Expired-Domain-1024x512

 

Imagine being able to purchase domains that already have excellent backlink profiles and existing target traffic at the same price as the new domain.

You can use an expired domain to do the following:

  • Establish a new authorized site to break through the competition
  • Build a strong private blog network.

No matter what you do, you can’t ignore the features provided by expired domain name, and today you’ll learn How To Choose An Expired Domain.

Why people buy expired domains?

 

There are many reasons why people buy expired domain names. Here are some of the most common reasons why people buy expired domain names instead of brand new ones.

Authority: If Google treats an expired domain name as an authority, people will purchase that expired domain names. If there already have a lot of high-quality backlinks pointing to the domain, it’s easy to build a new site from the first day and start to attract traffic.

The most time-consuming thing in SEO is Google Sandbox. In the meantime, it’s not easy to rank your website.

On the other hand, building a site on an established expired domain can help you shorten this sandbox duration and get a head start for your new business.

 

301 redirect: When people are not interested in building sites around expired domains, they can still take advantage of the authority of expired domains. They rebuild the expired domain by purchasing it, and then 301 redirect the expired domain to their primary site.

This way, all high-quality backlinks that point to expired domains now start pointing to their primary site. Now, the level/link juice that the expired domain already has can be easily directed to the money page.

Before purchasing an expired domain name for a 301 redirect, it’s important to ensure that the domain you purchased is contextually relevant to your primary site.

Otherwise, Google may negate the backlinks or you may face artificial or manual unnatural link penalty.

PBN: People build sites on expired domains that they purchase and use them as PBN sites. When they control the entire site, it’s easy to get a powerful home page link to their money pages.

Flipping: Buying a valid expired domain name and selling it to other SEO bloggers at a high price is a great technique. The most important thing here is to get expired domain names as soon as possible and resell them at a higher price.

Domain investing: It is often difficult to find fresh brand names. As an investor, thousands of domain names expire every day, so it’s easy to find brand names.

Many real estate investors are now considering investing in the sector due to lower risks and convenient entry points.

How To Choose An Expired Domain?

Once a domain name expires, it goes through many stages before being released to the open market. The domain name registrar company makes the first of three billing attempts to renew the domain name. If the billing fails, the domain name expires and the domain is parked.

If you are in a hurry, check out how Jon Haver at AuthororityWebsiteIncome.com chooses outdated domains, check out the video below.

 

If you have some time to learn more about the metrics, please continue reading this article.

Where To Find Expired Domains?

 

The best tool for finding expired domains is ExpiredDomains.net. You need a free account to start your expired domain search.

Simply enter your niche or related keywords in the search box. You’ll get hundreds of domain names that match your niche.

 

You can also set a lot of filters from the “Show Filters” option at the top.

What filter?

well…

Before registering a domain, you need to look at some metrics. I will explain them one by one.

What to look for in an expired domain?

 

I rarely use any expired domain names on my website. So far, I remember that it happened 1/2 times.

result?

These sites have performed well. Their rankings are faster than brand new domains.

What makes the domain name successful? This is because I followed the exact process when I looked up the expired domain and never disappeared from the blueprint.

Domain Authority [Hint: 20+, Better If You Can Get 30+]

Domain authority (DA) is an indicator developed by Moz that calculates some factors and scores each domain based on its findings. It represents the performance of a particular domain name in Google rankings.

When registering an expired domain name, I want to set at least 20 restrictions. If you can use a domain name above DA 30, it would be better.

You can check domain permissions (and other Moz metrics) from OpenSiteExplorers.org

 

Page Authority [Hint: 20+ is good, Better If You Can Get 30+]

Similar to DA, Page Authority (PA) is an indicator developed by Moz. PA does not represent a domain, but instead represents every web page available on the Internet.

If the domain has at least DA 25, I will choose the expired domain, but getting a domain with DA 35+ is awesome!

Moz Spam Score

Spam scores are an indicator developed by Moz to help you determine the legality of a domain name. This score will help you understand the domain name potential of the website.

Never choose a domain name with a spam score greater than 4.

OpenSiteExplorers.org allows you to view spam scores for any particular domain. However, to view the details of the spam score type, you need to join MozPro or use Mozbar From Moz ( Browser Extension).

Backlinks

Sometimes the aforementioned indicators can be manipulated. You can’t rely on them completely.

Therefore, the most important task after acquiring a domain is to check the domain’s backlink profiles.

If you see that the backlinks received by this domain are of high quality, the domain can be used.

