[Guide] How to use Expired Domains effectively

[rafark]

Why

It's a footprint. Google stores your ip every time you log in to any of its services. Google can (and most likely does) create a connection based on the ips of all the sessions. Companies have been detecting multiple accounts from the same user based on ips since the late 90s.

 

[WorkingNow]

does it matter how long the expired domain sits expired without content or a site? is there a time window in which this is effective?

 

[highw0w]

Nice thread! One big thanks!

 

[seowarrior008]

Hey, thanks for the great sharing, and I learned a lot things pretty new for me.

I am wondering how you insert anchor link on bls powered old page, if not niche relevant?

saying, that old page is for auto, but ur money site is for jewelry. In such case, do u still add "jewelry keyword anchor" on that "Auto" page？

How much links power can be transmitted, even if the content is NOT relevant? or u guys have other alternative solution for this?

Appreciate if anyone shares some experience here.

Cheers

 

[JonasGreyHound]

Interesting read. Thanks.

 

[connor4really]

Thanks for the great information! Question, do you ever run into issues restoring the content of the old site from previous owners? copyright issues? Additionally what if a lot of the links are pointing towards images that used to be on the site?

 

[fasttrak]

Love this guide. Thx dude

No problem, glad you liked it.

Great tips

Thanks.

I am also using archivarix to scrape site from wayback - if there is less then 200 pages its free. You can set even SSL there or download HTML editor etc. Really good tool

Great recommendation, thanks for sharing.

Thank you very much this helps me a lot right now.
I got a question: would you do a 301 redirect to a domain to your main money site?
I came up a domain which has some backlinks (very few) from really good sites and the domain is 100% the same of my main domain.
Would you do it? Thanks!

I do use 301 redirects on some of my sites, if they a) have enough decent links, and b) are an exact niche fit. I don't just 301 to the homepage, that is a waste and red flag. I redirect the juiced up pages to the pages on my site that are an exact fit.

Awesome and helpful guide for everyone.

Thank you.

Great share. Thanks.
Who just started play on an expired domain, this needs a lot of effort and time so don't expect it easy like you read the guide.

It definitely takes time to do this right, but the actual steps are pretty easy to follow.

I have a silly question that if I register an expired domain then whois info shows previous registration date or the date of when I bought?

Don't worry about that, not an issue.

If you look closely enough at the domain history, you can see each time it has been registered, how many different nameservers and hosting servers it has been on/through.

That is all a part of the due diligence before you buy the domain. But once you have it, the registration date does not matter anymore, as you have verified it is a clean domain with decent backlinks.

Make sense?

Thank you for your great guides.
I see many people redirect expired domain(s) with some backlinks their money site... Can you give more info/guide on this ?
If we redirect 3-4 old expired domains to a new site how this will work ?
Also this type of redirect its a simple 301 redirect from the domain registrar ? Nothing else ?

Thanks

Firstly, you are welcome.

Please see my reply above, 301 redirecting a site can work if done properly, it can also get your site penalised, especially if you are doing a number of them. So be careful with that method.

Obviously this guide is about using a quality expired domain as the base to build a money site from, but I did expect questions on domain 301 redirects as well.

Thanks a lot for this great share. What if I only want to use the domain for redirection purpose to pass some link juice to the new site, do I still need to recreate the site?

I will tell you what I do, then you can decide which method you want to use.

If I decide to 301 redirect a domain, and not build a money site from it, I follow the below steps.

1. Build out old content
2. Let it age and start to rank old KWs
3. 301 redirect individual pages to exact fit pages on my money site

The reason I do this, is the same reason you buy an auction domain, over an expired domain. You want guaranteed juice and authority, with less risk.

Yes, it takes some time, but not much effort and the results are night and day compared to a cold expired domain 301 redirect. Much safer for my money site too!

My thought exactly. I need more info on this. @fasttrak could you please shed more light on this?

Thanks again!

Please see above

IMO it's waste of time to do all this. I purchase expired domain and 301 it to hone page or related post.

Google starts to show the redirect links in my search console in 2 months and I start to see ranking improvements after that.

You are making it complex.

Thanks for your opinion, it is always appreciated. I am obviously less risk adverse than you in my approach + this guide is about building money sites from expired domains, not 301 redirects of an expired domain.

I never used to be as risk adverse, but then I have been slapped by Google because of 301 redirects in the past. I have never had an issue using any of the above methods though. Maybe there is something there that could help you too.

