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
-
Domain hacked and redirected to another domain
2 weeks ago my home page plus some others had a 301 redirect to another cloned domain for about 1 week (due to a hack).The original pages were then de-indexed and the new bad domain was indexed and in effect stole my rankings.Then the 301 was removed/cleaned from my domain and the bad domain was fully de-indexed via a request I made in WMT (this was 1 week ago).Then my pages came back into the index but without any ranking power (as if it's just in the supplemental index).It's been like this for a week now and the algorithms have not been able to correct it. So how do I get this damage undone or corrected? Can someone at Google reverse/cancel the 301 ranking transfer since the algorithms don't seem to be able to?I have the option to do a "Change of Address" in WMT from bad domain to my domain. But I don't think this would work properly because it says I also need to place a 301 on the bad domain back to mine. Would a change of address still work without the 301?Please advise/help what to do in order to get my rankings back to where they were.
Technical SEO | | Dantek0 -
What is cross domain?
what is cross domain? can any one explain in simple language ?
Technical SEO | | constructionhelpline0 -
Multiple domains pointing to same site
Over the years, we have acquired a great number of variations of our domains, or industry-specific domains to protect our brand. Currently, the majority of those domains are parked at the registrars. Would we do any harm to our rankings if we pointed the dormant domains to our website (www.ellsworth.com)? If not, are there any recommendations as the best way to do this, or just point them to the same IP?
Technical SEO | | Ellsworth0 -
TLD as part of word in domain name?
What is best practice regarding domain names? Assuming I would target the keyword "example" examp.le or example.com I guess the latter is preferable, what could be the issues with the first option? /Lars Eriksson
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson0 -
Problem with 1 Domain but not 60 Others
Hi, I have about 60+ domains which are spread across a few different IP address's and a couple of Servers The domains use the same template, which is modified per the specific domain Out of the 60, a single domain attracts virtually no traffic. In google webmaster, there are no messages, nothing out of the order The supporting blogs etc... for that domain are all fine. Any idea why one domain does not perform, while the other 60 plug are successful?
Technical SEO | | Bucky0 -
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 -
Changing preferred domain
My company has an international website, and because of a technical issue visitors in one of our main countries cannot visits the "www" version of our site. Currently, the www version is our preferred domain - and the non www redirects to that page. To solve this problem, I was thinking of proposing the following and would greatly appreciate any feedback! (Note: If you answered my www vs. non www question, thanks - this is a follow up) 1. Set non www site as the preferred version 2. Redirect from www to non www 3. Contact our current links and ask them to change to without “www” 4. Change canonical URLs to without “www”
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Outranking a competitor when their domain name is the keyword
Hi I'd just like to ask the opinion of my fellow members here : We are currently ranking second for a very important keyword and would obviously like the top spot on the SERP - the site that is ranking first has the domain name as the keyword phrase(along with a good amount of quality links from a variety of domains) - now I know it is possible to outrank them since I do remember reading about this in one of Rands posts(I think it was the whole white hat black hat one he posted recently) - bascially we have more domain authority, slightly less links but from double the amount of root domains and a higher page authority too! Does having the keyword as your domain make THAT much of a difference when we are(imo) quite close in terms of great content and link profiles(and all the onpage factors) ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DanHill0