If the backlinks are spam or poor quality, such as hundreds of blog comments or thousands of forum comments or links from non-english websites, you must have to avoid them.

You can check the backlink profile using the following tools:

OpenSiteExplorers.org (free)

Ubersuggest (free)

Ahrefs.com (paid, the best one on the market)

 

What to look for in the backlink profile?

  • Number of links
  • Linking domains amount
  • Anchor text changes

How To Decide?

Number of Links: The more the number of high-quality links, the better. I repeat, I said, high-quality links (I covered the details of high-quality links on this post, check now)

Quality Domain Links: Google cares more about how many domains are linking to you rather than caring how many links pointed to your site. If you see the domain has hundreds of links, but those are from only a few domains, then there is something unnatural.

How do you define spam links?

  1. Backlinks that are from “zero” authority sites
  2. Backlinks that are completely irrelevant
  3. Backlinks from Chinese or Russian sites
  4. Backlinks with spammy anchor text profile

Natural Anchor Text: If you notice the anchor text is heavy ‘keyword rich’ and doesn’t look natural, means someone tried to manipulate Google in the past. And the possibility is the domain got a penalty. So always look for natural anchor text distribution in a domain.

How to decide?

The number of links: The higher the number of high-quality links, the better. I will mention the high-quality link again (I introduced the details of the high-quality link in this article, check now)

Premium domain links: Google is more concerned with the number of links to your domain, not the number of links to your site. If you see that the domain has hundreds of links, but these links come from only a few domains, there are some unnatural situations.

Natural anchor text: If you find that the anchor text is heavy “keyword rich” and it looks unnatural, it means someone has tried to manipulate Google. And it may be that the domain is punished. Therefore, always look for a natural anchor text distribution in the domain.

 

Trust Flow [Hint: 15+ TF Required]

 

Majestic.com is another great company in the SEO field who developed indicators such as Trust Flow to measure the credibility of a domain in Google’s eyes.

When investigating expired domains, use a domain with a Trust Flow (TF) metric of at least 20+.

 

Relevant SEO Services By MahbubOsmane.com

 

Citation Flow [Hint: 15+ CF Required]

Similar to the trust flow, the citation flow (CF) is developed by the Majestic.com.

This metric is a prediction of the impact of a particular URL on Google and counts the number of sites linked to it.

Again, look for 20+

Domain Age

Old domains are prioritized by Google when ranking!

However, Matt Cutts officially confirmed the factor isn’t important ‘That Much’

but…

There are other reasons why you need an old domain name (such as a sandbox effect).

I want to use a domain name for at least 2 years. You need to work hard to find one. Especially for affiliate websites, this is difficult. If you can get a domain name based on all the above metrics, it may be that you have a domain name!

Google Page Rank

still…

Whenever an expired domain is selected, it is best to check if the domain has a page rank. It is even better if you can at least use the PR 2 domain. But this is not mandatory.

Since PR has no value officially, you’d better focus on the other metrics mentioned so far.

Check The Content History With Archive.org

Archive.org is a website that can store almost every website that was created and indexed. Many people use it for a variety of purposes, such as I use it to get unlimited free content for my website.

Now, we need to check the history of the domains that find almost identical to each of the above metrics.

How?

Visit Archive.org

 

archive.org Mahbub Osmane

Now enter your domain name in the box and click “Go”

This will display a calendar. Now click on one of the dates, which will show the implementation of that particular date.

Check each highlighted date available on the calendar and measure whether the site was reliable in the past, or someone just spoiled the domain with spammy, low-quality content.

Show signs for spam sites

  • Content that doesn’t make sense
  • Non-English language
  • Hacked content
  • Keyword stuffing
  • Duplicate content
  • Porn/unsafe content

How To Decide About Expired Domain?

If you find that the above metrics are met by any particular domain, you can find a wide possibility of brandability and long-term working scope, go for that domain.

 

More Things to consider before buying expired domains

Check brandability:

Are you purchasing expired domain names primarily for brand influence?

For example, when I purchase a BloggingX domain name, it is an expired domain name, and I purchased the domain name just to build a brand around it. I did not consider SEO when I purchased SEO.

Brand branding is important if you want to build a truly licensed long-term site on the expired domain you get.

On the other hand, if you want to use PBN and 301 redirects, brandability is not important at all. As long as you have permission, you can move on.

 

Check Google AdSense ban:

Google prohibits AdSense from using domain names that do not comply with its terms and conditions. It’s possible that you might choose Google to block expired domain names for AdSense ads.

