Buying Expired Domains
-
Recently i was looking to buy some good quality Expired Domains.
But while performing site and links query on such domains in google, none of the domains are showing any links or pages indexed in Google but the same domains are showing hundreds of links in opensiteexplorer for that domains.
So does Google has started devaluing expired domains or will expired domains recover all their rankings after re registration by us.
-
You need to be careful when purchasing a dropped domain that appears to be too good (short name, no hyphens, competitive keyword phrase)
a) take a look at what the site used to be in archive.org (the wayback machine) and take a look at if anything shady was going on
b) if you are buying it as a regular domain and not paying a premium price, set up a dummy site and get it indexed then see if it ranks for it's domain name and also using the site command site:domainname.com. If it's not ranking it's penalized, if it's not getting indexed it's banned.
c) If a site has been hit by Google it's done, at least until someone unwinds the penalty. Just dropping it and picking it up doesn't change the fact that it was penalized, otherwise everyone would be doing that to get out of penalties. So just be aware of that if planning on buying a premium domain so you don't get burnt.
If links are pointing to a expired domain it's like they are 404'ing but once the site goes live again those links are passing PR to that site.
-
This depends on the domain and the aftermarket process, can be hit and miss, the question should always be is this investment going to get me a return on my time and money. I often ask if I am doing this why is nobody else after this domain and if there is not keyword, cpc and other data to justify a purchase I'll back away. Keyword related expiring domains would be a better bet than just expiring domains with links.
-
Hi Amit,
I have owned a ecommerce domain since 2004 at times due to financial issues I had turned the site off (redirected everything to a maintenance page), for 6 months to even a year and half once. Oddly enough after the year and half time, I turned off the maintenance page and within 24 hours I already had customers buying from me again.
That isn't the same as expired since I always renewed my domain, but I was surprised on how quickly customers returned after such a long time being down. Hope that helps a little.
-
It's not a good practice, so be careful and only pick relevant ones.
Whether or not they loose their ranking depends, but if they aren't indexed anymore, then their rating is probably gone.
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
-
Lost ranking after domain switch
I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects. I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com). Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?
Technical SEO | | wfm-uk0 -
Sudden ranking Hike For domain
Hello there, I have domain Which got penalized By google Before 2 nd half years & all First Page Ranking Gone Down by 7-8 pages, But Now It got Sudden up after 3 years, So my Question is Will I need Worry or that Can Be Positive Sign For My efforts Given to Website? Will It stay Up?? As i have Updated My website As Told by Moz experts. Thanx, in advance
Technical SEO | | innovative10030 -
Changing a domain name, pages redirection
when changing a domain name, should we redirect all the pages to their new pages or only the indexed pages? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
Domain change recommendations
We recently migrated one of our websites to a new domain. Obviously we were expecting a decrease in traffic initially, but it has actually gone down by 70% week-over-week since we made the switch. We set up a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain, changed all internal links to the new domain and changed all inbound links that we owned to the new domain. Our research suggested the best way to approach a domain change was by keeping it simple and not making too many changes at once. So my questions are: 1. Are these the kinds of results we should expect initially after a domain change? And if not, 2. What are the steps we should take from here? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | gouldtr0 -
1000+ links from domain to subdomain - impacting?
Hi there! I'm wondering if anyone could kindly help me with this question. I have a domain let's say: thisdomain.com - and I also have a subdomain called widgets.thisdomain.com thisdomain.com has approx 2000 pages on it. There are site wide links in the top nav, side nav and footer pointing to widgets.thisdomain.com (all with the same anchor text - not branded - it's a money term). My question is, do you think this would be causing some kind of algorithmic penalty (over optimisation / penguin)? Or, do you think Google realises these links are pointing to a subdomain and says, "hey, OK we understand these two domains could be related" or given subdomains are seen as essentially standalone websites, the algo is saying "hang on a minute, pal, this looks fishy, why are you linking to this subdomain 1000+ times with sitewide links on the same anchor text"? Should I nofollow these sitewide links? Do you think that will help? I would really appreciate any help on this one. Cheers!
Technical SEO | | WCR0 -
Domain Forwarding Help
A friend of mine is a domainer and he wants to forward 21 parked niche specific domains to my site for extra type-in traffic. This will turn out to be 30 extra hits a day. Obviously, since these are parked domains, the SEO benefits are none, we just want the traffic. My questions is how to do it. These are his parked domains, and will not be redirected forever, is a 302 redirect the best plan here? He planned on just going into his hosting/domain admin and selecting "forward domain" -- is this ok too? Also, he would prefer to forward these domains to a single domain he owns, and then forward that single domain he owns to my domain. So someone who types in one of these 21 domains will go typindomain.com ---> hisredirectsite.com ---->mysite.com any implications here? What is the best option and how to do it? Thanks
Technical SEO | | terran0 -
Can subdomains boost the main domain?
HI I know that having a strong domain can help when creating sub domains, but can it also work the other way round? Can having a number of strong sub domains help the top level domain's quality and history? My reason for asking is that I have half a dozen domains which have been used for various projects, and still are, which have involved having a landing page on the root domain and running dozens of sub domains. These subdomains, across 6 root domains, have about 500,000 pages indexed. I have now decided I should do something with the root domain so am wondering if there are any benefits I would have gained from my initial approach. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Lots of Domains Going Nowhere - Point to a Real Domain?
I have hundreds of domains that I have purchased over the years that arent going anywhere except GoDaddy's Cash Parking system, which returns very little revenue, if at all. I wonder if it would make more sense to just point these domains to actually e-commerce sites that I own. If so, how best to take these domains and point them so that SEO credit is given properly. Most of these available domains dont have anything to do with the e-commerce stores. So not sure it would help. Furthermore, if I were to purchase new domains that were more relevant to the keywords to our e-commerce sites, how best to set them up so we can generate traffic on them and point them over to the actual domains? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | findachristianjob0