I think that you may have heard before about the practice of buying expired domains, but not really understand why you should buy them (expired domains aka dropped domains). Are you wondering why you should get an expired domain name instead of a new domain name?
Today, I will explain the benefits of buying an expired domain and the things you should consider. Before we start talking about the benefits, you need to understand what expired domains are.
Table of Contents
What is a Domain Name?
Domain Name is a name or identity or an address of a website in the web, example: google.com. This name is being typed on web browsers for you to visit that specific website.
What you can do with a Domain Name?
Domain name is just a name on web, but do you know that it actually carries multiple functions that can help your business? Lets have a look on the functions below:
- Create a website for your company
- Create blogs for personal or company
- Create company email address
- Match with your Social Media Accounts
- Can be used for email marketing
- And more
What are Expired Domains?
An expired domain is a domain that was registered before by an individual, business, or organization but was not renewed before the registration period ended, or was deliberately terminated. It means this domain is available for re-registration.
Understanding Domain Life-cycle
If you wish to invest in an Expired Domains, you must first understand how domain name works. Every domain names will have it’s own life-cycle. Different stage of the domain name will have different status. Below are the 6 steps of domain name life-cycle:
- Available
- Registered
- Renewal Grace Period
- Redemption Grace Period
- Pending Delete
- Released
You must first identify the domain name is at which stage of the life-cycle to determine the domain availability. If the domain name is at renewal grace period, you are unable to register yet, because this period is opened for existing owner to renew their domain name. You have to wait until stage 6 – Domain Released, only you are able to start register that particular expired domain name. You can learn more about domain life-cycle at our different article.
5 Benefits of Getting an Expired Domain for your Website
1. Build an Authority Site
When you are thinking of building a new website or blog, you may consider purchasing an expired domain name instead of a new domain. With an expired domain, you can leverage its existing SEO value to rank up your website quickly. This is because the domains have been indexed before by search engines like Google.
With a new domain, you will need to make a lot of effort to build up its authority because it is totally new for search engines. You need to put a lot of effort into generating new contents, building backlinks and domain age authority will then come with time.
2. Use it for Backlinks to your Website
In the SEO world, Backlink is one of the factors that affect your SEO score in search engines. You can build a small mini-site for the sole purpose of linking to your existing website or blog. The goal is to transfer the “link juice” from the old domain to your main website through the backlink.
You can update the new content such as a few articles or blog posts which are relevant to your industry so that the website looks more natural.
This method is known as PBN method or Private Blog Networks that utilize the expired domains to set up a few different websites link to one main website. It is important to add more than one or two sites as domain diversity for building backlinks.
Try not to use similar IP addresses and hosts on the same server to keep the relationship between all the mini-sites properly concealed. It will appear more like several unrelated sites that are organically linked to your main website.
This is the way to build backlinks faster instead of writing as many as possible guest posts that may not even accept your submissions or bring huge impacts. Everything will be under your control.
3. Redirect to your Website
Simply redirect the old domain to your website if you want to transfer the link juice of an expired domain to your existing website, without going through setting up a mini-site. This can be done via 301 redirect.
For example, if the expired domain is exa.com, you can make it redirect automatically to your main site, exabytes.my.
It is because if the expired domain which has a high SEO value and consists of many backlinks that occurred over the years, all the ranking value will be transferred to your existing website. That is why people are more likely to buy an expired domain.
Remember, the domain name must be in a similar industry to achieve the purpose that is stated above.
4. Keywords in the domain name
With the expired domain name containing the keywords most people search for, the expired domain price value can increase dramatically. Like the keywords, the domain will be the most people looking for when they want to purchase the domain. Keywords domains are still very popular in the domain market.
Remember, you should take note of the domain conflicts with trademark registrations when you want to purchase an expired domain. You can search the domain through the World Intellectual Property Organization database (WIPO) first before purchase.
5. Sell it for a Profit
A lot of people will purchase expired domains and simply sell it to others. This is also known as domain flipping. You can purchase an expired domain through an auction or certain provider that sells expired domain.
Option 1: Blue Renovation Method
After making a purchase, you can continue to start improving its SEO value. It can be done by continuing to build the backlinks to the expired domains. While there are a few things you have to consider such as the age of a domain to increase the domain value over time.
Take 3-6 months to optimize the domains. When it reaches a high value in SEO, it’s time to sell the expired domain with a higher price. That’s why you will see some expired domains really cost a lot, especially high DA domains.