Best of luck

 

[G2 Maker]

Just an amazing guide dude, thanks for sharing!
What's the difference between Redirect /old /new and Redirect 301 /old /new in htaccess???
Isn't Redirect 301 by default?

 

[jeffro89]

@fasttrak or @Nargil
Any experience, repurposing expired domains with Drop history?
A friend bought a brandable expired domain last year. Not many links pointing to it about 20 if anything. The domain his been dropped once in its entire history. Only expired once. My mate has added like 60000 words of content and rankings were going up daily. Over the last 2 months, he seems to have just plateaued in terms of rankings. He said he has been on the average position of 56 over the last 2 months even after adding new content monthly.

My question is, does having drop history cause ranking suppression form you experience. The domain is clean, I checked it for him and no spammy links ever. I know having to many drops is bad. But one surely shouldn't be causing any ranking suppression?

 

[Nargil]

@fasttrak or @Nargil
Any experience, repurposing expired domains with Drop history?
A friend bought a brandable expired domain last year. Not many links pointing to it about 20 if anything. The domain his been dropped once in its entire history. Only expired once. My mate has added like 60000 words of content and rankings were going up daily. Over the last 2 months, he seems to have just plateaued in terms of rankings. He said he has been on the average position of 56 over the last 2 months even after adding new content monthly.

My question is, does having drop history cause ranking suppression form you experience. The domain is clean, I checked it for him and no spammy links ever. I know having to many drops is bad. But one surely shouldn't be causing any ranking suppression?

Amazing what obscure reasons can people blame for their site not ranking. What about... not enough backlinks? New content monthly? That's not much of an effort either.

Drops have no impact on anything. Especially if they happened ages ago. If the site has been dropped for a while, it might take a bit longer to kick in, but that's about i t.

 

[Deleted member 283687]

Good share.

 

[fasttrak]

Thanks for sharing mate.

Nice guide. Thanks for sharing.

Great tips! Thanks for sharing mate!

Awesome as always, thank you for sharing.

Good one. Thanks

Your welcome, thanks for reading and I hope it helps.

I have used https://github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader several times successfully without any issue. And its free. Only problem, you will need something like notepad++ to identify and reemplace broken links

Thanks for sharing that, I have used it a fair few times as well. You can also use HTTrack.

Truth to be told adding the PBNs to the console is kinda useless. Whats the point? Google may or may not show all of the old links, regardless of their authority - literally zero correlations between ranking and if the link is visible in the console - you can see massive boost from link that did not show up in the console, ever. The rest of the guide is good.

That is why I have 2 determining factors - old KWs ranking again! As soon as I see this, I know the domain is good to go.

Very informative share, thanks for sharing this wonderful guide.

Nice share...thanks for info...

Amazing guide, very useful.

Excellente!!!!

Great Work

Your welcome, hopefully it helps you create some killer money sites. Or at least gives you a good base to start on.

Nice guide! Thanks.

Do you think there’s 0 value in a straight 301 redirect if you don’t restore content at google eyes first?
I opted for 301s in the past, as I’m a bit lazy and it sounded cheaper and quicker than restore, host and treat it as PBN.
Actually I see the old backlinks in GSC of my money site after few months of redirection.

Thank you for this Share!

I answered this in an earlier question. Have a look at my previous reply, it should answer your question, if not, give me a nudge

Appreciate you efforts in posting this information .
Would love to implement them personally

Nothing stopping you, go for it, you have nothing to lose and absolutely everything to gain.

Best of luck.

 

[Dhilariousdandy]

I will tell you what I do, then you can decide which method you want to use.

If I decide to 301 redirect a domain, and not build a money site from it, I follow the below steps.

1. Build out old content
2. Let it age and start to rank old KWs
3. 301 redirect individual pages to exact fit pages on my money site

The reason I do this, is the same reason you buy an auction domain, over an expired domain. You want guaranteed juice and authority, with less risk.

Many thanks man! I appreciate this a lot.

 

[fasttrak]

Is there any way to check if the domain was ranking in the past for those content? If it is a recent one, I can probably look over SEMrush but for domain 5-6 years old, how to know if they were ranking domain or else all the effort of restoring content will fail. If it could not rank that time with those content, then in today date, it will never

The presumption is that your expired domain had quality backlinks. If this is correct it would have ranked for target KW's and had traffic. If there are not many quality links, there is a possibility that a very old domain did not rank. In which case it is not one that I would consider for a new money site, and so I would not go to the effort of restoring old content.

You can obviously check Ahrefs historical database to see what links and traffic it had for the period of time that Ahrefs was around and recorded the traffic. Anything before that, you should base your decision on the quantity and quality of the links.

