[HELP] Changed the niche of a pretty expensive expired domain and added backlinks but its not ranking

Hello!

Ive recently bought an aged domain that was pretty expensive (15K+) and when i got it, i created a blog with the same permalinks to restore all the backlinks. This was about 2 weeks. On GSC, it did show that most of the backlinks are back and it was even ranking for the old search queries (KD 60+).

However, since i am going to use this site for another niche, i changed the website entirely and 301 redirected all the restored pages to my home page to pass link juice. I've also added quite a lot of backlinks and PBNs that usually work for my other websites.

In addition, i also bought an aged domain before this which i also 301 redirected to the new domain.

Usually, with such a good and powerful aged domain, with backlinks for Wikipedia, major blog sites such as new york times etc. and tons of EDU sites, the site will rank with no issues. However, now its ranking for only branded keywords as well as random keywords thats not related to the new or the old niche. I believe it ranked for these keywords due to the keyword being repeated ONCE on the website.

Regardless, the keywords are also ranking pretty bad, around page 3+.

And my desired keyword that i want to rank for (KD 90) is showing like 15 impressions throughout the week. On GCS, it shows it being on page 5 with only 2 impressions, then gone again the next day.

I was wondering what is happening to my website and how can i fix it? Any advice is welcome! Thank you!

How long has it been?

You need to give it time for it to show its full potential considering everything is done right.

Give or take 4 weeks

You made an absolute ultra mess out of that site.

You took a domain. Completely changed its niche, so now it's 100% non relevant through backlinks.

Then you blasted it with PBN links, which I doubt are dedicated and are most likely from some low-end multiniche PBNs.

And on top of that you redirected another, most likely unrelated, domain.

And now you have basically a mega mix of all kinds of niches that Google has no idea to do with.

All of this within a few weeks.

What exactly did you expect to happen I wonder?

1. Niche relevancy is important. Unless you are targetting some spammy niche, it simply is necessary. Sometimes you can get lucky with non-related domain, but that's an exception.
2. Redirects always have to be relevant. Again, some rare exceptions, but in most cases it will end up like this - https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/a...-0-to-45-k-month-ruined-by-1-mistake.1210715/
3. Even big expired domains take months to see results, not a few weeks. It's not 2014 when you would rank immediately the next day.

Go back to square one and start working on a niche relevant domain and take it slow. I wouldn't bother salvaging this one. It's just too much spam in a way too short period.

If you can't wait a year or two, don't waste your time starting a new site on an aged domain. Aged domains go through the sandbox too. So my advice to you is

- let it sit for a while and continue to publish content on the site in the meantime
- Get rid of all the low quality links you've built too, disable the homepage redirects
- switch to a niche that's relevant to the aged domain

SeoWrecker said:

How long has it been?

You need to give it time for it to show its full potential considering everything is done right.

Click to expand...

I changed the niche for about 2 weeks now.

There are more and more keywords being found on Ahrefs everyday.

How do you mean everything is done right?

Nargil said:

You made an absolute ultra mess out of that site.

You took a domain. Completely changed its niche, so now it's 100% non relevant through backlinks.

Then you blasted it with PBN links, which I doubt are dedicated and are most likely from some low-end multiniche PBNs.

And on top of that you redirected another, most likely unrelated, domain.

And now you have basically a mega mix of all kinds of niches that Google has no idea to do with.

All of this within a few weeks.

What exactly did you expect to happen I wonder?

1. Niche relevancy is important. Unless you are targetting some spammy niche, it simply is necessary. Sometimes you can get lucky with non-related domain, but that's an exception.
2. Redirects always have to be relevant. Again, some rare exceptions, but in most cases it will end up like this - https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/auction-domain-case-study-rise-and-fall-of-amazon-website-0-to-45-k-month-ruined-by-1-mistake.1210715/
3. Even big expired domains take months to see results, not a few weeks. It's not 2014 when you would rank immediately the next day.

Go back to square one and start working on a niche relevant domain and take it slow. I wouldn't bother salvaging this one. It's just too much spam in a way too short period.

Click to expand...

Hmm, what you said made sense to me. However, after seeing my competitors in the same niche as i am, they are all buying aged domains and changing it to their landing page. And their previous landing pages are either 301 redirected to the new domain or just left there with some backlinks pointing into the new domain.

To this day, there are more and more niche relevant keywords being found by Ahrefs. Around 10-20 a day. But those aren't hard keywords.

I really need to salvage this domain, could you maybe give me some pointers as to how i can fix this? Anything is appreciated Nargil.

