[Case Study] Top #1 Google & 150k Traffic in a Month

So here is the story:

1. I bought an expired domain with a small traffic in it (83 visitors daily). The metric is RD171, 1 y.o, it has a few authority backlinks and PBN links.

2. In mid March, I bought a fresh domain (newdomain.com) and rebuilt the content from the expired domain and then added some new related content as well. I also made sure the site was onpage optimized and load fast.

3. I created a simple static page “We are moving our site to newdomain.com bla bla bla” on the expired domain that I bought. The purpose is to direct the visitors to the new site, to get the link juices and minimalize the risk of getting penalty (if you go with 301 redirect route).



4. I haven't built any backlinks to the new domain yet. I let Google index the content naturally and signed a cheap VA to update the content two times a week as I left the site for a while.

5. Checked the new site two days ago as someone contacted me asking for a guest post. Then I found dozens of keywords on Top 10 Google like wtf?


Here is the organic traffic estimation breakdown:

SEMRush version



7. I checked the link profile of the new domain and found new 10 RD from shitty website lists with huge OBL (P.s: I did not build them obviously). And that’s it. No other worthy links except the expired domain I bought.




Tbh I didn’t expect the new site will rank on Top 10 or even Top 3 Google in just a month with a single link from an expired domain! And also generated that number of visitors in a short period of time. I haven’t monetized the site yet or anything as I’m still a bit of overwhelmed.

Have you experienced anything like this before? or done an experiment like this? Let me know your thoughts below.

That's crazy.
Good job.

On the old website, did you redirect all page to the Home ?

I think you've stumbled upon a gold mine. May I ask is it product related or not? If so try amazon aff or adsence may be

That's great at least someone got links without contacting site owners

You just won a lottery! I'm happy for you

I seriously love these case studies i read on forums there are too much s**t out there is hard to know what is real and what is fiction.
Congratulations man!¡

haha congrats. no need to understand why it works... work on optimising your ranking site for conversions and keep adding content.

Nice one OP. You prolly hit the gold, but why did you used new domain instead of using old expired domain to write and add new contents for?

Good case study man. Appreciate your insights

Happened to me before. My website went straight to #6 for the main keyword. I used an expired domain. But a few weeks later Google took it to the fucking "sandbox". Means page 5/6.

ill have to try this. I just created an index.html page and redirected all old pages on the site to that page. On the index.html page i put a link to a new website surrounded by some text. Lets see how this pans out.

Marneus74 said:

That's crazy.
Good job.

On the old website, did you redirect all page to the Home ?

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Yes I did. So that I won't lose the link juices.

veboo said:

I think you've stumbled upon a gold mine. May I ask is it product related or not? If so try amazon aff or adsence may be

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No it's not product related. I'd never want to work with adsense anyway, I'd probably try affiliate marketing or CPM perhaps.

ashish2112 said:

That's great at least someone got links without contacting site owners

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Without contacting the site owners? What do you mean?

seo diagrams said:

Amazing!!!!

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Thanks!

jefis said:

You just won a lottery! I'm happy for you

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Ha! I guess! Thanks man.

Roger Marquez said:

I seriously love these case studies i read on forums there are too much s**t out there is hard to know what is real and what is fiction.
Congratulations man!¡

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Thanks.

seocrab said:

haha congrats. no need to understand why it works... work on optimising your ranking site for conversions and keep adding content.

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Well sometimes Google works in a strange way. Yeah that's what I'm gonna do. Thanks.

jani said:

You have a gold mine now

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Thanks.

PaulRD said:

Nice one OP. You prolly hit the gold, but why did you used new domain instead of using old expired domain to write and add new contents for?

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Because it's part of an experiment.

ridersark said:

Good case study man. Appreciate your insights

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Thanks.

nakamura said:

Happened to me before. My website went straight to #6 for the main keyword. I used an expired domain. But a few weeks later Google took it to the fucking "sandbox". Means page 5/6.

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You used the expired domain to rebuild the content or you used it as a backlink like I did?

johandr said:

ill have to try this. I just created an index.html page and redirected all old pages on the site to that page. On the index.html page i put a link to a new website surrounded by some text. Lets see how this pans out.

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Good luck man. Make sure you optimized the onpage on both domains too.

google sometimes work in a very strange way, congratulation by the way

How did you find the expired domain?

Also the expired domain you used seems to have past high traffic rank (200k monthly traffic) with google which maybe explains why google trust your new site.

markos87 said:

google sometimes work in a very strange way, congratulation by the way

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That's right. Thanks man.

jmcgoose said:

How did you find the expired domain?

Also the expired domain you used seems to have past high traffic rank (200k monthly traffic) with google which maybe explains why google trust your new site.

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I bought it from my local provider.

I couldn't find the traffic history for the expired domain unfortunately. If it has 200k monthly traffic before, it should have showed up on Semrush Organic (All Time).

english site? so fast

What does your web analytics say? How many daily visitors are you getting?

Rachmaninoff said:

I bought it from my local provider.

I couldn't find the traffic history for the expired domain unfortunately. If it has 200k monthly traffic before, it should have showed up on Semrush Organic (All Time).

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Past expired domain traffic



Maybe that is why new domain get similar traffic.

congratz on randomly hitting a goldmine, interested to see how far you take it and the direction you go with it.

Good Karma really did hit you didn't it !