Option 2: Blue Auction Method
You can start an auction domain business by building an entire blog or e-commerce site to sell all the expired domains like Expired Domains.net. You can bid on a domain bidding to buy a specific domain that most people would like to buy.
Obviously, this method will require a lot more work to build a domain auction website. It would be a great business opportunity for you on domain selling. And target the marketing industry which will buy dropped domain from you for SEO purposes.
6 Things You Should Consider When Purchasing an Expired Domain
Before you buy an expired domain, you can do some research. Here are the 6 things you should consider when purchasing an expired domain.
Age of Domain
You should check the age of the domain before you purchase an expired domain. This is because the domain authority has an established site. Use DA to compare websites or by tracking the “ranking strength” of a website over time.
Read more on Domain Authority here.
So REMEMBER, Check the Domain Authority before you buy the expired domain. You will not want to buy a domain that just expired in 1-2 years.
Backlinks Quality
As I mentioned earlier, buying an expired domain is due to the value of high-quality backlinks and link to your main website. You can use a backlink checker like Ahrefs Backlink Checker to check the quality of the backlink of the expired domain.
Skip that domain if all the backlinks from the expired domain look spam and low quality. It will bring the toxic backlinks to your site.
Site Quality
To define the site quality of the expired domain, you can use the Wayback Machine to see the site history. Again, you don’t need to purchase a domain site that has been used before for spamming purposes.
For example, if you can identify the sites that were used as a link farm, Don’t Buy it.
What is a Link Farm?
A link farm is a set of the website created with the aim of linking to a target page, in an attempt to improve that page’s search engine ranking.
Check it with Wayback Machine before purchasing expired domains!
Check Moz Rankings
Before you purchase expired domains, Check Moz Rankings on the expired domain. There are (2) metrics to determine the quality of a site which is the Page Authority and Domain Authority.
What is Page Authority?
Page Authority (PA) is a score developed by Moz used to predict how well a specific page will be ranked on search engine result pages (SERP).
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz to predict how well the website is able to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). It is calculated by evaluating several factors like linking root domains and the number of total links into a single DA score.
The higher the DA score, the better the domain name performs for search engines.
Make sure the site has a high PA and DA scores when you purchase an expired domain.
Website Traffic
Track your monthly traffic. Don’t go for it if there are only a handful of visitors. You can get advice from any marketer, and they probably can tell you what it takes to be able to get footprints.
The reason you need a high traffic domain name is that it might be a high DA or PA score, and it already has existing traffic pointed to that domain. Their current audience still remembers the domain name or to a certain extent, already bookmarked the site previously. This will give you free traffic at the beginning when you start registering the domain. Note that the traffic will reduce after a period of time when visitors start to realize the website had changed.
Traffic is a quality reference. If you plan to use it for guest content in the future, then it becomes even more significant. You will see many enquiries coming in for a guest post if there is good traffic every month.
Check the Search Engine Ban
Make sure the domain name isn’t banned by the search engine that you want to rank using a checker such as Google Ban Checker. This is because if the domain name is banned by Google, it will have no value to you and your main website. The “link juice” or “link score” associated with the domain name will be removed and not be counted by Google. Your efforts might be a waste.
Steps to Buying an Expired Domain
Buying an expired domain is different. It is because it involves special procedures, so there is a slight difference compared to the ordinary purchase process. It is advisable to learn the ordering steps first to avoid potential issues when you place an order. We will describe the process below:
- Go to expireddomains.net. It is a website that lists out all the expired domains and soon to expire.
- Search and analyze the domain name that is worth buying. There are multiple types of indication that you should look for, including the number of backlinks, Alexa traffic rank and the date of expiry.
- Choose the domain name that you like and compare it with the indicators stated above. Try to find domains that have a high number of backlinks, high Alexa traffic rank and near expiration.
- You can contact us to get more enquiries about the expired domain that meets your criteria. Register the domain if the domain is available.
Registering an expired domain name with Exabytes lets you enjoy special deals*. Come to our Premium Domain page to learn more.
Conclusion
Expired domain name is one of the potential domain name you can tap into. You can use it to boost your SEO ranking by using it for backlinks. On the other hand, you can also use it for investing, where you bought it at low price and wait for good price to sell out. Hence, it is worth to try it out!
