Anyone else noticing that their expired domains have lost PR?
-
A while back I experimented with buying some expired domains that had some PR. I built a small website on each and created content with anchor text that linked back to my main site.
For one of my sites I noticed a significant drop in rankings this week. At first I thought it was because of the latest Panda update. But, the drop was slow, not sudden like most Panda hits have been.
Then, I noticed that some of my previously purchased domains that had held their PR for quite a while are now PR N/A. I'm guessing that the latest algorithm change caught on to what I was doing.
Probably what I was doing was grey hat. I honestly think that every SEO goes through a period where they try out some grey or even black tactics. This makes me even more desiring to be completely White hat now....and build links that are going to last.
I was just wondering if any of you guys have experienced anything like this this week? Would love to hear your thoughts.
EDIT: A second question - What would you guys do with these domains? They're still in the Google index so they're not penalized, likely just stripped of PR. Would you scrap them completely? Remove the links back to my sites? Do nothing?
-
There's also a problem that's happened in the last couple of days for third-party reporting of toolbar pagerank that might be affecting what you're seeing. Check out the post at http://mz.cm/rjPAwc.
-
Marie, feel free to send me an email if you want to bounce any ideas off of me about YouMoz, I'm currently the primary person reviewing submissions and can give you some pointers about what tends to do well on the blog. keri at seomoz dot org.
-
I've noticed that my two domains that have lost PR had links in a blogroll in the sidebar. I have some expired domains that are still working for me. These simply had links in context.
Perhaps the newest Panda Update looks for sites with PR that have recently changed hands that have blogroll links?
-
Thanks Ryan. Your video reminded me of this animated gif that Rand tweeted the other day. (See image below):
-
Thank you for a thoughtful reply. I'm thinking of creating a YouMoz post about my struggles of learning to rank with only White Hat Tactics. You're right, it's crummy to look at your competitors and see that they rank with ridiculous directory links.
-
** This makes me even more desiring to be completely White hat now....and build links that are going to last.**
Thumbs up for both the question and the sentiment.
Google is far from perfect, but given the size of their work and the determination of webmasters, programmers, SEOs and everyone with an iPad to usurp their process, I applaud them for continuing to take steps to improve results.
To address your question and Robert's concern:** Anyone else noticing that their expired domains have lost PR?**
I would put my logic hat on and think the right thing for Google to impact (i.e. reset PR) would be expired domains which changed owners AND content. That's what I would do if I worked for Google. It explains the results you and Robert shared.
Otherwise I wholeheartedly echo Robert's sentiments. Panda 2.5 hit last week. The only thing I feel bad about is those poor people at Panda's international who depend on people's donation to save this species which is almost extinct (around 1000 left in the world). You are trying to save a species on the bring of extinction and the world's largest marketing company names their spam and manipulation killing algorithm change after the species you are trying to save....big ouch!
-
I found your post interesting, but I have had a different experience this week in that several sites that we have been nurturing moved up a significant amount page 4 to page 2, several moved up over a dozen positions. Hope that means we have been doing a good job and not that Google knocked some others around.
I was pondering your very issue re older domains and expiring domains over the last couple of days. I have not seen an expiring domain lose ranking before. (Hopefully, we never will as that is the last thing I need. A registrar with one more reason to send me another expiration notice - you ignored our last 300 emails that started two years before your domain expired.....do you really want to lose DA???? Contact us NOW!)
But, the question regarding what to do with a domain that is "unused" is interesting. We typically buy most extensions for any TLD and those are built around several keyword groups as we begin to develop a campaign. So, assuming we are building a group of sites around a new dental paint that never has to be whitened...... Dental-paint.com, .net, .org, .info, etc. along with Never-whiten-with-dental-paint.org, .com, .net, .info, etc.
From these, our clients will typically use 3 or 4 so there are a group that are left. Maybe, never used before. I will sometimes let an intern build a site as a project for their degree, etc. Rarely do they end up with any real DA.
As to the white/grey/black hat issues, for me it always seems to be around expediency. Personally, I have always wanted what I want, when I want it and I always want it now or yesterday!!! So, I can either opt for the expedient and hope my client doesn't pay the price or endeavor to take the high road. My personal opinion is that one person saying something is wrong does not make it so. So, I try to measure my actions against how I feel when I see others doing something similar.
I hate it when I see so many sites with links, for example for urologists that com from caps-or us, honkytonkyjonky, expotexto, monkeymania, etc. I read about Google penalizing people but then see that the vast majority of links used on professional practice sites are so bogus that ....well they are.
What's an SEO marketer to do. For me, I just don't have time to deal with the junk directories and I have learned that some of them will get to me anyway. I watch as big directories of national companies take money from their clients then put nofollow links to the sites. (Can't wait until there is some sort of exclusion for a site that is simply a lawyer, doctor, dentist, carpenter, etc. directory - when I want a dentist for an implant I do not want to be served up Yahoo.local.dentist from some other place or specialty. )
So, I am submitting to the better directories then pushing clients to go to vendors, etc. for links and we do all that we can to blog, PR Web, etc.