Jerk55 said:

If you can't wait a year or two, don't waste your time starting a new site on an aged domain. Aged domains go through the sandbox too. So my advice to you is

- let it sit for a while and continue to publish content on the site in the meantime
- Get rid of all the low quality links you've built too, disable the homepage redirects
- switch to a niche that's relevant to the aged domain

Click to expand...

Ill give that a try. Thank you!

Zpher said:

I really need to salvage this domain, could you maybe give me some pointers as to how i can fix this? Anything is appreciated Nargil.

Click to expand...

Remove everything. Every link, every redirect. Restore the domain to its previous state and let it be like that for a few months.

Then start again.

I think you did the 301 way too early.
Google is catching up with 301 redirects those days for obvious reasons. Even expired domains with same content and same urls from archive.org need more time to regenerate.
You need to be very careful, especially if you are changing the niche. Being impatient + Total change of niche = Receipe for disaster.

I would have kept some of the previous content on the new website with deeplinks redirections for some time so the transition would look more natural. Changing completely the niche is a huge gamble anyway. You must be ready to lose all the raw power of backlinks.
Honestly, what has been done is so mess up ; the ndd has lost almost all its value. You can't work on your website unless you forget about your expired domain.
I would take the ndd back, put all the archive content with the exact url structure and wait for months to see how it evolves. You need to keep some of the old content when you do the transition to another domain too. But I would reconsider not doing the 301 redirect though. Total change of niche always get catched at some point (same day or 2 years later).

Nargil said:

Remove everything. Every link, every redirect. Restore the domain to its previous state and let it be like that for a few months.

Then start again.

Click to expand...

Just as a side note, the niche i am in is gambling, which does have quite a lot of spammy links.

But back to your comment, i was wondering, when will i know the domain can reverted back to gambling niche? How many months will it take?

Also, ive removed the 301 of all the restored pages that went back to the home page and just left it as 404.

I am trying to make small fixes here and there to see if these would help the rankings.

I understand that this is a huge mess up on my part but due to time not being on my side, i am trying to find out ways to fix this quicker. (Note: Yes, SEO definitely takes time and i completely understand but due to some issues, i dont have a few months to spare. But i am still open to your idea)

Please do let me know if you have anymore advices. I really appreciate it Nargil.

Zpher said:

In addition, i also bought an aged domain before this which i also 301 redirected to the new domain.

Click to expand...

Another note, i didnt 301 redirected it but i did set a canonical. I believe that also pass link juice. And since this domain was used as a gambling niche domain for a few months, shouldnt the niche be changed? or should i remove it? and just not use that aged domain?

El Flaco said:

I think you did the 301 way too early.
Google is catching up with 301 redirects those days for obvious reasons. Even expired domains with same content and same urls from archive.org need more time to regenerate.
You need to be very careful, especially if you are changing the niche. Being impatient + Total change of niche = Receipe for disaster.

I would have kept some of the previous content on the new website with deeplinks redirections for some time so the transition would look more natural. Changing completely the niche is a huge gamble anyway. You must be ready to lose all the raw power of backlinks.
Honestly, what has been done is so mess up ; the ndd has lost almost all its value. You can't work on your website unless you forget about your expired domain.
I would take the ndd back, put all the archive content with the exact url structure and wait for months to see how it evolves. You need to keep some of the old content when you do the transition to another domain too. But I would reconsider not doing the 301 redirect though. Total change of niche always get catched at some point (same day or 2 years later).

Click to expand...

I agree. I should have thought this through better.

So basically restore content and wait a few months?

The gambling niche here consist of a lot of 301 redirects and buying expired domains without restoring content. Just by registering the domain and immediately change it to a landing page. Do you think this is the better way to go or restoring content is better?

Zpher said:

Just as a side note, the niche i am in is gambling, which does have quite a lot of spammy links.

But back to your comment, i was wondering, when will i know the domain can reverted back to gambling niche? How many months will it take?

Also, ive removed the 301 of all the restored pages that went back to the home page and just left it as 404.

I am trying to make small fixes here and there to see if these would help the rankings.

I understand that this is a huge mess up on my part but due to time not being on my side, i am trying to find out ways to fix this quicker. (Note: Yes, SEO definitely takes time and i completely understand but due to some issues, i dont have a few months to spare. But i am still open to your idea)

Please do let me know if you have anymore advices. I really appreciate it Nargil.

Click to expand...

The fact that your domain is in a spammy gambling niche changes a few things.

Google should tolerate non-existent niche relevancy, but even then you went way too hard and way too fast.

