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Streamline Your SEO Efforts With Expired Domains

Posted By Guest Blogger 15th of August 2012 Search Engine Optimization 0 Comments

This guest post is by Matt Green of Evergreen Internet Marketers.

Have you ever thought or heard about buying aged domains to boost your SEO efforts? Well the results can be staggering. A lot of the top marketers in the industry have been doing this for years and have been dominating their markets! In fact, a recent post here on Problogger.net explained how this technique was used to reposition a business.

Not sure what an aged domain name is? Well it’s an expired domain name that typically has authority, age, page rank, back links, and various other components that make expired domain names very powerful. You should be purchasing expired domain names because most of the work is already done for you.

Instead of working hard building backlinks and doing a ton of off-page SEO, you can find great expired domain names for which these tedious tasks are already done. The advantage of buying expired domains is that these domains can help you boost your rankings in the markets you are already in to drive more leads and subscribers to your blog.

The benefits of expired domains

Buying expired domains has numerous benefits, but these are the main advantages.

Benefit #1. Drive traffic through sub-niches

You can find exact-match domain names so you can target sub-niches that are relevant to the market you’re currently targeting, to help you drive more targeted traffic to your websites. The huge opportunity in finding these domain names is that they’re usually not very competitive and you can take over the sub-niches in as little as a couple weeks. The potential traffic you could be reaching can vary, but this can be a very profitable way to grow your business.

Benefit #2. Cut your workload in half with established backlinks

The second benefit to buying aged domain names is that they already have authority and backlinks. This can really help you out tremendously. It’s very time-consuming to create high quality, relevant back links—exactly what Google and the rest of the search engines require.

Backlinks are a necessity to online success. With expired domain names, someone else has put in all the hard work—and you can pick up right where that person left off. Once you get the domain, you can build more backlinks to rank in the search engines much faster than if you were to buy a brand-new domain where you have to start from scratch.

Benefit #3. Get instant page rank

Another huge benefit to buying expired domain names is that you can find domains that have page rank. This is a huge added benefit because, again, it takes time to establish a domain name and build up its page rank. When you’re buying an aged domain name you can literally buy domains with page rank overnight. This really streamlines the process, so you can build authority and traffic extremely fast!

Benefit #4. Expired domains for the masses

With 100,000 domain names expiring every single day, there is a huge opportunity for you. It’s physically impossible to look at all these domains every day, so the competition isn’t particularly fierce. Typically, you can find a great domain name and buy it for as little as $12. Who else besides me would love to buy an established domain name with lots of backlinks and page rank for just $12? This brings a huge opportunity to website owners.

Benefit #5. Directory listings done for you

Have you ever wanted to get into DMOZ, Yahoo, but thought it’d take ages? Well another huge benefit to buying expired domain names is that you can find domains that are already listed in these directories. This way, you don’t have to spend days and weeks trying to get your website submitted into powerful directories that have a lot of influence for your domain name.

The DMOZ directory can be very hard to get into. You submit your website and wait weeks to have someone review it to see if it is of high enough quality to be included in their index. But you can forget about this task if the expired domain name you buy is already listed in the DMOZ directory.

The Yahoo directory needs to approve your website and on top of that you have to pay Yahoo $299 to join. Why spend the money when you can buy an expired domain name that’s already in the directory for $12?

Expired domain pitfalls

Of course, there are some pitfalls you’ll want to avoid if you’re looking to buy expired domains. Let’s look at them now.

Pitfall #1. Buying domains that lack value

Beginners tend to buy domain names that have no value. You need to do your due diligence and make sure you’re picking the right expired domain names that will enable you to drive consistent, reliable traffic to your website over time.

Pitfall #2. Bidding too soon

When they find a great domain name, sometimes people will bid on it when there’s still more than a day left until the domain auction ends. This can really hurt you, because you’re sure to draw attention to the auction, which can inflate the domain’s price. The best time to bid on a domain auction is within the auction’s last ten minutes.

So many people make this mistake. If they’d just waited for the last ten minutes to place their bid, they’d have won the auction at cost! Bidding too early can drive competitors to the auction listing, which can cause you to pay more than you need to for your target domains.

Pitfall #3. Keep away from the competition

Another pitfall to watch out for is to assess the competition the domain name has. If you pick a domain name that has a keyword that’s very competitive you may want to move on and find a different domain. You want to be picking domains up to rank fast, so you don’t want to find out later that you can’t rank for the keyword because it’s too competitive.