Personally, there is satisfaction at the end of the day in knowing we "Out-optimized the other guy and we did it on the up and up with quality site metrics, quality links, thought out keyword and link strategies, and a commitment to look at it every day in order to keep the client on top or moving toward the top."
And one last thing. We stayed on top of our game because we are connected to such a great group of marketing pros through SEOmoz. Sorry for the sentimentality, but I never cease to be amazed at the willingness to help one another get better and better and better.
Thanks for a thought provoking question,
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Keyword Appears In Top Level Domain
If i add a keyword in my domain so it will help me or not in search ranking.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MuhammadQasimAttari0 -
Steps to Improve Page Rank and Domain Authority
Hi If the quality of web pages is very good I believe rankings should reflect this. My domain is at least 3 years old.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOguy1
What steps would you recommend short term and long term in terms of how to improve page rank and domain authority? Thanks.0 -
Dealing with links to your domain that the previous owner set up
Hey everyone, I rebranded my company at the end of last year from a name that was fairly unique but sounded like I cleaned headstones instead of building websites. I opted for a name that I liked, it reflected my heritage - however it also seems to be quite common. Anyway, I registered the domain name as it was available as the previous owner's company had been wound up. It's only been in the last week or two where I've managed to have a website on that domain and I've been tracking it's progress through Moz, Google & Bing Webmaster tools. Both the webmaster tools are reporting back that my site triggers 404 errors for some specific links. However, I don't have or have never used those links before. I think the previous owner might have created the links before he went bust. My question is in two parts. The first part is how do I find out what websites are linking to me with these broken URL's, and the second is will these 404'ing links affect my SEO? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mickburkesnr0 -
Website that lost ranking and now starting to recovery
Hello guys,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WayneRooney
About a month ago we got in the webmaster tool a message that saying that we have unnatural links to the website.
We got drop from 200 keys that was in page 1-2 to pages 5-8.
We check our links and notice that someone links more then 1000 links to our site. We apply for reconsideration request plus we send the file with the links to Google to ask to remove. Yesterday we got message from Google that say : Manual spam action revoked.
We check today the ranking and we saw that from 3 keys that was in the first page, now we are with 24 in the first page. Very good improvement but still very far from the 130 keys that was in the first page a month ago. I wanted to ask, what can we expect ?
Are we gonna get the lost ranking now ?
Is this happen overnight ?Maybe the big change will be in the next penguin update ? Bottom Line, what is the chance to get back the ranking as we had before ?
This is the most important thing right now... Thank you0 -
Moving from www.domain.net to domain.com?
We're thinking about moving our domain from www.domain.net to domain.com as we just acquired the dot com domain. www.domain.net receives roughly 20million pageviews per month and gets about 90% of it's traffic from search engines. What is best to do in this situation? Should we start using .com instead of .net? 301 redirecting traffic to the .com from .net? Should we drop the www in front?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mschianoyo0 -
Manage two domains with Webmaster tools
Dear all, I want to create an additional domain in order to: Rank better for a very specific keyword with an exact match domain (I already ask about that, but I did not have my ideas clear at the time); Offer to the user usefull infomation about the topic, without duplicating the content I have in my main domain, just additional and very specific information; Use this domain as landing page, offering a tutorial on "how to" use a specific section of my main domain, including a video tutorial; Link to the related section of my main domain. So, the main idea is, if an user type in google "this specific keyword of ours", they will have in the results "thisspecifickeywordofus.es", they will click and go to the site, where they will find unique and specific information, complementing what I have in my mainsite, and showing how to use my site, so trying to use it for conversion. I want to do only white hat SEO, so first at all, I would like to ask you if you think it is a good idea. The keyword is difficult to rank for, and if I can take advantage of this exact match domain (even if it is nowdays no more so big an advantage), would be great. Second, do you see any problem in managing different domains from the same google account? Newbee question, sorry. Thanks in advance for your help, Daniel
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | te_c0 -
New website :301 redirection of a established domain
Hello , I am launching a new website which would host user generated content . Based on my brandname i have purchased a new domain . In order to improve SEO rankings i was considering to purchase a good quality domain (have gr8 link backs) and then perform 301 redirection of the domain to the new brandname.co.in domain . Does this work ? Is there any harm in doing this ? . Does the Link juice pass naturally ? Warm Rgd
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShoutOut0 -
Is domain name or page title "safe" as anchor text?
I am aware of the dangers of excessively optimized anchor text I have seen some suggestions that as long as your anchor text is either the URL or the page title that this will be OK, no matter how many links come in with that anchor text. Does anyone have an opinion, or even any hard data on this? Thx Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0