[Advice Needed] Expired domain

somesay said:

Yes, in my experience it will definitely reduce the "sandbox" time.
However, it's not like you'll write an article and it indexes on page one right away.

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Yeah thats true.

SirLouen said:

This is something I currently analyzing with a 40 DA domain I'm managing (not expired, but nearly expired without new content in the last 10 years).
It's hardly receiving 20 visits per day with a lot of quality content, and the link profile is really impressive.
Very weird overall... Maybe one day explodes, is from a client (not SEO client, dev client), but I'm analysing the SEO for "free" for research purposes, because it's a weird situation.

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Have seen this LOTS of times, I even sold old domains like that. It's a long discussion, but I assume after many years G marks some domains as 'old' and even adding a lot of content, new links won't take them out of the hole. If they are in that hole already, you have to let them stay there. Something happened over the years with the domain, such as not having frequently updated content, link growth stalled, infected or whatever - something that triggered a permanent rank drop.

You can't really resurrect one of these easily. I do have a method for resurrecting them (worked in the past) but it hasn't been tested in 2019, and it takes long time (>1 year) and there is no guarantee.

This being said, the best usage for such a domain is to use it to lift other sites you have. You use it to link to a few other sites of yours. That high link juice will definitely help.

twaen said:

Have seen this LOTS of times, I even sold old domains like that. It's a long discussion, but I assume after many years G marks some domains as 'old' and even adding a lot of content, new links won't take them out of the hole. If they are in that hole already, you have to let them stay there. Something happened over the years with the domain, such as not having frequently updated content, link growth stalled, infected or whatever - something that triggered a permanent rank drop.

You can't really resurrect one of these easily. I do have a method for resurrecting them (worked in the past) but it hasn't been tested in 2019, and it takes long time (>1 year) and there is no guarantee.

This being said, the best usage for such a domain is to use it to lift other sites you have. You use it to link to a few other sites of yours. That high link juice will definitely help.

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This post is right on the money. Expired domain =/= silver bullet. More often than not it's better to start with a fresh domain.

twaen said:

You can't really resurrect one of these easily. I do have a method for resurrecting them (worked in the past) but it hasn't been tested in 2019, and it takes long time (>1 year) and there is no guarantee.

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And that method can be shared?

Yes, expired domains are good for SEO.

SirLouen said:

And that method can be shared?

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Yes, can be shared, with a grain of salt (I haven't tried it again since a few years ago). I call it "defibrillator method", as in let it die, then resurrect it.

Once again, this method of mine is useful for an older domain with very good backlinks, but for some reason doesn't rank well anymore. Likely due to stale content, thin content or whatever like that has brought it in the black hole. Here's what I did.

Step1. Putting all pages on 404 and letting G de-index for a while (say 1-2 months). Then deleting the domain completely, no DNS, nothing (keeping it registered though). The goal here is to completely de-index the domain and make clear to G the domain does not "exist" during this time.

Step2. Wait some time. I have typically waited for about 1 year.

Step3. Relaunch the site, with fresh content (not the same as it was). Can be in a different, but close related niche. Keep building content steadily for some time. Bring a few new links as well, from sites related to the niche.

From this point, you will most likely enter sandbox. In my case, sandbox was always the same: 3 months. The trick is to keep posting content, and do not be deterred by the sandbox. You will rank, but in the 10's or 100's.

Once it gets past that time (say 3 months), woosh - you'll see it suddenly in top of SERPs, and ranking again great like in the ol' times.

From this point on the cycle resets and you can enjoy again a few years of steady growth, if you continue to build it and update pages at least once at 3 months. BTW it is better to keep updated rather than always adding new content, and discarding pages that do not generate traffic.

Happy resurrecting.

Edit: It's not necessarily sandbox, but G algo being circumspect about your site for a while, and that you can count on.

Fibermayo said:

Yes, expired domains are good for SEO.

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Not necessarily. I've worked with several powerful domains that just refused to budge despite having a lot of authoritative links, age and trust.

WIZDAHL said:

Not necessarily. I've worked with several powerful domains that just refused to budge despite having a lot of authoritative links, age and trust.

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Quick question. How long did you continue to build content (and links) after relaunching the domain?

twaen said:

Quick question. How long did you continue to build content (and links) after relaunching the domain?

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I keep nudging it for a couple of months that is -> 3-5 months and get a feel of the SERPs.

WIZDAHL said:

I keep nudging it for a couple of months that is -> 3-5 months and get a feel of the SERPs.

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Correct. If it didn't budge in 5 months, it's probably time to let it rest.

Was curious if you gave up too soon, not the case it seems.

Does the length of time a dropped domain was deregistered affect it's ability to use it's own link juice? For example: if I find a domain that has a great link profile but hasn't been registered for over a year and got deindexed from google, will it come back to life and start using it's link juice to start ranking once again if I register it and add some new content?

What about if a domain has even older links and hasn't been registered in 10+ years? Can that super old link juice be resurrected?