buying high PR domains for PBN.. why so expensive?? Advice please!

OK so my business niche is IT/computer/technology related and i have put budget aside to build my own PBN. Having ready many guides and articles on the do's and dont's and best practices i have a firm grip on what needs to be done but i'm finding it really difficult to purchase expired PR 3,4,5 domains in godaddy auction for the "guide price" that i see others saying they obtain their domains for their PBN on these forums (PR3s and 4s for less that $100 a go)... within reason im happy to pay the money for a quality domain but i need to justify it and know im not paying over the odds. My attitude is that i would much prefer to have 10 quality domains and have to only maintain the ongoing upkeep and cost of these than say 30 medium quality domains and pay three fold on the ongoing costs.

my steps to find and vet my domains are as follows:

1. Login on expireddomains.net and filter domains with >PR3 >30DA remove unsure, fake and -1 PR and hit go (also do the same with listings on dmoz as a separate search). each morning i will also check "added in the last 24 hrs" to see what new domains have been added each day that fit my criteria.

2. Look at each domain and find ones that meet my niche and also are of quality name for example sweetredapples.com i would consider a good name over cheap-sweet-red-apples.com (to long and spammy).

3. I would check the PR to ensure it isn't fake by doing info:domainname.com, also check it using a fake pr checker, check the whois of the domain and check waybackmachine to ensure no recent 301 redirects have been in place and to also to see what the site was all about months/years ago.

4. Once i have narrowed down further i would take the domains and check their backlinks in aherfs. I try to ensure that the anchors are in my niche or at least semi related and most of all something i am interested in writing about and can change the topic to make the potential blogsite related to my niche. I also check for all site wide links, amount of ********/nofollow etc etc.

5. I then add these domains that i wish to purchase to my watch list in godaddy.

there are many of pr3/4 sites that are in much niche that are added each week that i would like to purchase but when i look deeply into them and their links it is garbage and it confuses me how it even got to such page rank. What i am finding in that the domains i do want to purchase go for prices that are ridiculous.

here is an example, crshare.com which is a PR4 and went for ~$910 or so. These kind of prices for pr3 and 4 have been occurring several times for my chosen domains that i wish to bid on and i feel im doing something wrong to not be able to purchase in the regions of what others manage get theirs for...

I appreciate that the above example is a desirable URL with some nice backlinks but i am finding that pr3 and 4 domains with very weak-average names and link profiles are going for a lot more than i would consider worth it...

I would also like to add that i am quite picky when it comes to relevance also. for example if my niche is red apples i would look for sites related to green apples, sour apples, pine apples, fruits - hell just food in general will do. But i would not go much further than that in the way or relevance. I want to maintain sites that I will have an interest in upkeeping and writing content for. I also try to incorporate the niche of the original domain and backlink anchor in the new content and in the anchors i will point back to my site in the future (thus keeping it natural and relevant).

advice and comments welcome.

cheers,

mike

following my OP another example of a domain i am looking at is https://uk.auctions.godaddy.com/trp...hedigitaldiva.com&cvosrc=affiliate.cj.4097748 which still 17 hrs left but the price already is mind blowing for this PR4 domains. Yes i appreciate it is in dmoz but realy....

Hi,

Why are you focusing on PR? Google has already stated they are pretty much done with it. Don't you think that maybe you're sorting your domains like every other person out there on BHW is doing? And in doing so have stupidly huge competition? Hence the high prices? I've seen people pay hundreds of dollars for fake PR. My basic answer is - you're doing it wrong.

You're probably gonna have a hard time finding expired PR 6 domains for $50. However there is no reason you should be paying in the hundreds for PR 2-3-4. I saw a legit PR 5 with two dozen real .edu/gov links go last week for $85. It wasn't spammed, it wasn't anything blackhat - it was a legit health site. I lost it because I am cheap and bid $50.

I'm not going to tell you how I'm doing this - but I will point you in the right direction. You are searching for expired domains in the exact same fashion that 99% of BHW is searching for expired domains. Don't be surprised when the bidding is through the roof. Check your filters. Rationalize/explain each one to yourself, when and where they will and WON'T work, and go from there.

