redirect.

You want to 301 redirect every article that is present on this website at the similar article on website you currently own? Or what?

$1.5k seems quiet low for a site of that Traffic level especially if it's not in a niche banned by Adsense.
How are you making the transaction? PayPal or Western Union? Be very careful it's not a scam.

Going forward, find out the reason for the Adsense ban and as mentioned earlier, explore 301ing the Site to a freshly registered domain then apply for Adsense with that new domain.

301ing to your website might not be a good move. It is always better to have more than 1 website in a niche.

Best of luck.

Shwepps said:

You want to 301 redirect every article that is present on this website at the similar article on website you currently own? Or what?

Click to expand...

redirect the domain, then 'create' posts with the content of the previously ranking pages, then make sure the permalink structure are exactly the same...

howardriddle said:

$1.5k seems quiet low for a site of that Traffic level especially if it's not in a niche banned by Adsense.
How are you making the transaction? PayPal or Western Union? Be very careful it's not a scam.

Going forward, find out the reason for the Adsense ban and as mentioned earlier, explore 301ing the Site to a freshly registered domain then apply for Adsense with that new domain.

301ing to your website might not be a good move. It is always better to have more than 1 website in a niche.

Best of luck.

Click to expand...

The niche isn't banned at all, I have a website presently in the same niche and it's monetized by adsense for over a year now.

When he mentioned $1.5k was last year and he had no time working on it because he was always busy running his own ageny(a web design agency that also does SEO for clients)

not very scared if its turns out fraud as I will be paying directly to his bank account which I can go to the bank to report as fraud...this is very less likely because he stands to lose a lot.

I'll look into exploring the 301 redirect to a new domain, thanks.

HenryObi said:

redirect the domain, then 'create' posts with the content of the previously ranking pages, then make sure the permalink structure are exactly the same...

Click to expand...

That might work for you. 301 redirects are powerful