If you’re thinking of migrating your website to a new domain or planning to launch your business online, expired domain names are a great option to explore. Expired domains can provide some SEO benefits as well as an opportunity to jumpstart web traffic if it has some online history.
Why You Should Buy an Expired Domain Name
Expired domains have become an attractive alternative to hand registering a brand new domain name to businesses as they may carry SEO value. These domain names can be hidden gems if they are associated with an excellent backlink profile. In fact, some expired domains may have previously ranked in search engine result pages (SERPs).
What are expired domain names?
Expired domains are previously registered by the owner that may be an individual or business, and are not renewed by the owner or are terminated for a number of reasons. Sometimes it can be because the online business didn’t work or the owner is involved in a trademark infringement case, which they are looking to pivot from. While the allure of an expired domain sounds great, buying an expired domain should be taken with caution as there are some caveats to consider.
Let’s dive into the advantages…
Benefits of Buying an Expired Domain Name
As mentioned, expired domains are the domain names that the previous owner failed to renew. When a domain reaches its expiration date and is not renewed for 30 days, it will be available for auction after the redemption period lapses.
Redemption periods provide the owner to renew the domain before it is dropped to the public market for re-registration.
There are auctions that take place through the registrar’s auction service for 7 days. The highest bidder gets the expired domain.
Expired domains are popular for online businesses as they are associated with SEO value and previous ranking power. If you’re interested in purchasing one, you should assess the quality of its inbound links.
What is a backlink?
For a better understanding of why expired domains are valuable for SEO, let’s look at what backlinks are first. In simple terms, a backlink is any link that is pointed to your site from another site.
Backlinks are important to how a page ranks. Google algorithms are designed to deliver the most valuable and authoritative sites to users. To do this, Google uses several ranking factors including backlinks.
If a website points to yours, it tells the users that your site provides useful information to the audience. When a number of high authority websites are pointing to your site, Google senses it and treats your site as a valuable site. It’s very important for site owners to understand how backlinks work if they want to improve their SEO.
Why are expired domains valuable for SEO purposes?
Established Backlink Profile
One common reason why many online business owners invest in expired domains is that they may already have a backlink profile from valuable authority sites. It takes a considerable amount of time to gain high-quality backlinks, so if you invest in this kind of domain, you’ll be able to capture more trust from those links.
Building and ranking websites and pages for keywords can take years for the site owner to invest in publishing quality content, launching marketing campaigns, and maintaining the website. The goal is to rank in Google. Google still treats backlinks as one of the most important ranking factorsof a page aside from the site’s content and web traffic.
Established Page Rank
Getting an expired domain name with a high ranking is a great advantage for an online business.
The quantity and quality of backlinks associated with a website informs Google on how valuable a page is. Establishing a page’s ranking is not overnight work but good on-page habits and backlinking efforts pays dividends in the future.
In fact, websites that were on the top 10 ranking pages were at least two years old, according to Ahrefs’s recent study. It also took at least 12 months before the pages were able to rank in the top 10.
Consider the Domain Name Age
You should not buy expired domains just because they seem affordable. Remember, domain name renewals fees can quickly add up the following year. There are certain factors that you need to consider when purchasing expired domains and it includes the domain age.
Do not purchase a domain that expired after a year it was registered by the previous owner, unless it’s an opportunity that you understand or predict to appreciate in value. Older domains are typically more established and more mature.
However, be careful when purchasing an expired domain because there might be some issues associated with it. If a marketer attempted some advanced black hat tactics and ended up being penalized for the strategy, then it damaged the rankability of the website in Google.
Old, expired domains are worth more if it was a website that performed well on SERPs. This means that they have accumulated more value.
Another consideration is if the domain has been expired only recently. An expired domain that was idle for many years is more likely to lose its value. However, the potential buyer needs to understand this factor before purchasing.
An expired domain with traffic is regarded as a more ‘trusted’ site. However, a new site that has stronger SEO and backlink profile can outshine the older expired domain.
What is a 301 redirect?