Hope that helps?

does it matter how long the expired domain sits expired without content or a site? is there a time window in which this is effective?

Ultimately no, it does not matter, but it has taken longer for Google to finally restore authority to the domain for some really old ones I have worked on. Some of the domains in my portfolio are sat ageing for several months. But they are worth it.

Nice thread! One big thanks!

Thank you.

Hey, thanks for the great sharing, and I learned a lot things pretty new for me.

I am wondering how you insert anchor link on bls powered old page, if not niche relevant?

saying, that old page is for auto, but ur money site is for jewelry. In such case, do u still add "jewelry keyword anchor" on that "Auto" page？

How much links power can be transmitted, even if the content is NOT relevant? or u guys have other alternative solution for this?

Appreciate if anyone shares some experience here.

Cheers

You can ALWAYS make the old content relevant. In your example I would simply (and have done exactly this) rewrite that page to be about automotive jewellery, that way it is still on topic for the domains linking to it and it is also niche relevant for my transformed money site. I would the create internal links to my money pages from that page to shape the link juice to where it is needed most.

Did I understand your question correctly?

Interesting read. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thanks for the great information! Question, do you ever run into issues restoring the content of the old site from previous owners? copyright issues? Additionally what if a lot of the links are pointing towards images that used to be on the site?

I'll take the 2nd question first - I would not consider this domain for a money site.

Copyright can be an issue, so you do need to do this carefully. Check to see if the business is still active, the publisher is still around etc. You can then decide to what level you restore the content, or if you need to replace some of it.

Personally I have never had an issue, and I have done this with a few big company websites which they ditched as part of their development over the years. Even to the point where my ageing site ranked in the top 10 for their brand name, and they were an Energy company

Obviously, just be smart and careful.

Just an amazing guide dude, thanks for sharing!
What's the difference between Redirect /old /new and Redirect 301 /old /new in htaccess???
Isn't Redirect 301 by default?

Lost me here. I only 301 redirect pages, so eventually Google takes my new page as the right one.

Can you be a bit more specific? I think I might have missed the point of your question?

@fasttrak or @Nargil
Any experience, repurposing expired domains with Drop history?
A friend bought a brandable expired domain last year. Not many links pointing to it about 20 if anything. The domain his been dropped once in its entire history. Only expired once. My mate has added like 60000 words of content and rankings were going up daily. Over the last 2 months, he seems to have just plateaued in terms of rankings. He said he has been on the average position of 56 over the last 2 months even after adding new content monthly.

My question is, does having drop history cause ranking suppression form you experience. The domain is clean, I checked it for him and no spammy links ever. I know having to many drops is bad. But one surely shouldn't be causing any ranking suppression?

@Nargil answered this one, thanks buddy. To echo his answer, it makes no difference, I would suggest building more quality links. The expired domain is simply a base to create a site, a leg up, you still need to consistently build quality links, just as you would any site, new or old.

Good share.

Thank you.

Many thanks man! I appreciate this a lot.

Your welcome, I am pleased it has helped you.

Best of luck.

 

[G2 Maker]

Lost me here. I only 301 redirect pages, so eventually Google takes my new page as the right one.

Can you be a bit more specific? I think I might have missed the point of your question?

Just a technical question basically
I asked for the difference between these two:

Redirect /old /new

Redirect 301 /old /new

Isn't the same (301 by default)?
Thanks again budd

 

[syzygy1]

One question:

Do I need to host the expired domain on a completely different host ? If there are more than 3 ED then I will need more than 3 different hosting account right?

 

[bulba13]

Hey, thanks for the foreign language reply.

I have another question. If all the backlinks are pointed to homepage, is there any point of restoring the old content pages?
Is the site structure important for google to recognize old links?

 

[Jimoz]

Love this guide. Thx dude

 

[Turbo SEO]

Good one mate.keeping rocking

 

[varun barve]

If I decide to 301 redirect a domain, and not build a money site from it, I follow the below steps.

1. Build out old content
2. Let it age and start to rank old KWs
3. 301 redirect individual pages to exact fit pages on my money site

hey, so you don't 301 just the domain to the homepage of money site?
x page to x money page redirection is better?

also, I wanted to ask I have a website where I had done a 301 redirect of a domain and both are in a different niche can I remove the 301 and make a proper pbn out of it? it has been redirecting to one of my sites from 2 months now is it safe to change it now?

also do many posts do you prefer on a pbn? 8-10 links to sites are good? 1 link per domain?