Buying Expired Domains, How Does It Work?

[rosemaryxanders]

I have a website whose backlink profile is not strong and whose rankings have suffered with repeated Google algorithm changes. If I were to buy a domain (expired or otherwise) in a niche that’s similar to mine—say, musical instruments—but with a much stronger backlink profile then TRANSFER my site’s entire content to this new URL, would my keyword rankings increase? Obviously, this would require me to first deindex my old site entirely before moving the content to this new site where, I hope, Google will reindex the articles with the new site’s much stronger backlink profile propelling the articles upwards? Any issues or problems with this method? Thank you.

 

[Nargil]

Yeh, that's not how to do this.

Get the domain, copy your old site to a new site. 301 redirect your old site, page by page, to a new site. Eventually, unless the new domain is utter shit, your ranking should be higher than before. In time of course.

That's it.

 

[praetserge]

I have a website whose backlink profile is not strong and whose rankings have suffered with repeated Google algorithm changes. If I were to buy a domain (expired or otherwise) in a niche that’s similar to mine—say, musical instruments—but with a much stronger backlink profile then TRANSFER my site’s entire content to this new URL, would my keyword rankings increase? Obviously, this would require me to first deindex my old site entirely before moving the content to this new site where, I hope, Google will reindex the articles with the new site’s much stronger backlink profile propelling the articles upwards? Any issues or problems with this method? Thank you.

As mentioned above my post... you should 301 redirect old domain to the new one. If you keep the old structure then you can apply wild redirect with just 1 line of code and then google will gradually update your rankings.

There are plenty of guides here about finding and using expired domains.

 

[itz_styx]

yes it can work if you 301 your old domain to the new domain. of course there is no guarantee that ranking increases, but there is a good chance that it will.

 

[worldatlarge]

These other guys are right, about the 301. You just want to 301 redirect the entire site.

Not knowing exactly what's 'wrong' with your current site, besides slowly decreased rankings... I'd say that if it were me, I'd probably want a fresh start, too. (A new domain, with a clean backlink profile)!

And since I don't know what your site is, I don't know how your content looks. Besides starting fresh with a new, or CLEAN expired domain, I would suggest taking a look at your content and making sure it's not too commercial-sounding.

Actually, if you want, I could take a look at it, in private of course. Maybe a second set of eyes, reading your content, would be good, to get a new perspective. And if you don't feel comfortable sharing with a complete stranger (me) then try to look at your site from a different angle. Pretend to be a customer searching for "musical instruments" and what their perception of your site is. Forget all the hours you've spent building your site. Pretend you're a consumer and want to be impressed with a good looking, informative and not spammy, site, that answers their question and (I assume) has a non-spammy way to buy "musical instruments"


I know that for myself, I am always WAY too close to the issue (my websites) to be objective in any way. Of COURSE I think MY content is perfect, because I wrote it!!!

Here's one way to do a 301 redirect. There are a few ways, depending on what CMS you use and which domain registrar you use. https://www.domain.com/help/article/how-to-create-a-301-redirect

Good luck!

 

[rosemaryxanders]

Thanks for all your responses. Really good food for thought. I still have 3 more questions, though, and if anyone can answer them, I’d really appreciate it.

1. What’s the advantage of 301’ing your old website? As I mentioned before, I don’t want any connection between my old site and a “new” expired one with a more powerful backlink profile (my plan is to deindex the old site and all its articles, wait, then publish the articles anew on the new site). Bottom line: I want to start fresh, particularly if there’s a penalty associated with the old URL, which again makes 301’s a bad idea. So . . . what advantage would 301’s have?

2. People mention how expired domain don’t help, but I know of two sites, thegunzone.com and killedbypolice.net, that have done very well. I’m not sure if either is an expired site. However, both have been radically changed by their new owners. Thegunzone.com went from a gun hobbyist site to a schlocky gun-accessory affiliate-marketing site, and killedbypolice.net, originally intended as site that monitors cop violence, has now tackled on hundreds of gun-accessory affiliate-marketing articles despite while still having the same homepage. How come these two have met success?

3. Finally, is there another site besides expireddomains.net (the only one I know) that sells expired domains? One that sees expired domains sooner than others?

OK, those are my questions. Like I mentioned before, any help would be sincerely appreciated.

Rosemary