Getting the link juice of an expired domain can be done quickly by redirecting the old domain to your main website. A 301 redirect, one of the several HTTP status codes, is a permanent redirect that passes the link equity and page authority from the old URL to the new URL.
All users are redirected from an old URL to a new URL. It is mainly used when a page is no longer useful, relevant, moved, or removed from a site. It is used to enhance the user’s journey as they are pointed to a new page rather than left hanging that the page they are accessing is no longer available.
What are the benefits of using a 301 redirect?
The 301 redirect is a very useful tool to redirect traffic from an old page to a new web address.. It is important to redirect an old URL that is not relevant any more when rebuilding your site.
- Google ranks a page higher when it offers fresh and updated content than the previous page.
- All the SEO value, page authority, and link equity are passed on to the new page.
- A single page that offers more information is more likely to rank better with more keywords.
If a user visits your page and finds a ‘404 not found error,’ it will definitely impact their user experience with your site. There’s data that suggests that they’ll never be visiting your site again if they encounter a 404 error. To avoid this, you should use the 301 redirect tool to point them to the new page that can turn users into buying customers.
How to Find Just Dropped Domains with High-Quality Backlinks
Dropped domains are domains that expired and have exceeded their validity period. When this happens, these domains are called ‘dropped’ domains. Dropped domains are the ones that aren’t renewed during the redemption period.
Purchasing an expired domain with no traffic might be wasting your money and resources. It’s more of a risk to invest in expired domains without web traffic because it’s like buying a new domain that has no value yet.
Expired dropped domains with high-quality backlinks can be found at search sites, registrars, and auction sites.
Auction Sites
GoDaddy Auctions
GoDaddy Auctionsis a marketplace for sellers and potential domain buyers. Sellers can list their expired domains for sale without any fees during the 7-day auction.
Potential buyers can bid and the highest bidder takes the auctioned domain. Godaddy takes a percentage of the sale price when the domain is sold.
The marketplace is one of the best platforms to find expired domains with traffic and link value. The expired domains offered on GoDaddy are still working and maintaining the same registrar. The advantage of this is that there’s no downtime for the expired site.
Flippa
Flippa is a marketplace for expired domains, sites, and applications. The auction lasts for 30 days on Flippa, and buyers can only bid once they are accepted by the seller.
The highest bidder wins the auction for an expired domain once it reaches more than the reserve value. The buyer then pays and arranges for the transfer of ownership.
Search Sites or Softwares
Spamzilla
It is a paid software that provides a list of expired domains with traffic. The software has filtering, analysis, and sorting features that enable buyers to assess the domains based on history, Google rankings, anchor text, and more.
Expireddomains.net
This is a popular domain aggregator that offers expired domains and dropped domains with high-quality backlinks. It has more than 200,000 domain names available at auction. Anyone can filter the different expired domains available depending on their niche.
Domain Registrars
FreshDrop
At FreshDrop, buyers can search for a database with expired domains as well as valuable dropped domains. It offers expired domains available across all auction sites.
DomCop
DomCop is a registrar that works like FreshDrop. Buyers can find expired and expiring domains on the platform.
How to Buy and Assess the Value of an Expired Domain Name
A domain becomes available to other buyers once it wasn’t renewed by the owner. Anyone can purchase the expiring domain the moment it goes beyond the expiration date.
The original owner cannot reclaim the domain once it passes the redemption period. To check if the expiring domain is in redemption or not, check it on the WHOIS database under the ‘domain status’.
Before making a purchase of an expired domain name, make sure to do your research.
Below are the factors to consider before purchasing an expired domain name:
Domain Authority (DA)
You need to ensure the domain authority of the potential expired domain that you want to purchase. They are regarded as valuable and trusted sites by Google. If there are a lot of high-quality sites pointing to your site, you can quickly build web traffic to your site.
Spam
Check if the domain was used for spam purposes. You can easily spot a spammy site with these indicators: keyword stuffing, duplicate content, hacked content, and many more.
