Hi Guys,
Wanted to get some discussion going over using expired domains for SEO. I wanted to share our experiences and hear yours.
So to start with, I think everyone will agree one of the best methods of SEO link building is getting high PR backlinks, these are often hard to find and/or expensive, although if you have a knowledge of building sites (which I am sure you all do) there are cheaper ways of doing it. Over 1000 domains expire daily with a Page rank, although a lot of those are fake. We have found that around 600 or so are real page rank anything from PR 1-8 with good backlinks. We managed to pick up a real PR 7 and two PR 6's in just 1 week of doing analysis for 30 minutes a day.
Step 1 - Finding the Domains
The first step is obvious, finding the expired domain with good backlinks and high PR, personally we use http://www.domainsnoop.com which only use real PR so takes out some of the hard work for you, although there are other expired domain searchers out there. The nice part of Domain Snoop is you can either look for relevant domains by typing a keyword, or start building a network by clicking 'All Page Rank' or 'All Backlinks' under more options, we tend to go for the All Page rank option. Once you have started the search you can see both the page rank and the number of backlinks.
For this example we are going to use a domain which dropped a few days ago 'mikethepod.com'. A 10 year old PR 3 which we found searching for PR domains
Step 2 - Research
Depending on what you are after step 2 goes into analysis of the domain. For this we use Majestic SEO (majesticseo.com). Stick all the domains you have found, or use our example domain and we can start checking the backlinks. You should see something link this:http://s16.postimg.org/jzmghjr05/majestic_mikethepod.png
For me the most crucial part is the trust flow, a low trust flow tends to mean they are not very good backlinks. The example domain has a trust flow of 26, we do not tend to go less than 20.
Step 3 - Check for spam
Still using Majestic SEO, it is time to start checking out the backlinks anchor text using the 'Anchor text' tab. The main thing you are looking for here is that the site has not been spammed, often you will find domains that have thousands of 'Payday Loan' or similar anchor texts, this is due to a comment, or a hacked page where the spammers have driven tons of links to that site. Once you have confirmed there are no spam backlinks, move onto Step 4.
Step 4 - Look at the old site
We like to look at Archive.org's way back machine to see what the site used to look like. Not all sites are cached although this one is. We will explain what to do if it is not. You can see this webpage has a very old design, but we do not mind that, it will most likely imply that the backlinks are old which are like gold to google.
Step 5 - Buy the domain
Buying the domain, you have two options, you can either wait for it to expire and register it for the normal 10 odd dollars, it will normally be available some time that day. However, if it is a good domain, either a high PR or lots of quality backlinks you will find Snap Names have already got it, they get first priority over normal members of the public. To get in on it, you can place an order through Snap Names for $69. If more than 1 person wants the domain, it will go down to a 3 day auction. The most recent PR 6 we got cost $180 at auction, still a bargain!
Step 6 - Create the site
Imaginary congratulations! You just purchased mikethepod.com. Now comes the fun part, building the site. You actually have 2 options, if the site is very relevant to the site you want to SEO then you can look into 301 redirects. DO NOT redirect the entire site, just redirect the pages with the relevant backlinks. We tend to go with the second option, building the site. We choose this because it allows you to link to more than one site. Some black hat members will copy the site exactly as it was although there are all kinds of copyright issues with this! In our opinion the best way to do it is find the pages which had the most backlinks. Refer back to Majestic SEO and click on the 'Pages' tab. Once you have found all the pages, you simply recreate them with your own content, links and images. Make sure you keep the URL structure exactly the same, and remember that you do not need to re-create every page, 10-20 should do the trick. You can also just look at the archive, if you want to re-create all the pages and you can see exactly how they had it.
Step 7 - Reap the rewards
Now that you have created the site, you have as many PR 3 links to as many sites as you can squeeze in!
Step 8 - Discuss
What do you guys think? Have you done it? Are you going to give it a go? Do you do any steps differently? Think this is all rubbish? Let start discussing
If you would like to see this in action, we may buy a domain and show you step by step what we did, from the searching, the analysis, to building the site. Let us know if you want to see this.
