Does Buying A Domain For Link Traffic To An Existing Website Work?

[Hercules Hercules]

I have an existing website that addresses the problems of a particular niche market. I have recently discovered some relevant available domains that have loads of backlinks. I'm kind of new to the domain business, so I have a quick question for anyone gracious enough to help.

If I simply bought those domains and redirected them to my website, would that provide me with an upsurge in traffic? Am I missing something? Any input is appreciated.

 

[AEProgram]

Its not the amount of backlinks, its the quality. There are sites with 50k backlinks that get no traffic from it. If you don't share more info nobody can tell you.

 

[Hercules Hercules]

Okay, thanks a lot.

 

[Shayne]

No, you are not missing something.
You can benefit from an upsurge in traffic.
But of course, only if those expired domains have incoming traffic to them.
Just note that loads of backlinks is not an indication to the amount of incoming traffic.

You'll never know unless you try.



When I started playing around with domains about a year ago, I had the exact question as you.
I decided to give it a try.
I registered 150 expired domains and redirected all of them to a website I set up for the purpose of the experiment.
I got around 25-30K unique monthly visitors from those expired domains.
So I can say from experience that you can benefit from an upsurge in traffic.

Very important thing for you to know:
When I researched and gained more knowledge, I discovered that this is considered a blackhat method to manipulate page rank and domain authority which violates Google policy guidelines and can lead to de-indexing of the website from Google search.
So, if it's a website that you want to rank on Google, I wouldn't advise doing that.

 

[Hercules Hercules]

Okay, wow. That's a wealth of valuable information. I'm torn now, though. Because I want to get the traffic, but am concerned with being penalized long-term. You've given me food for thought.

 

[Future Sensors]

I discovered that this is considered a blackhat method to manipulate page rank and domain authority which violates Google policy guidelines

Sure, some use it that (blackhat) way, but there are definitely legitimate applications through redirects. These solutions are described in detail by Google, aimed at website owners who are moving their sites to a new domain, or want to point different domain names or hostnames to one single website.

 

[Oceana Domains]

Check out Sean Markey over at https://www.seanmarkey.com/

He’s so SEO, even his initials are SEM.

Subscribe to his newsletter. Good SEO tips. And a great writing style.

Then check out his SEO domains marketplace https://juicemarket.com/

He’s also the new owner and publisher of a site about buying, selling and building domains https://dngeek.com/

 

[evil]

The point is not the upsurge in traffic because the answer is for sure YES.
The point is to understand if really the relevant available domains have really traffic!
Usually it's difficult to find reg fee domains with traffic because they are all registered.

 

[VadimK]

It depends, because traffic in reality can be:
a) quality traffic (your niche)
b) any traffic

In the case a) your site will benefit from it, as google will consider it as a definite plus. For example, if you have a travel website, and all the redirects come from other sites (domain names) related to the travel industry, then it's good.

In the case b) it can be good sometimes, if there are not too many non-related websites redirect to your website (it will boost your positions) but in most of the cases it will be bad for your site, as hundreds and thousands domains that have nothing to do with your website will be pointing to you, google will rather mark it as some sort of suspicious activity. Nothing good will come out of this as time goes by.

Also, even if you say sites are related to your business, nowadays Google doesn't pay much attention to it (compared to like 10 years ago). It's lots of other on-line optimisation: site structure, texts, keywords, social media etc.

Anyways, if your main concern is to get the good external SEO to your page, buy the program called MoneyRobot and forget about the manually adding links , buying extra domains, redirecting them and all these things.
(I am just a happy client using this prog in my business, without any other interest of advertising them or anybody else).

 

[Hercules Hercules]

It depends, because traffic in reality can be:
a) quality traffic (your niche)
b) any traffic

In the case a) your site will benefit from it, as google will consider it as a definite plus. For example, if you have a travel website, and all the redirects come from other sites (domain names) related to the travel industry, then it's good.

In the case b) it can be good sometimes, if there are not too many non-related websites redirect to your website (it will boost your positions) but in most of the cases it will be bad for your site, as hundreds and thousands domains that have nothing to do with your website will be pointing to you, google will rather mark it as some sort of suspicious activity. Nothing good will come out of this as time goes by.

Also, even if you say sites are related to your business, nowadays Google doesn't pay much attention to it (compared to like 10 years ago). It's lots of other on-line optimisation: site structure, texts, keywords, social media etc.

Anyways, if your main concern is to get the good external SEO to your page, buy the program called MoneyRobot and forget about the manually adding links , buying extra domains, redirecting them and all these things.
(I am just a happy client using this prog in my business, without any other interest of advertising them or anybody else).

Hey, thanks a lot for the insight and tips!

 

[redemo]

"I registered 150 expired domains and redirected all of them to a website I set up for the purpose of the experiment. I got around 25-30K unique monthly visitors from those expired domains."

@Shayne if you are redirecting 150 root names to a single root domain I can understand this how and this can increase your traffic to your website. But how do you ( technically ) redirect non-root traffic from other pages say for instance thisisyourdomain.com/thisisafilename because I would have though the visitor will be served with a 404 error page? Are you using some kind of domain name catchall script?

 

[redemo]

"Usually it's difficult to find reg fee domains with traffic because they are all registered"

@evil My process is to gather all the backlink addresses in a document and see which links originate from high authority root domains. Then use a traffic tool to find the estimated number of monthly visitors to that page. If 10 link pages are each receiving 5000 visitors per month then it's probably worth registering. I can't know for sure but would imagine that most people wouldn't perform that level of research which is why the opportunity is out there waiting for you right now.

 

[Shayne]

"I registered 150 expired domains and redirected all of them to a website I set up for the purpose of the experiment. I got around 25-30K unique monthly visitors from those expired domains."

@Shayne if you are redirecting 150 root names to a single root domain I can understand this how and this can increase your traffic to your website. But how do you ( technically ) redirect non-root traffic from other pages say for instance thisisyourdomain.com/thisisafilename because I would have though the visitor will be served with a 404 error page? Are you using some kind of domain name catchall script?

What I did is to set up a page rule on Cloudflare to redirect all traffic.
*thisisyourdomain.com/* 301 redirect to wherever.
That way all non-root and root traffic is redirected.

I don't completely remember but I'm pretty sure that even if you set forwarding in the registrar level, the non-root traffic is also redirected but this setup might have certificate issue if the traffic is coming from HTTPS:\\thisisyourdomain.com/thisisafilename URL.
The visitor might see the "This is not secure website" page.

 

[Clover]

Okay, wow. That's a wealth of valuable information. I'm torn now, though. Because I want to get the traffic, but am concerned with being penalized long-term. You've given me food for thought.

Depending on the terms, it t could just apply to domains that are redirected, in which people ar compansating or scamming peopl to click the domain to profit

 

[HexPixel_com]

You need to differentiate between real traffic and just bots.

It's about the average session duration, which gives you an understanding of your traffic.

In the attached picture you can see, where new 301 redirects are added to the domain. These are mostly bots who constantly scan ip-ranges, it's not real visitors, despite having unique IPs.