An expired dom experiment

[domainmafia]

Just picked up a domain with a shed load of backlinks. I mean a tonne of the beggars. From high profile sites as well, gov domains, big newspapers and magazines (CNN, NY Times, Bloomberg, BBC etc) as well as Wikipedia. Majestic TF of 15, CF of 18.

I have a fair bit of experience with domains that have expired but not tried one as powerful as this before. The plan is to get it indexed again so G knows it is there and the DNS failures it saw while the domain was expiring (UK domain so no DNS for a month or two) were transient. Once G is visiting again and I have sorted some things with the money site I will look to push all the links over.

It's not a straightforward relationship from in terms of niches but I am trying it on the value of the words in the domain. Been trying to come up with a suitable comparison to give you an idea on how I think it might work but struggling to find a good one without giving the name away.

They are unrelated niches (e.g. marketing and dogs) but have linked words. For example the expired domain could be biringhamleads.xxx and the money site birminghamdogleashes.xxx. So they are linked geographically and leads is like leashes - see what I mean? Also the birminghamleads site has a page /bitches - which is used heavily in the anchor text - so I am hoping G will pick up some word similarities...

Anyhoo, domain purchased yesterday, set up a holding page and Googlebot is regularly visiting it. Have set it up in WMT and will scrape some content from the old site over the next few days while I check out how many pages Google is looking at and make some amends to the money site. Going to add leads to the money site more so that it looks like the name is as much about leashes and then I will 301 all of the content from the caught site to the home page of the money site.

Money site is currently page 3 and I just CBA link gathering for it. Current TF 16, CF 27, 257 ref domains. The number one site for the main target keyword is 1,979 ref domains, TF 44 and CF 39. Caught domain has 1,060 ref domains so am hoping for some good upward movement. I think it might be a case of either killing the money site or giving it a real boost. What do you think?

Will keep you updated with progress

 

[seocrab]

interested to see your results... maybe put this in the IM Journey section too? Good luck!

 

[domainmafia]

I tired to post on here a few days ago. I got impatient, as I tend to, and decided to push the domain to the money site almost immediately. I put up a holding page, checked logs and saw Googlebot hitting it within a few hours, checked Google's index and saw the holding page was cached so decided to switch it quickly. The expired domain had a lot of dynamic backlinks, I tried to post what I had done with these in terms of htaccess redirects to make sure things were getting pushed over but as this is a new account on the forum I hit some sort of block so ditched the post and am will get a few more under my belt so the account unlocks.

Anyway, saw almost immediate movement with the money site - in the wrong direction though I redirected the domain on Monday and within 24 hours the site had dropped four positions for the main term. When searching for the main keyword from a machine in the geo-location the site is based in for the keyword without the location name the domain dropped from page two to page twenty.

Was not particularly worried about this, this was a domain with 300 or so domains linking to it that suddenly had 1,000 extra domains now linking plus I had tweaked the title tag which can sometimes cause a drop in rankings.

Five days since the redirect and we now have upward movement. From position 38, back up to 34 and now it is on page 3 - position 25 - some really good upward movement. When searching from a machine in the target area for the term without the place name we are back on page two in position 17. I don't use rank checking software at all so handy for me to post up here so I can keep an eye on movement. Like I said, will post about redirects and checking of dynamic URLs etc later on.

Fingers crossed for more upward movement, I would expect to see more yet due to the power of the domains linking. Also need to get busy in getting some more links with search term specific anchor text to help push up the ratios and increase relevancy as the redirected domain will push down the percentage of matching anchor text. Also going to add some more text to the home page and some other on page tweaks. Looking promising so far though.

 

[rumi92]

Would like to see this. Keep us updated regarding the results of your experiment

 

[seocrab]

Very interesting. Shame you're building additional links before rankings have stabilised - makes it hard to measure the impact of the redirect. But as long as you're ranking is improving, that's good for you!

 

[domainmafia]

Very interesting. Shame you're building additional links before rankings have stabilised - makes it hard to measure the impact of the redirect. But as long as you're ranking is improving, that's good for you!

Cheers, that's a good point. Not got any new ones in yet and knowing my lazy nature I probably won't have done within the next couple of weeks so will see what happens and let you know. I do think that the anchor text ratios will need a push around with the expired domain pointing at it though so to get the best ranking for the main keyword I don't think that the 301 will be enough. Let's see what happens...

 

[Sofiamartinez]

I was about to get into a similar kind of experiment. I already have the domain, but it is expired. Dont know how much impact it will have as a PBN. Keep us updated, it will be interesting to see how your site moves ahead.

 

[TheMarquis]

Very interesting. Don't push too far. Let Google crawl it, like in a natural way. Good luck!