Wanted to get some discussion going over using expired domains for SEO. I wanted to share our experiences and hear yours.
So to start with, I think everyone will agree one of the best methods of SEO link building is getting high PR backlinks, these are often hard to find and/or expensive, although if you have a knowledge of building sites (which I am sure you all do) there are cheaper ways of doing it. Over 1000 domains expire daily with a Page rank, although a lot of those are fake. We have found that around 600 or so are real page rank anything from PR 1-8 with good backlinks. We managed to pick up a real PR 7 and two PR 6's in just 1 week of doing analysis for 30 minutes a day.
Step 1 - Finding the Domains
The first step is obvious, finding the expired domain with good backlinks and high PR, personally we use http://www.domainsnoop.com which only use real PR so takes out some of the hard work for you, although there are other expired domain searchers out there. The nice part of Domain Snoop is you can either look for relevant domains by typing a keyword, or start building a network by clicking 'All Page Rank' or 'All Backlinks' under more options, we tend to go for the All Page rank option. Once you have started the search you can see both the page rank and the number of backlinks.
For this example we are going to use a domain which dropped a few days ago 'mikethepod.com'. A 10 year old PR 3 which we found searching for PR domains
Step 2 - Research
Depending on what you are after step 2 goes into analysis of the domain. For this we use Majestic SEO (majesticseo.com). Stick all the domains you have found, or use our example domain and we can start checking the backlinks. You should see something link this:http://s16.postimg.org/jzmghjr05/majestic_mikethepod.png
For me the most crucial part is the trust flow, a low trust flow tends to mean they are not very good backlinks. The example domain has a trust flow of 26, we do not tend to go less than 20.
Step 3 - Check for spam
Still using Majestic SEO, it is time to start checking out the backlinks anchor text using the 'Anchor text' tab. The main thing you are looking for here is that the site has not been spammed, often you will find domains that have thousands of 'Payday Loan' or similar anchor texts, this is due to a comment, or a hacked page where the spammers have driven tons of links to that site. Once you have confirmed there are no spam backlinks, move onto Step 4.
Step 4 - Look at the old site
We like to look at Archive.org's way back machine to see what the site used to look like. Not all sites are cached although this one is. We will explain what to do if it is not. You can see this webpage has a very old design, but we do not mind that, it will most likely imply that the backlinks are old which are like gold to google.
Step 5 - Buy the domain
Buying the domain, you have two options, you can either wait for it to expire and register it for the normal 10 odd dollars, it will normally be available some time that day. However, if it is a good domain, either a high PR or lots of quality backlinks you will find Snap Names have already got it, they get first priority over normal members of the public. To get in on it, you can place an order through Snap Names for $69. If more than 1 person wants the domain, it will go down to a 3 day auction. The most recent PR 6 we got cost $180 at auction, still a bargain!
Step 6 - Create the site
Imaginary congratulations! You just purchased mikethepod.com. Now comes the fun part, building the site. You actually have 2 options, if the site is very relevant to the site you want to SEO then you can look into 301 redirects. DO NOT redirect the entire site, just redirect the pages with the relevant backlinks. We tend to go with the second option, building the site. We choose this because it allows you to link to more than one site. Some black hat members will copy the site exactly as it was although there are all kinds of copyright issues with this! In our opinion the best way to do it is find the pages which had the most backlinks. Refer back to Majestic SEO and click on the 'Pages' tab. Once you have found all the pages, you simply recreate them with your own content, links and images. Make sure you keep the URL structure exactly the same, and remember that you do not need to re-create every page, 10-20 should do the trick. You can also just look at the archive, if you want to re-create all the pages and you can see exactly how they had it.
Step 7 - Reap the rewards
Now that you have created the site, you have as many PR 3 links to as many sites as you can squeeze in!
Step 8 - Discuss
What do you guys think? Have you done it? Are you going to give it a go? Do you do any steps differently? Think this is all rubbish? Let start discussing
If you would like to see this in action, we may buy a domain and show you step by step what we did, from the searching, the analysis, to building the site. Let us know if you want to see this.