Even if you’re building an affiliate website, I recommend that you check the AdSense ban, as the plan will change frequently as the site evolves.

There is a tool called the AdSense sandbox. Once you enter the URL, it will show ads for that site. Just enter the URL of the expired domain you are willing to purchase. If no ads are popped for this URL, AdSense will block the ad.

 

Check Facebook ban:

You also need to check if the expired domain is banned from Facebook due to spam.

Before I acquired bytecode.org, it was banned by Facebook. The previous domain owner sent spam on Facebook using the domain name.

Maybe some automatic FB group posters are used to send spam?

Once I get the domain name, I will create a very professional homepage and post some blog posts. Now, I am trying to serve an FB ad to my site, but the ad is disapproved.

I had a business chat with Facebook and explained the problem to them. It was banned by Facebook within 30 minutes.

But despite this, even if I knew that Facebook had banned my domain name in its domain name, I took the risk and bet at a high price.

Sometimes it can be difficult to implement a Facebook ban.

You can check if the FB is prohibited from using the domain name by trying to post the link to your timeline or by sending a message to the friend via a link.

Verify if it has any manual penalty:

If you’ve used Google Search Console, you may have noticed the “Manual Actions” section.

Labour fines cannot be checked before purchasing a domain name.

However, if you purchased from a domain name seller, you will need to check with him again if there are any manual fines.

Whenever you purchase a newly expired domain, just verify it in the Google Search Console and wait 5 days. If there are any manual penalties for the domain name, the domain name should be displayed.

If there are no manual penalties in Search Console, then you are safe.

If the site is listed on Google’s spam blacklist, it will be subject to a manual fine. In this case, you will need to submit a reconsideration request to Google with the subject “Newly acquired domain name.”

Check Google index:

You need to check if the pages of the expired domain are indexed on Google.

If you’ve indexed some pages in Google for expired domains, you can be sure that the domain won’t be penalized and unindexed by Google.

Sometimes, even if the domain has an authoritative backlink, it will not be indexed on Google.

In this case, this could mean that the domain name has been out of date for a long time. Buying expired domain names is usually better than buying old domain names.

Check trademarks:

Before purchasing any domain name (especially an expired domain name), it is important to check that you infringe any trademark.

In some cases, domain names will be deleted only due to trademark infringement.

You may need to use a US trademark search engine to search only for domain names.

For example, you are not allowed to launch sites that contain terms such as “WordPress,” “Google,” “Facebook,” and so on.

Check the number of drops:

You can use DomainTools Whois to check the number of times the domain has expired before reusing the domain name.

If a particular domain name has been deleted more than 5 times, you may need to purchase the domain name with extreme caution. You need to delve into historical data, SEO data, and be very careful about copyright infringement.

Personally, I will completely avoid obtaining domain names that have been deleted more than 5 times in the past decade.

 

Determine whether the expired domain had spam​:

This is the first thing you need to check before purchasing an expired domain name for SEO or brand benefits.

If a previous webmaster used an expired domain for spam purposes, you are most likely to be affected by that domain.

The question is, how do you determine the content on an expired domain name?

This is where the Wayback Machine comes into play.

Just go there.

Now search for the expired domain name you want to buy here.

It is possible that the Wayback machine has recorded a snapshot of an earlier page in the domain. By looking at the content, you can determine if the content is spam.

Just look at the look of the site a few years ago and you can decide whether to buy a domain name.

Some possible spam metrics include:

  • non-English
  • Hacked content
  • Keyword fill
  • Duplicate content
  • Porn/unsafe content

You don’t have to buy an expired domain name, instead of looking for a historical snapshot, especially if it’s a premium domain name.

I recommend that you look closely for domains where the spam indicator has expired.

Determine if there are spam links​:

Another signal to determine if an expired domain is used for spam is by checking the historical backlink profile.

how about it?

This is where the Majestic SEO comes into play.

When you use it, you will have two choices – the fresh index and the historical index.

Enter the expired domain name URL, select the historical index, and press Enter. You will get all the old backlinks pointing to this domain.

You can determine if they are spam only by analyzing backlinks.

How do you define spam?

Backlinks from “zero” permission sites
Completely unrelated backlinks
Backlinks from Chinese or Russian websites
Backlink with garbage anchor text configuration file

You can also use Ahrefs to check all existing backlinks. It has the largest backlink database on the network.

If the domain has several spam backlinks, rejecting them after getting them may not be a big deal.