 

[domainmafia]

A bit of downward movement the last few days. No site changes, no new links. Pushed up again today though feels like it might go higher yet. Up to 23 for main KW with location but still down one on the previous report without location - position 19. Definitely of a mind to leave it now for a few weeks before trying anything else to see where it ends up.

 

[kid1810]

I am doing the same approach as you. But a bit different, my expired domains have less than 10 RD but, each RD has lots of links. Some keywords go up to top in 2-3 weeks. Could be my keywords are easy.

 

[BobJustBob]

Can you give some more details?

How did you used the expired domain name? with old content and old theme or just the old content?

What changes did you do in terms of whois and dns data that is publicly available?

What did you do with the URLs? Did you check if it had SSL before?

so on...

 

[domainmafia]

Can you give some more details?

How did you used the expired domain name? with old content and old theme or just the old content?

What changes did you do in terms of whois and dns data that is publicly available?

What did you do with the URLs? Did you check if it had SSL before?

so on...

I wrote a longer post about what I did with this one but due to my post count being < 15 it got blocked, I tried editing the content out to see what was tipping the filter but couldn't get it through so will post it again when my post count is high enough. Basically though, as it was a fresh drop I just did a holding page, checked Google was crawling it so within 48 hours had it completely redirecting to the money site. I couldn't wait due to the strength of the links.

Positions pretty much the same for the minute, up one to 22 for the keyword with location, still 19 for the term when searched using an IP in the geo location.

6 more posts before my account unlocks.

 

[domainmafia]

A few days of no change and then some downward movement yesterday - followed by a strong push up today. Was back down to position 24 for the term with location but this morning it has pushed up to position 19 - page two, baby!! For a machine in the location it is up one position to 18.

 

[Maxim Alston]

Interesting experiment. How competitive are the keywords your targeting? Curious; how is/was the rest of your link profile looking, pre-this? PBNs, Web 2.0, natural links?!

 

[domainmafia]

Interesting experiment. How competitive are the keywords your targeting? Curious; how is/was the rest of your link profile looking, pre-this? PBNs, Web 2.0, natural links?!

The keywords are competitive, not gambling or financial competitive but the Google Ads are always full. I do PPC for them at the minute and top spot if around £5 if that is any gauge of competitiveness. Let me know if any other measures of competition I can check and I will let you know. Since I kicked this domain over I have been looking more at organic ranking and I have just bought the SEO Powersuite, not used it for five or six years and realising why I stopped using it now

Link profile before hand was a mix of directory sites, a few PBNs and links from other "real" sites that I own or manage. No Web 2.0s - I don't really know what they are to be truthful, I need to swot up on gaming Google in 2018! I have been working on web sites since before Google was a household name but do more on hosting and management now than SEO.

Before the redirect I had about 250 referring domains, Majestic is now showing over 1,050.

Position 15 now, I smell a top 10 coming on... Shouldn't jinx myself, just yet should I

 

[Maxim Alston]

Position 15 now, I smell a top 10 coming on... Shouldn't jinx myself, just yet should I

Awesome! Thanks for the reply. Look forward to seeing how this progresses!

 

[domainmafia]

I did jinx myself Domain dropped back over the last few weeks, pretty much back to where it was before I did the redirect.

I have a couple of theories on this though and don't regret buying the expired domain at all.

1 - I have seen occasions before - a bit weight of links in a short space of time can cause domains to climb rankings and then fall again - I think this is the reason it has gone up and come back down again in a relatively short space of time.

2 - Very little other link building going on for this domain before or since the redirect so the sudden presence of a lot of links might have tripped a filter (site did fall temporarily to page 12 for one keyword, definite sign of an automatic penalty IMO).

3 - Anchor text and niche not on target. Niche was completely different but I bought the domain due to the high power backlinks, BBC, major news sites etc. Anchor text was very varied and it will have vastly reduced my main k/w ratios so while the volume and power of links might have caused it to rise the k/w density algo's might have caused a similar fall - leaving the site back where it was originally.

So to push this domain on I am going to do what I said I was going to do in one of the earlier posts, get more links and increase the k/w ratio of the anchor text for the money terms. I am confident that the powerful links will give it a good authority boost and help the domain long-term but it needs to have a regular drip of new links to give the site a view of being popular in G's eyes (I do think regular links help ranking sometimes) and also now it needs a higher number of k/w anchor text backlinks to bring up the ratio.

So still got work to do before I reach the magical front page. So I guess the moral of this experiments is - redirecting expired domains can certainly help but be careful on how the anchor text ratios will affect your overall keyword balance and don't neglect other link building to keep your site fresh in Google's eyes.

Wishing good rankings to you all.

domainmafia xxx

 

[jamie3000]

Thanks for the share mate, really interesting read