You need to make sure you do some research on the domain name to make sure that the keyword that the domain will be ranking for doesn’t have too much competition. If the domain name has too much competition, it could take you a long time to reach a decent rank with that domain.

Seeking expired domains

Keen to dip your toes in the expired domain waters? The main sources of expired domains are places like GoDaddy, NameJet, Sedo, Snapnames, and Flippa. There are over 100,000 domain names expiring every day so I would recommend using an expired domain name service to help you sift through them all.

There is a ton of potential and opportunity for you to grow your business right away with these expired domains. Have you ever bought an expired domain? Let me know how it went in the comments.

This guest post is by Matt Green of Evergreen Internet Marketers.

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Comments
  1. Many SEOs still believe in buying existing sites and leaving the whois information alone. But if a domain expires, it appears Google knows about it and will note it in their database.

    • Hi Ben,

      It is very important to add privacy protect to the domain once the domain goes into your account.

      Otherwise you are right. They will see that you own the website.

      • I have never given importance to these expired domain nor I know that hundred thousands of domain are getting expired daily and would never knowing if I haven’t read your article. It was like something new to learn. Thanks!

  2. This is an irresponsible post IMO. Google is known to reset the link authority anytime they detect a domain that has expired and been re-registered.

    Unless you really know what you are doing with this you will find that 90%+ of the expired domains that you buy are being reset and losing any SEO benefits.

    Also, why post about black hat SEO tactics on a blog like this?

    • Exactly right Patrick. Allowing this type of advice is especially ironic after reading this https://plus.google.com/112726038360301567381/posts this AM.

    • Hi Patrick,

      Thanks for the comment.

      The most important part is adding privacy protection. Other than that i have 100’s of domains that i have bought and profited from that have high page rank and lots of SEO rankings.

      This is not black hat SEO, It is simply buying an expired domain that someone has put all of there hard work into and had not renewed because they did not realize the potential of the domain name or they just did not understand how to monetize it.

      This can help cut your off page optimization work in half saving you years of time!

      Matt

  3. This is an interesting idea, and one I never thought of. Is there a place I can go to see what domain names may be expiring soon, so I keep see if any are worth my time, and money?

    • Hi Kevin,

      We developed a service here: http://ageddomainhunter.com

      There are 100,000 expiring domains everyday. There are a ton of business models you can use with these domains.

      With so many expiring there are domains that you are missing everyday that could benefit you if you want to drive traffic from different side door niches onto your website or auto responder list.

      Matt

  4. Actually, some good points already mentioned in the comments. You would think Google would be on top of this sort of tactic. Maybe I shouldn’t waste my time.

  5. Hey Matt

    Great post on buying domains, however i would love to see a follow up post on a more in depth process of sourcing and choosing domains. I must say when it comes to buying domains, its a little annoying dealing with domain hoarders. Its like they see domains that will be popular in the future and buy them early and then when people want to buy the domains they hike the price ridiculously high.

    Its like there are “domain hunters” out there…. LOL

    I have a client who’s company name was bought already as a domain. When we discovered the domain was taken and approached the owner who bought it and was not even using it. He said $2000 pleases.

    Yikes. :(

    • Hi Geoffrey,

      Thanks for the comment.

      Yea the business model i use is to buy the domain name and set the website up so i can start driving traffic quickly.

      Unfortunately there are people who do take domains from companies but why didn’t your company renew the domain? That is an important asset for the company.

      Matt

  6. Another seo/internet marketing shortcut that in my opinion is short sited and a waste of time.

    Sad to see an article like this published on Problogger.net.

    -rd

  7. I Never Thought Of Of Using Expired Domains this way they can be so useful I Had no idea :(

  8. Hi Kevin,

    We developed a service here: http://ageddomainhunter.com

    There are 100,000 expiring domains everyday. There are a ton of business models you can use with these domains.

    With so many expiring there are domains that you are missing everyday that could benefit you if you want to drive traffic from different side door niches onto your website or auto responder list.

    Matt

  9. Hi Matt

    I had a bad experience with buying a expired domain. I used that domain for one of my blog and after doing lots of hard work on SEO & Content writing i ended up with few pageviews per day. I don’t know the exact reason why i couldn’t get the traffic but for me expired domain didn’t worked at all.

    • Thanks for the comment!