XH

im not gone bust any methods of easier research but ill suggest you think outside the box and u can get ur self a 500$ domain for only 2.75$
don't gave up OP and keep digging it I was in your shoos few months ago

Yeah, keep looking at page rank, more domains for me.

I always see people say they pay like $20 for a PR4 domain and I figure they are either buying a domain with fake PR or they are not being actually upfront.

Most of the domains I've found with real PR and DA and PA to go with it are like you said, in the hundreds. Pr4 seems to be around $300 in general if it's not a dropped domain with zero backlinks and going to go to PRn/a on the next update, and I've seen them go for much higher, though.

PR isn't super important, but you should also consider DA/PA, the Moz values and TrustFlow and Citation Flow.

You could just buy a bunch of new domains and backlink them. It will take more work & time but thats basically what I'm doing now.

turdface said:

I always see people say they pay like $20 for a PR4 domain and I figure they are either buying a domain with fake PR or they are not being actually upfront.

Most of the domains I've found with real PR and DA and PA to go with it are like you said, in the hundreds. Pr4 seems to be around $300 in general if it's not a dropped domain with zero backlinks and going to go to PRn/a on the next update, and I've seen them go for much higher, though.

PR isn't super important, but you should also consider DA/PA, the Moz values and TrustFlow and Citation Flow.

Click to expand...

Since you haven't seen this, I'll give you an example so maybe you can find some deals to.

OP - I found a domain that was the homepage for a professional organization. Think Chiropractic association sort of professional. However, I'm guessing when they bought the domain the association name itself wasn't available. So they chose something relevant. Keeping up with our chiropractic example, if chiropractors.com wasn't available, they chose one like chiropracticpage.com. It had been registered for the last 10 years. However, time came and went and apparently they got the domain name they wanted. Chiropractors.com in our little example here. So they bought that domain and 301'd the chiropracticpage.com > chiropractors.com. Guess what?

ExpiredDomains showed a fake PR.

But it wasn't fake. The domain they redirected to was a couple months old with barely 100 links. It had a PR of 0. The domain they were redirecting had several thousand links, including from .gov sites linking to (our example) the chiropractic association of wherever. There were .edu's linking out from their chiropractor course pages to this domain. It had real and legit PR but because it had been recently redirected to their new domain, people were staying away. There were no other redirects in the domain's history. It wasn't magically leeching PR 5 from a PR 0 domain. If I look it up right now in OSE the top link it shows is a .gov one from a state ministry of education. The PR is real, and it's very upfront.

It ended up going for just over $80. I was at work when the auction ended. I had bid $50.

Long story short - ignore the above poster, the gems are out there. He is using likely using the same search methods you are, and so is paying the same price. You have to get a little more creative if you want the gems at a discount. In this case, using a Fake PR filter would keep you and the guy above out of this auction. However, if you can't be bothered doing a ton of research, then just pay the $300. Both will get you what you want. One takes more time. The other takes more money. I'm not saying go all no fake PR filter. Just be aware that when you turn on the fake PR filter, you block out a lot of garbage. You may also block out sites that have a legitimate reason for redirecting. As I said in the first post, think about your filters, and cases where they may block legitimate domains. The go find those ones that most others will have missed.

BreaknBrix said:

You could just buy a bunch of new domains and backlink them. It will take more work & time but thats basically what I'm doing now.

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well that is stupid

xha44a said:

Since you haven't seen this, I'll give you an example so maybe you can find some deals to.

OP - I found a domain that was the homepage for a professional organization. Think Chiropractic association sort of professional. However, I'm guessing when they bought the domain the association name itself wasn't available. So they chose something relevant. Keeping up with our chiropractic example, if chiropractors.com wasn't available, they chose one like chiropracticpage.com. It had been registered for the last 10 years. However, time came and went and apparently they got the domain name they wanted. Chiropractors.com in our little example here. So they bought that domain and 301'd the chiropracticpage.com > chiropractors.com. Guess what?

ExpiredDomains showed a fake PR.

But it wasn't fake. The domain they redirected to was a couple months old with barely 100 links. It had a PR of 0. The domain they were redirecting had several thousand links, including from .gov sites linking to (our example) the chiropractic association of wherever. There were .edu's linking out from their chiropractor course pages to this domain. It had real and legit PR but because it had been recently redirected to their new domain, people were staying away. There were no other redirects in the domain's history. It wasn't magically leeching PR 5 from a PR 0 domain. If I look it up right now in OSE the top link it shows is a .gov one from a state ministry of education. The PR is real, and it's very upfront.