Historic Backlink Profile
Another way to spot if a site was used for spamming is by checking the historic backlink profile. Backlinks that come from ‘zero authority sites,’ spammy anchor text profiles, and irrelevant backlinks indicate that it’s used for spamming.
There are a lot of factors to consider before purchasing an expired domain. Aside from the above-mentioned, you should also consider domain history, organic traffic history, Google Index, trademarks, Google Adwords ban, trust, and citation flow, among many others.
Step-by-Step Guide to Purchasing an Expired Domain:
Buying an expired domain is a waiting game as there are certain periods that you need to watch out before you’re able to register it.
If no other buyers have placed a backorder for the expired domain, you’ll likely be able to register it in your chosen domain registrar. However, if other buyers have placed a backorder for the same domain, an auction will take place for the expired domain.
How to Set Up a 301 Redirect for Your Website
As mentioned previously, a 301 redirect is used to redirect a website permanently. It is good for SEO purposes and also signals the search engines that a site is moved to a new URL for good.
Setting up a 301 redirect is different for every platform and CMS. A plugin can be used to set up the 301 redirect on WordPress.
Here’s how to do a 301 redirect on your website:
The most common way to do the redirect is by editing your site’s .htaccess file. It can be found on your site’s root folder.
For example, if you want to move a page from an old URL to a new URL:
From https://www.abc.com/old.html
To https://www.abc.com/new
To make sure that it is redirected to a new page, you need to add the code to your .htaccess file:
redirect 301 /old.html https://www.abc.com/new
The ‘redirect 301‘ signals the search engines that your page has been moved to a new URL. If you need to move several pages, you need to create a redirect statement per page.
When to Use a 301 Redirect
There are a number of reasons why you should redirect your page to another page. Sometimes, you need to redirect a single URL or the entire domain.
There are various 301 redirects so it’s important that you know what to use and when to use them.
Below are the reasons why a 301 redirect is essential:
Aside from SEO purposes, a redirect is crucial for user experience. You need to ensure that visitors to your site as well as search engines will not find a page that is no longer available.
How to Track the Success of Your 301 Redirects
It’s important to check if the 301 redirects are working properly. To do this, just type the page’s URL into your browser. If you’re redirected to the correct page, then you have set up the redirect page the right way.
There are also redirect checker tools that you can use to test if the redirects are working properly. Using these tools ensures that you avoid mistakes in setting up the redirects, such as a series of redirect chains, redirect loops, and phishing websites.
There are tools that can track the success of individual links and several pages. Some checkers for individual links include the redirect tracker, SEO redirect checker, and the redirect detective.
For bulk checking, HTTPStatus, HEADMasterSEO, and HTTP 301 and 302 URL Redirect chain checker tools are very useful.
How Can Expired Domain Names Help Me Find My Niche Audience?
Expired domain names can be a valuable tool in finding your niche audience repeatedly. When you acquire expired domains relevant to your niche, you gain access to a pre-existing audience that may already be interested in what you offer. Utilizing these domains allows you to bypass initial audience building efforts, saving time and effort in reaching your target market.
Tips for Expired Domains with Traffic
Your domain name is one of your business’s valuable assets. After registering an expired domain, you need to ensure that your website is safe by following some of these best practices:
- Place your domain under ‘Registrar lock‘ or ‘Client Transfer Prohibited.’ Lock your domain name to ensure that there will be no unauthorized changes.
- Use a trusted and stable domain registrar to ensure that it will not go out of business anytime soon.
- Use a solid password for your registrar’s account to ensure that it’s safe from unscrupulous hackers.
- Register your domain name for multiple years, for example 10 years, if possible to avoid losing your domain to someone else.
- Register variations of your domain name to prevent others from using the same or variations of your domain.
Buying an expired domain name can provide a shortcut to a successful online business. If you have tried different strategies to improve your SEO, using expired domains can take your business to the next level. However, you need to research and do your homework before purchasing an expired domain to ensure that you’ll avoid making mistakes that may involve you in trademark or legal issues.
To learn more about domain name upgrades to improve your online business, visit our other posts for more information.