      An expired domain is the same thing as buying a new domain. The perk about buying the domain aged is that you could find a great domain that already has some backlinks and authority on the domain. So why not get it? It already has trust and authority.

      Matt

  10. I need help with my SEO. I’m doing well, but I want to be fantastic. Thanks for this tip. It’ll be fun finding domains that will work for my site too.

    Kimberly

  11. If the backlinks pointing to your domain are relevant, than I would say it’s good – otherwise it’s just spammy. For example, links to my website Art Love Light that were coming from a site about, Cement Manufacturing for Parkades — well, that doesn’t help me out as much as backlinks from Lori McNee, Artist, or from Fluent Self, wonderful pattern de-stuckifier.

    I recently had my old domain “katanaville” expire — it got bought up so i cannot renew it. I found picking a new domain with keywords that were more about what I wanted my site to be about made me more enthusiastic about blogging. “artlovelight.com” is my new one and it just sounds so much more welcoming. I think that is the important part — to pick a domain that suits your content, and if it happens to be recently expired, that is great.

    • Thanks for the comment Katana!

      The nice thing about these aged domains is that you can target sub niches. For example if you are in the fitness niche and have a domain called fitnesstips.com then you could target other markets like bestabworkouts.com which you could also drive traffic and sales from.

      Matt

  12. Harsh Agrawal says: 08/15/2012 at 7:55 am

    Great insight Matt
    One should also check for any domain penalty or if domain is not blocked by any firewall like web sense
    I prefer to buy existing sites from Flippa instead of just domain.

    • Yes buying exciting websites that are already ranked is the fastest way to start a business. Buying domains takes a little more work but it is much less work then buying a brand new domain name.

      Matt

  13. I love the idea of doing this, but all of the keywords that I would be interested in have been snapped up. Is there a way to drive traffic back to an original blog through these domains? I don’t mean by redirects – from what I understand, that’s not permitted.

    I’d like to buy domains for mini-sites that ultimately direct visitors to my main blog.

    What do you think?

    • Hi Kimberly,

      That is what I am doing for my websites. I build up in side door niches and then put that traffic into an auto responder and then i promote the blog posts i post on my main blog.

      Great way for driving easy traffic.

      Thanks for the comment.

      Matt

  14. OK, so I buy some domains. Then what. How does any search engine know that they are linking back to my website?

    Don’t the links have to be on a website associated with that domain?

    Thanks!

    • No the domains do not have to be associated with your main website. You can simply use them for lead generation or to drive more sales to your business.

      It is a great way for expanding your current market and jumping in to sub niches of your market.

      Matt

  15. I love your site~~your blog~~with so many beautiful and amazing pictures in your page~~~you know the point is that your stylish writing is helpful ~

  16. To me, a big problem is the fact that many expired domains have fake PR values due to redirection tricks. It can be hard to determine the true PR value.

    • There are ways to check fake page rank. You just need to search Google like this…

      info:domain.com and if the domain matches then it is real. If it shows a different domain then it is fake.

      Matt

  17. This is exactly the kind of information I was digging for.~~~the blogger offered many helpful information~~~hope see your new works~~

  18. I read the earlier post and I am just not clear on this strategy. I find potential candidates on sites like expireddomains.net but really don’t know which attribute carries the most benefit – Blekko Links, Unique Domains, Backlinks, Google Indexed Pages, Alexa Rank, DMOZ, or Traffic estimates.

    Is the strategy:
    a) buy expired domain and just forward it to my main site?
    b) buy the expired domain >> create a new site using the purchased domain >> 301 redirect to my main site?
    c) buy domain >> create landing page and additional content >> add menu link to my blog?

    It seems it would make a difference in choosing which expired domain attribute to focus on

    • Hi Jerry,

      C is the best benefit. You can drive more traffic with another domain and rank for other keywords that you are not reaching with your main domains name.

      A domain with the most on it the better it is. The more backlinks and directories the domain is submitted in the less work you have to do.

      The most important factor to look at if you are driving traffic is pagerank and backlinks. The more backlinks you have the faster you will drive traffic and rankings for your target keywords.

  19. This is a great SEO tip, and some people have been doing this for years. I have purchased a couple of domains (PR 3 & 4) to link back to my main website. I love using this strategy because I can build backlinks to these domains that act as a buffer to my site in my link strategy.

    Thanks for the tips on purchasing these expired domains.

    Brennan

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