Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Buying Expired Domains with Decent DA/PA for SEO Purposes
-
Hey guys, i've seen some stuff about this before but I recently found an opportunity to put it into action and wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into!
I am looking at buying a domain (expired and now only 10 dollars) that has a decent domain authority and has some keywords in it related to my clients practice. I plan on using a 301 redirect to pass "link juice" because this client is looking for a quick bump in rankings.
Thoughts? Benefits? Problems with this?
-
So interestingly enough, and without trying to identify the people involved, I have found a local SEO company that has somehow acquired a fully unrelated domain which supposedly used to have something to do with students and kids lives and was a resource of sorts back in the day.
This site has FOLLOWED backlinks (with the student resource context) from the United Nations, from cbs.com, and from a wide range of websites mostly referencing it as a student and kids life resource.
Given the looks and feels of their site, they seem like a shabby SEO company with rather grey or dark themed SEO tactics.
This company ranks on page 1 for City+ SEO combination of keywords for three to four MAJOR cities in the US.
I want to find out what you all think of this...
Is this ok?
How is this ok?
Is this going to cause them to be flagged eventually automatically for a penalty or purge?
Does Google have anything against this sort of thing at all?
Danke
-
what is a good resource to find expired domains? for instance a list or like wise instead of purchasing scraping tools.
-
I tried this procedure but was not very successful and the blog was penalized by Google.
What I did, I bought a fairly good command with AD and a good amount of back-links it was indexed.
I created new content for the blog and redirected all the old pages to the home.
I was punished because the content that the user should see is not the same as the search engines, not entendie well. -
In my opinion I have seen both tactics work, it really comes down to how much Google trust the domain and your web site. If you are going to do a 301 redirect, I would do a very in depth link analysis and make sure that nothing is spammy. Make sure you really dive into the quality of back links that the URL has as well as how diverse the link profile is from a link standpoint and anchor text standpoint. A buddy of mine thought a URL was good but got penalized because to many links were coming in from the same type of sources even though it wasn't the same source.
You also need to check your link profile and make sure it is well diverse as well. This will help the url blend in more natural. I agree with Moosa, I would only use this tactic one or two times. If you are thinking about doing a PBN I wouldn't recommend it. However there are plenty of legit ones that really build out great content and information and are legit, but in my opinion if your going to spend all the time and money doing that you could spend it on your website. Good luck
-
OoOPs! I forgot this is only white-hat forum/QA board. but buying domains in bulk and redirecting to main site is also blackhat. 301 was supposed to be a transfer, If your website is shifted from domainA to domainB then you can redirect 301 from domainA to DomainB. Anyways, Do make a try with your strategy. I've shared what worked for me
-
Thanks guys! I've got a solid checklist now to complete to qualify a site!
Though for anyone else reading this thread--@salman...sounds like a very old-school, black hat SEO tactic! Not only do I doubt that would work short term, I KNOW it is something that Google will be looking to penalize. A link network/ link farm like that is not really a legitimate SEO practice and violates Google's guidelines.
-
Its a good thing, but I'd prefer to use expired domain as a backlink source.
Its called Site-network or Blog-network. Register 10-20 domains with different PR's and DA's. Put high quality content (related to your topic) and then link to your client's website with different anchor tags. then see Boom in rankings! I ranked a 52% Keyword difficulty keyword using this method in 1 month.. Exact! -
I never say No to it, unless you have like 20 domains 301ing to the main domain but one or two are fine in my opinion.
When buying an expired domain, having a decent DA is not enough, also check their links that are pointing the website and if they are fine, go for it otherwise, 301ing the domain to the main domain might hurt!!
-
I agree that this is a great idea, when handled properly.
Oleg pretty much covered everything but this 2013 post from SEORoundTable.com covers this tactic as well: http://www.seroundtable.com/competitor-domain-name-17032.html
-
- Check if domain is indexed
- Check the anchor profile of the domain - too spammy means it would affect your current site's anchor profile and possibly penalize it
- View the site via archive.org and make sure it was good site. Spam/porn/hacked sites will probably do more harm than good.
Also, the best 301 strategy would be to link individual pages to specific new pages on your site. I would focus on the pages that have external backlinks and do a catch-all redirect to the homepage for the remainder.
-
Hey,
This is good idea if implemented properly! You need to check few things before redirecting this domain
- Verify that there is not Manual Penalty to this domain (Verify it through Google Webmaster Tool )
- Check the back-links of domain if any. It might be victim of Penguin 2 & 2.1 (You can use ahref.com or Moz Explorer)
Redirecting this domain without above verifications could lead to further trouble!
Regards
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
-
When creating a sub-domain, does that sub-domain automatically start with the DA of the main domain?
We have a website with a high DA and we are considering sub-folder or sub-domain. One of the great benefits of a sub-folder is that we know we get to keep the high DA, is this also the case for sub-domains? Also if you could provide any sources of information that specify this, I can't see to find anything!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Saba.Elahi.M.0 -
Should I keep, or disavow PA 1 DA 0 backlink?