It ended up going for just over $80. I was at work when the auction ended. I had bid $50.

Long story short - ignore the above poster, the gems are out there. He is using likely using the same search methods you are, and so is paying the same price. You have to get a little more creative if you want the gems at a discount. In this case, using a Fake PR filter would keep you and the guy above out of this auction. However, if you can't be bothered doing a ton of research, then just pay the $300. Both will get you what you want. One takes more time. The other takes more money. I'm not saying go all no fake PR filter. Just be aware that when you turn on the fake PR filter, you block out a lot of garbage. You may also block out sites that have a legitimate reason for redirecting. As I said in the first post, think about your filters, and cases where they may block legitimate domains. The go find those ones that most others will have missed.

Click to expand...

Thanks xha44a for taking the time to write both your informative posts. For the record I do look at all other seo metrics such as moz, trust flow, DA etc and I don't solely look at PR. I look at everything including if they have any gems in the way of backlinks (edu, gov, dmoz )to get a view of the bigger picture. I'm very new to this and what I am trying to achieve is a long term domain name that will keeps its links and keep its PR/trust/DA etc come the next update.

I appreciate that the above method is the "costly" way of doing it and your last post is a great tip on what I need to do to find some nice domains for <$100. I'm spending a lot of time looking for domains I do have the time in my hands to dedicate a hr or 2 a day or every other and to be honest as I'm very picky with my selections and this is why I takes me so long to find them. After reading what you have said I am definitely going to change my methods in finding quality domains.

I'm not sure exactly what you do with your domains (use them for yourself or sell them on...) but what I am trying to achieve is obtaining domains that are closely relevant to my niche. Is this something that I am getting to hung up on and thus paying a premium and finding that it take a lot of time to actually find the domains. For example if i had a architects business I would be looking for domains that are relevant to building, construction, design, real estate etc. I would not be looking for lawyers, Restaurants and health etc. Should I be doing this or is it not really necessary for PBN, or should I just change the niche of the on page content when you create the blog site?

Also on another note I often find domains with a particular PR and when I look http://checkpagerank.net/ it reports that domain as weak or moderate but when I check the backlink profile it looks somewhat strong with maybe few but some quality links. I guess my question here is how much notice should I take of this once I have checked the links and ensure that the PR isn't fake (i.e. checking there are quality links and that there is NOT and 301 domains redirecting to this domain in question that would be pushing the PR up).

Thanks, Mike

Years ago I used expireddomains and other drop lists but now the price is so high now. So over the last year I built my own crawler to find expired domains. Granted these don't have PR until the next google update, but I find a bunch of non-spammed domains with DA 20+ each week. I get these for the cost of registration and there are far more out there than what you find on drop lists or at auctions.

allaboutdomains said:

Granted these don't have PR until the next google update

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This is interesting but why would a domain with good DA/Moz ranking etc have 0PR as it is and then once you purchase it and make a site for this domain then pop back with PR?

I am finding plenty of domains that are in my niche that have say pr0 but the DA is around 30-40+ and it has thousands of links pointing to the root and its sub pages. They also have no 301 in or out and looking at waybackmachine i can see that there was no redirect in place before the last PR update. Could this be because the domains are penalized or are the likely to have their PR restored once a site is set back up and all inner page backlinks are 301 redirected to the home page etc?

cheers,

mike

I was in the same boat. Spent thousands on PR domains. Still haven't even built a bunch of um. For me this is the way to go:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/seo-packages/651800-build-your-own-high-google-page-ranking-niche-relevant-safe-private-blog-network-100-hands-off.html

But that's just because I don't know how to find cheap good domains and don't have the time to build each.

Hi,

Quick update for naysayers. I got a domain today - not the big one I was after but still a decent one. Here are the specs.

Legit PR: 2
Niche relevant (HARD TO FIND)
TF: 27
CF: 20
DA:20
PA:30
Incoming links 540, 100+ domains. All branded.

So it's not an *amazing* domain. It's decent. But for $19, why on earth wouldn't you pick it up, right?

XH