Answers
How do you check page and keyword concentration before buying a content site?
Short answer: Ask for 12 months of search console and analytics data by page, plus affiliate or ad earnings by page. Work out the share of clicks and earnings from the top one, five and ten pages. If a few pages carry most of the site, value it as if they lost their rankings.
What is page and keyword concentration?
A content site can show steady traffic overall while most of it comes from a few pages, or from a few search terms those pages rank for. When that is the case, the business you are buying is really those pages. One ranking drop, one competitor or one search update can take out a large share of traffic and earnings at once. Listings usually report total traffic and the channel mix, not how the traffic splits across pages.
What should you ask the seller for?
- Search console access, or an export of clicks and impressions by page and by search term for the last 12 months (16 if available).
- An analytics export of sessions by landing page for the same period.
- Earnings by page: affiliate reports by tracking link or sub-ID, and ad revenue by page if the ad network reports it.
- The date each top page was published and last updated, and whether any were bought, redirected or merged from another site.
How do you measure it?
Sort pages by clicks and work out the share of the top one, top five and top ten pages. Do the same for earnings, because a page with modest traffic can carry most of the affiliate income. Then look at the search terms behind the top pages: if one or two terms bring most of their clicks, the concentration is even higher than the page numbers show. Finally, chart the top pages' clicks month by month to see whether they have held their positions.
What are the red flags?
- One page brings in more than about a quarter of clicks or earnings. This is our rule of thumb, the same threshold we use for one customer; see customer concentration.
- The top ten pages bring in most of the earnings on a site with hundreds of articles.
- The top pages rank for one or two head terms that big publishers also target.
- The top pages were published or rewritten in the last few months, so their rankings have no history yet.
- The seller will only share totals, not page-level data.
- Search is most of the traffic too, so a ranking drop hits both; see organic search over half of traffic.
How do you price the risk?
Ask what the site earns if its top page, or its top five pages, lost half their clicks, and value the business on a number between that and the listed profit. The traffic shock test runs the same idea on the whole site. If the top pages have held their rankings through recent search updates, the risk is lower; check that with how to tell if a site was hit by a Google update.
What does a composite check look like?
This is a composite example, not a real deal. A product review site with 240 articles lists $3,000 a month in profit, asking $90,000. The page-level export shows the top page brings in 38% of clicks and, through one affiliate program, 52% of earnings, and it ranks mostly for one "best of" term. The buyer models the top page losing half its clicks, which takes profit to about $2,200 a month, and offers on that number: about $70,000 at the same multiple, or the asking price with part of it as an earnout tied to that page's earnings over the first year.
Run the listing through the free red-flag checker first, then work through the content site due diligence checklist.
Frequently asked questions
Is some concentration normal on a content site?
Yes. Most content sites get a large share of traffic from a minority of pages. What matters is how large that share is, how long those pages have held their rankings, and whether the earnings are spread more evenly than the traffic.
Can I check page concentration without the seller's data?
Only roughly. Third-party SEO tools estimate traffic by page and can show which pages and terms a site ranks for, but their estimates can be far off. Use them to choose questions, and confirm with search console data before you make an offer.
Should I walk away from a concentrated site?
Not necessarily. A concentrated site can still be a good buy if the price reflects the risk and the top pages have a long, stable ranking history. Price it on what it earns if the top pages slip, not on its best month.
Sources
- FirstPass Memo, red-flag checker rules, our own rules, published as /rules.json
- FirstPass Memo, seller question bank, October 2026 (general checklist), our own questions
- FirstPass Memo, free buyer calculators, our own calculators; the formulas are on each page
Related
- Free red-flag checker
- How to verify website traffic
- How to tell if a site was hit by a Google update
- Content site due diligence checklist
- How to verify affiliate income
- How to check customer concentration
- Traffic shock test
- Red flag: organic search over half of traffic
- Glossary of listing terms
- More questions buyers ask
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Composite examples are invented and labelled. Figures from other sites are quoted with a link and the date we read them; FirstPass figures are asking prices and seller-stated profit, not sale prices. Informational screening only, not investment, legal or tax advice.