Hi, I am doing link cleaning, and still a bit new to this, and would appreciate the community's help 🙂 So, I have a site which has quite a lot of low DA (or no DA) follow backlinks. BUT, the links are from my niche the sites are not spammy the anchors are okay and they are from good Geo location for me The only negative thing is that these sites are a bit "dead" meaning that there is no new content, and thus there is no traffic or clicks coming from them. Should I keep those links or disavow them? To me these links are natural, but do they help me at all.... FYI I have plenty of good DA links. But what do you guys think, if I disavow all these low DA backlinks, does Google think that I am trying to manipulate my backlink structure to look better than it naturally is? Cheers guys and girls! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RistoM0 -
Should I run my Shopify store on a subdomain or buy a new domain for it?
I'm planning to set up a subdomain for my Shopify store but I'm not sure if this is the right approach. Should I purchase a separate domain for it? I'm running Wordpress on my website and want to keep it that way. I want to use Shopify for the ecommerce side. I want to link the store from the top nav and of course I'll use CTA's in a variety of ways to point to merchandise and other things on the store side. Thanks for any help you can offer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ims20160 -
Legacy domains
Hi all, A couple of years ago we amalgamated five separate domains into one, and set up 301 redirects from all the pages on the old domains to their equivalent pages on the new site. We were a bit tardy in using the "change of address" tool in Search Console, but that was done nearly 8 months ago now as well. Two years after implementing all the redirects, the old domains still have significant authority (DAs of between 20-35) and some strong inbound links. I expected to see the DA of the legacy domains taper off during this period and (hopefully!) the DA of the new domain increase. The latter has happened, although not as much as I'd hoped, but the DA of the legacy domains is more or less as good as it ever was? Google is still indexing a handful of links from the legacy sites, strangely even when it is picking up the redirects correctly. So, for example, if you do a site:legacydomain1.com query, it will give a list of results which includes pages where it shows the title and snippet of the page on newdomain.com, but the link is to the page on legacydomain1.com. What has prompted me to finally try and resolve this is that the server which hosted the original 5 domains is now due to be decommissioned which obviously means the 301 redirects for the original pages will no longer be served. I can set up web forwarding for each of the legacy domains at the hosting level, but to maintain the page-by-page redirects I'd have to actually host the websites somewhere. I'd like to know the best way forward both in terms of the redirect issue, and also in terms of the indexing of the legacy domains? Many thanks, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | clarkovitch0 -
Does having a different sub domain for your Landing Page and Blog affect your overall SEO benefits and Ranking?
We have a domain www.spintadigital.com that is hosted with dreamhost and we also have a seperate subdomain blog.spintadigital.com which is hosted in the Ghost platform and we are also using Unbounce landing pages with the sub domain get.spintadigital.com. I wanted to know whether having subdomain like this would affect the traffic metric and ineffect affect the SEO and Rankings of our site. I think it does not affect the increase in domain authority, but in places like similar web i get different traffic metrics for the different domains. As far as i can see in many of the metrics these are considered as seperate websites. We are currently concentrating more on our blogs and wanted to make sure that it does help in the overall domain. We do not have the bandwidth to promote three different websites, and hence need the community's help to understand what is the best option to take this forward.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinodh-spintadigital0 -
Should you include domain / brand in Meta Title
Hello, I am trying to come up with a strategy for creating meta title information for my eCommerce store. I have read mixed reviews on the examples below. The first includes the company / brand in the meta title and thus is included in SE results. The second does not. Probably not a 'right' answer here so I look forward to answers with rationale... also open to a completely difference strategy all together! 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - $Company_Name OR 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - Pre Workout Supplement Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 6thirty0 -
Redirect a subdomain to a subdirectory for SEO purposes.
Hi, I have a site on wordpress and I want to add eCommerce to it. We want to go with Shopify but Shopify only allows to host their platform on a subdomain. I like to have it on a subdorectory, so my question is: Would it make sense to redirect the whole subdomain to a subdirectory (move everything from shop.domain.com to domain.com/shop) for SEO purposes? Would Google see these pages as if they were part of the main domain? Thanks! Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | julienraby0 -
Does domain WhoIs Privacy affect SEO efforts?
Hi guys, I got a hopefully quick question. I am designing a site currently that is made up of many different domain names as part of a network. I've heard that Google will penalize however is linking is passed back and forth between these domains if the registrant information was the same. I have WhoIS privacy information on all the domains to stop telemarketers and spam as well as (hopefully stop Google from getting suspicious). I'm not doing anything bad or against Google rules but I can see how they might think that if I have a huge network and links are being passed between these. It's a friend of mine who owns like 2000 domains and he wants to put legitimate information on each one and rank them higher, it's an interesting concept but I won't go into to much detail. So my question is basically, does having WhoIS privacy on all these domains, will it affect me in anyway in the SEO process? Will google count the links passing back and forth as legitimate? Or might it get suspicious and think I am spam? Are there ways to see what server it's coming from? Should all these sites be on different servers? Any help is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | itechware0