However, if there are hundreds or thousands of spam backlinks, the domain name is not recommended.

If you are buying a domain name for the benefit of SEO, you need to make sure that the D.A domain name you purchase is at least 15 and is related to the niche market you are looking for.

It’s critical to delve into the backlink profile and analyze whether the SEO gains you’ve earned are sufficient to justify the price you’re going to pay.

Expired domain Marketplace

Freshdrop

Freshdrop is my recommended expired domain name market. It allows you to easily research and purchase expired or discarded domain names.

You can filter domain names based on immediate purchases, auctions, backorders, bargains, and more.

You can apply various filters such as search terms, domain permissions, backlinks, Google indexing, geolocation, and other filters.

Some additional features are only available to professional members. Their plan starts at $32.95 a month. Their professional program also has a 7-day free trial period.

DomCop

DomCop is a good expired domain name market where you can buy cheap expired domain names.

Like Freshdrop, they don’t have any free trials. Their plans range from $56/month to $184+/month.

Only use the power plan to access the “Expired Domains” section. With the novice plan, you can only get a list of expired domains.

You can search for domain names based on Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, SEMrush and other metrics. It can help you filter out expired domains more easily and narrow your search to the one that works best for you.

ExpiredDomains

This is a free tool that makes it easy to find out-of-date domain names and purchase them. This tool has a very powerful filter to help you narrow your search.

To access all the filters they offer, you need to consider creating a free account for them.

They only integrate the Majestic SEO API. There is no integration with Ahrefs and SEMrush.

Considering that it is a free tool, it has some praiseworthy features.

Moonsy

Moonsy is also an excellent tool that rivals ExpiredDomains.

It has access to Majestic and SEMrush data.

In addition to this, you can choose whether you want this tool to display only expired domains with backlinks from authorized sites.

This is a great feature when it comes to domain names with authoritative link profiles only.

NameJet

NameJet is an excellent platform for domain auctions, expired domain names and after-sales domain names.

If you are engaged in auctions and after-sales sales, the platform is better for you.

Mainly due to the brandability of the domain names available in this platform, it is more popular among domain name investors than SEO.

FAQ

Q. when a domain expires what happens?

Ans: Once a domain name expires, it goes through many stages before being released to the open market. The domain name registrar company makes the first of three billing attempts to renew the domain name. If the billing fails, the domain name expires and the domain is parked.

Q. What happens to a domain when it expires?

Ans: During the redemption period, you can still renew your domain name, but there is an additional redemption fee of $150.00 USD which includes a one-year renewal. If the domain name is not redeemed during the redemption period, the domain name will be deleted by the registry and made available for registration.

Q. How do I get my expired domain back?

Ans: DE domains automatically go back to the registry on the expiration date. For 30 days, the domain can be restored via your signature on a registry form, which we provide. Once the registry confirms the form has been filled out to their standards, the domain is transferred back to us at 101domain.

Q. Is domain squatting illegal?

Ans: Domain squatting is not new, but victims now have legal recourse. Many states and countries have passed laws against domain squatting, making it illegal. There are two ways in which domain squatters earn money: Placing ads on the site.

Q. How long does a domain stay in pending delete?

Ans: about 5 days. The exact drop time varies by a registry – from 30 to 60 days. It can take up to 75 days for the domain to actually drop. Contact the registrar to find out what their hold time is. The domain will stay in pendingDelete for about 5 days.

Q. What is the grace period for domain renewal?

Ans: A “Renewal Grace Period” is the time during which a domain owner can renew an expired domain at the regular renewal price. Most domain extensions offer a renewal grace period of up to 40 days. For example, this is the life-cycle of.COM, which has a 40-day renewal grace period: 2015/01/01 – Your domain is registered.

Still, have questions? Or want to get a call?

Just fill-up the contact form or call us at +88 01716 988 953 or +88 01912 966 448 to get a free consultancy from our expert or you can directly email us at hi@mahbubosmane.com We would be happy to answer you.

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    Final words

    If you are creating a long-term authority website, we recommend that you choose a trademarkable domain name.

    If you manage to purchase an expired domain that is both branded and SEO benefits, you will win the grand prize.

    If you sacrifice your brand image by chasing SEO, you may regret it later.

    If you come across a good SEO friendly domain name, there is no brand value at all, and you may want to sell it at a higher price or use it for SEO on your own website.

    I hope this article discusses all the issues you need to consider before purchasing an expired domain. How you buy an expired domain, plz comment below.