Discover how to find expired domains with quality backlinks

In this post, we will show some tricks and tools used to choose expired domains.

When you start a new blog, one of the first things you do is choose a domain. Many people later regret their choice and finding the perfect domain isn’t easy.

There are three ways you can start working on creating a new website.

This is what most people do. You are starting with a blank slate.

This is another choice: it could be profitable, especially if there is a website attached, but at the same time such a domain could be very expensive.
3. Register an expired/deleted domain.
This is the method I usually follow, and I’ve had good success with it. The advantage is that it is very inexpensive, but at the same time it also gives you an SEO advantage: once your domain gets a few months old and is picked up by Google, the backlinks created by the previous owner will give you an advantage and better rankings.

What is an expired domain?

When the website owner does not extend the payment for the domain registration, the domain
expires; the domain host makes it inactive, which makes such domains
deleted or
dropped. As a rule, website owners get a notification that their domain names will expire soon. There is a redemption grace period during which the domain owner has the right to renew the expired domain. During this period, the domain name becomes available for bidding in auctions that sell domain names. If no one shows interest in the domain name, it is put on the dropped list.

Use SEO SpyGlass to choose your domain

Example: start a blog about sales funnels. The search term has about 8,000 monthly searches, but of course everyone who wants to sell products will need to have a sales funnel.

I went to ExpiredDomains.net (I recommend you to register a free account, because then you have more features available; the site doesn’t charge you anything, it earns when users register new domains via affiliate links.) I entered the keyword “funnel”, set the filter to “Deleted Domains”, then sorted the results by “DP”, which means domain pop, which is the number of domains that link to the listed domain. (You can also sort results by “BL”, which is backlink count for Majestic.)

These numbers are usually not accurate, but they give you a good starting point.

You get a screen like this.

Tip: there are Column Manager settings to add or remove metrics that matter to you. Hover over statistics, and you will get tooltips with explanations and references to major marketplaces selling domain names. You can find out the domain’s age, status if a given domain is available for a specific domain name extension, etc.

Here are the important metrics to check the domain with.

LE: Length of the domain name in characters.
BL: Number of backlinks.
DP: Domain pop.
ABY: Date of the first mention of the domain in Archives.org.
CF/TF: Majestic metrics
Citation Flow
and
Trust Flow (similar to
Domain Authority
and Page
Authority of Moz).

Note

Generally, SEOs hunt for old expired domains that had earned a high domain authority with a bunch of referring websites. However, a solid
domain agedoesn’t always mean it will rank high on Google immediately. You need to watch out for spammy backlinks; make sure that the domain hasn’t been used to build a PBN (in this case, watch out for 301 redirects that pass link juice to some other website). Check the web archive to see what kind of content has been published on this domain. And to monetize potential clients, check if the domain hasn’t been banned by Google Adsense. Any penalty imposed by Google in the past might prevent your new website from ranking on this domain.

When choosing a domain name for your website, stick to the following best practices:

1. Make it easy to type.
2. Keep the domain name short.
3. Avoid numbers and hyphens.
4. Try to choose memorable names associated with your brand.
5. Choose the right domain name extension (particularly important when targeting a specific region).

The availability of an expired domain will depend on the keyword. For some keywords, you’ll find expired domains with great backlinks on Google, while for others, you’ll only find domains with spam links. Either way, it’s almost certain you can find a domain that has a great name with some strong backlinks.

Now take the domain and go check it with SEO SpyGlass.

You’ll get a message that SEO SpyGlass can’t find such a web page, which is correct, because we’re talking about an expired domain and the site search on Google would yield zero results. Click “Yes” to continue anyway.

When I initially did this research, I got the following result:

FunnelXpert.com — brandable name, 304 backlinks from 74 referring domains. Looks like a good choice.

Next, I did some manual work to check the web archive with the Wayback Machine. The website’s search history goes back to 2012, and it looked like this: an internet marketing company operating in Australia and India.

I registered the domain for $8.99 and built a nice blog on it. I wrote in-depth posts for it, like this one on the topic of creating an online course on your blog in WordPress.

Another thing to check is Archive.org.

Make sure the domain isn’t redirected or spammed.

A few more tips before buying an expired domain

You can also follow the above procedure when buying a domain at auction. You’ll discover many times that buying such a domain would be a complete waste of money, as it has thousands of backlinks, however, most of them come from spammy websites with Chinese anchor texts.

Also, stay away from expired domains that have hundreds of links pointing to the homepage and none to other pages: such domains are over-optimized and will be penalized unless you plan to do massive link building to individual pages as well.

I’ve also used this method to discover foreign language expired domains with a nice backlink structure. I found two Hungarian domains, the first one would translate to seduction.net, the other would be giftisland.com.

I must add that such foreign language domains require a considerably smaller number of backlinks to rank high, and you can even get away with lower quality ones, like link directory links, and they will still rank well and get traffic. The reason is the lower level of competition in foreign languages.

Source Link Assistant

Pubblicato in Digital Marketing, SEO