There’s a lot of talk about buying domains in the SEO world. Should you buy branded domains? Exact match to your keyword domains? Partial match? We’ll go through some of the advantages of buying expired domains, and how they can be useful to your SEO strategy.
On its own, an expired domain is not valuable. But, if you know what you are looking for, expired domains can be one of the most powerful tools in your SEO arsenal. There are a few things that make an expired domain worth buying. The first is their backlink profile, the second is that the domain is in the same industry to your main website, and the third is that the domain wasn’t previously used in a private blog network (PBN) or other spammy tactics.
If you can find a domain that meets the above criteria, then it’s a great asset to have. You can use it in a number of ways. We will take you through some of the ways a domain like this can be used, including for a PBN, for finding links pointing to dead pages, for 301 redirects, and finally, for building websites.
PBNs are a loaded word for anyone who has read about them before. Depending on the person you speak to, they are either the best thing in the world, or the devils’ work in itself. The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle. PBNs do work; hundreds of the best SEOs use them. The problem is that when done incorrectly, they can cause a massive headache, and even destroy your websites’ rankings.
The best tactic in 2018 is to find a great vendor that can rent or sell you links. The process of creating a PBN can be costly, and it’s often best to pay some that know what they’re doing. If you’re looking for a whiter hat alternative, check out guest posts from SERPchampion.
The second strategy is to use expired domains to find links for your new website. The process for this is to use a tool like SEO Moz, or ahrefs to look at the backlink profile of the domain, and then reach out to the owners of the websites to inform them that the website they are linking to is expired. You can then offer that they link to your great article or website instead!
Next up is using a consolidation strategy. This has been done for years, and is a great way to boost a website’s page rank. First, find a domain with a healthy backlink profile, free of spam, and with good authority links pointing to it. You can then buy the domain and redirect it to your money site. This will transfer around 80% of all the links to your main website.
This is also known as the merger strategy, and is used when one company acquires another. When this happens, the old company website will generally be redirected to the new one, transferring most of the power over to it.
Finally, you can use expired domains to build your website rather than having a new domain. This will give you an initial boost in the rankings, and will save you precious link-building time.