Advice on Selling Local Pet Care Biz + Domain/Website

My wife and I have owned a pet care company locally for 5 years. We have the top spot for "dog walking" on organic search for our area and have never spent money on advertising. We have been highly successful but we are moving and wanting to sell either the website/domain to another company or sell our client list.

Initially I thought we could 301 our domain to theirs, but I've read how Google could punish a move like that. So it seems they would have to keep the brand/domain as is in order to reap the position it holds on organic search - am I correct? We just feel our website has been a huge money maker for us and we don't want to just shut it down when it could be sold or be used by someone else to help make them money. Thoughts on how we should proceed? Thanks!

 

Where are you located? I have consulted for a successful designer dog collar company and they might be interested in your business.

 

Raleigh NC

 

They are based in Providence, RI, so a locally focused business in NC would not likely be of interest to them.

 

Thank you for asking though. Anyone else have any suggestions strictly about the process we should take about the domain/website?

 

You should sell your website/customer list, as is, now while it still has strong results. Sell it as a complete business and base value on annual revenues (1-2x) or profits (4-8x). If you have an audited financial statement, that would be best and will get you a better price. Let the buyer decide how he wants to proceed with the business once s/he purchases it. It is not your problem at that point.

Note that you need to sell this locally, so advertising your business all over the Internet is waste of time. Focus on local options for advertising.