All things considering I might be inclined to just leave it all as it is and wait to see what happens.

Otherwise, just revert everything to point zero, recreate the old domain and let it rest for 2 - 3 months. At least that's how I do it.

Gambling is a very specific niche indeed. It is the far west in terms of link building.

I would only redirect expired domain belonging to the gaming niche though. This seems doing pretty ok.
The redirect strategy is a bit too gross to work otherwise.
Damn, with a 15k budget you could do so much with much more relevancy.

Well, this ndd must be really powerful though. I would build it again exactly the same way as it was.
I would use that website as a very powerful satellite website with a homepage link towards the money website. And I would use it to make link exchanges with other websites. If you bring back some natural traffic to the website, you have a good value exchange for future backlinks.

Nargil said:

You made an absolute ultra mess out of that site.

You took a domain. Completely changed its niche, so now it's 100% non relevant through backlinks.

Then you blasted it with PBN links, which I doubt are dedicated and are most likely from some low-end multiniche PBNs.

And on top of that you redirected another, most likely unrelated, domain.

And now you have basically a mega mix of all kinds of niches that Google has no idea to do with.

All of this within a few weeks.

What exactly did you expect to happen I wonder?

1. Niche relevancy is important. Unless you are targetting some spammy niche, it simply is necessary. Sometimes you can get lucky with non-related domain, but that's an exception.
2. Redirects always have to be relevant. Again, some rare exceptions, but in most cases it will end up like this - https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/auction-domain-case-study-rise-and-fall-of-amazon-website-0-to-45-k-month-ruined-by-1-mistake.1210715/
3. Even big expired domains take months to see results, not a few weeks. It's not 2014 when you would rank immediately the next day.

Go back to square one and start working on a niche relevant domain and take it slow. I wouldn't bother salvaging this one. It's just too much spam in a way too short period.

Click to expand...

Great reply by Nargil and totally on point.

@Zpher what's the site doing now, still having issues? This was the big error " However, since i am going to use this site for another niche, "

Zpher said:

i changed the website entirely and 301 redirected all the restored pages to my home page to pass link juice. I've also added quite a lot of backlinks and PBNs that usually work for my other websites.

Click to expand...

Instead of doing 301s, you could just restore the old pages and create links to your homepage in those restored pages. This way you don't lose as much link juice as with 301s.

Sorry for the late reply!

Nargil said:

The fact that your domain is in a spammy gambling niche changes a few things.

Google should tolerate non-existent niche relevancy, but even then you went way too hard and way too fast.

All things considering I might be inclined to just leave it all as it is and wait to see what happens.

Otherwise, just revert everything to point zero, recreate the old domain and let it rest for 2 - 3 months. At least that's how I do it.

Click to expand...

A little update: domain has not improved at all and ive tried to add more PBNs and backlinks to see if that would change the topic of the website.

I am planning to redirect this domain to a new domain but im scared that the rankings will just pass. What do you think?

El Flaco said:

Gambling is a very specific niche indeed. It is the far west in terms of link building.

I would only redirect expired domain belonging to the gaming niche though. This seems doing pretty ok.
The redirect strategy is a bit too gross to work otherwise.
Damn, with a 15k budget you could do so much with much more relevancy.

Well, this ndd must be really powerful though. I would build it again exactly the same way as it was.
I would use that website as a very powerful satellite website with a homepage link towards the money website. And I would use it to make link exchanges with other websites. If you bring back some natural traffic to the website, you have a good value exchange for future backlinks.

Click to expand...

I see, so basically change this page to and place backlinks to new domains?

MisterF said:

Great reply by Nargil and totally on point.

@Zpher what's the site doing now, still having issues? This was the big error " However, since i am going to use this site for another niche, "

Click to expand...

Yea, that was my bad..

The site havent had any improvements so far... Any ideas?

Any would be greatly appreciated!

MasterOfMasks said:

Instead of doing 301s, you could just restore the old pages and create links to your homepage in those restored pages. This way you don't lose as much link juice as with 301s.

Click to expand...

I see, so i shouldnt do any 301s? Would that waste the backlinks? since it wont be passed to the home page as much as a 301.

Zpher said:

I see, so i shouldnt do any 301s? Would that waste the backlinks? since it wont be passed to the home page as much as a 301.

Click to expand...

yeah its better for backlinks to go to a page with content rather a 301 to the main page.

hello @Zpher . im interesting to talk with you, im from indonesia, can i get ur contact number or something, im running gambling niche to and need more help, maybe u could help me thanks !!

Did you found the solution yet?