The need for better tools and resources for online businesses is rising as technology evolves at breakneck speed. That’s why they rely on Search Engine Optimization when it comes to marking their presence on the World Wide Web.
A ranking website not only stays visible but enjoys an increased sale and ROI. To get an edge over your rivals in this virtual competition, you need to adapt the best strategies. Choosing methods that your competitors might not have discovered yet, may help you get a lead.
But have you ever thought about the time it takes to make a website rank on the SERPs? It takes around 4-6 months to start the ranking and 12 months to see significant results. But, that is also only possible with a healthy SEO budget. However, buying an expired domain may help you rank faster.
Today, SEO is considered the best strategy for small to medium-sized businesses. At the same time, over 93% of purchases are done through search engine results. Stats depict the intensity of the competition; you need a robust approach to ace the competition, and buying an expired domain may help you hit the jackpot.
Let’s dive deeper to understand how expired domains can help you rank better on SERPs.
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What Are Expired Domains?
Essentially, expired domains are website URLs, which have become dysfunctional or useless for the original owners. In other cases, a domain expires when the owner forgets to renew it.
A website without a domain is just a dead, offline platform that only you can visit. A domain can be bought for any period. You have to pay the registration fee in advance, and it remains live for the entire period. Once the registration period completes, the domain is considered expired, and you are given a 30-day grace renewal period.
This grace period allows the original domain owner to register for the same domain again with only a renewal fee. However, failure results in an expired domain, which is put up for auction as soon as the grace period ends.
Once it goes for auction, it can be renewed again by paying a redemption and renewal fee, which can be done after 40 days of expiry, and only if no one buys the domain from the auction.
But, if you don’t renew your registration within the Registrar Hold Period, which is 60 days after expiration, you lose your domain. After these 60 days, the domain is put up for the general registry. This is where anyone can buy it.
Benefits Of Expired Domains
Domains expire due to several different reasons, not because they have something wrong with them. But because the original owners couldn’t renew it in the given time or the real owner went out of business.
Since there is nothing wrong with the expired domains, they can be bought to utilize their juice, links, and authority for your benefit. When you buy an expired domain, you get all of its previous rankings and SEO value along with the domain name. This means you will not have to build your website’s authority from rank 1. With a pre-existing domain name, you will win the pre-existing links that you can use to boost your SEO practices.
Furthermore, here is what you can do with an expired domain:
Build An Authority Website
Suppose you are thinking of starting a new online business and willing to buy a domain for it, get an expired site instead. Once the expired domain is live again, you will be able to use its link authority to build an authority website with pre-existing backlinks.
Building a new website would require you to curate new content and backlinks. Also, it would need an aged URL to show its credibility on the SERPs, which depict that you are not a new presence in the industry.
You can easily leverage a domain’s existing SEO value for your benefit. It will reward you with authority and higher ranks. However, working on it for some time will boost the results even further.
Use It For Back Linking Purposes
Building an entire website can be daunting for a new business. But an expired domain can save you from the hassle. You can make a mini-site and link it to your main website. This way, you let all its juice flow to your website or blog.
However, you would need to add some content, such as a few blogs and articles, to make the old website look credible. The method is also referred to as PBN (Private Blogs Network), which utilizes several expired domains. You can buy numerous different expired domains and link them all to your main website. Here, it is essential to pair up several different websites to get the best results.
Many SEO specialists consider it a better way to build backlinks instead of writing guest posts that barely get acceptance.
Redirect The Site To Your Main Website
Another great way to squeeze the link juice of an expired domain is by redirecting it to your main website. This way, you will not have to build and set up mini-websites, as discussed earlier.
You can use a 301 to redirect the expired domain to your website to let the link juice of the old website flow to your main website. The reason here is again the same: the old website has a higher SEO value, which helps build your website’s authority and ranking within no time.
However, one thing to keep in mind for all the three benefits mentioned above is that you need to buy an expired domain from the same industry as yours.
Sell The Expired Domain For Profit
Unlike many people who buy expired domains to boost their SEO practices, some people buy expired domains to sell them for profit.
The practice is known as domain flipping, and many people invest in domain flipping to put bread on the table. You can buy an expired domain, increase its value or ranking by building more backlinks, and then sell it at a higher price.
These benefits directly strengthen the SEO practices and significantly improve the rankings on the SERPs without much effort.
However, when you buy an expired domain, you need to look into a few things to ensure that you are investing in the right place.
Things To Consider When Buying An Expired Domain
Several domains are up for auction every day. However, buying a domain just because of the price and the name is not beneficial.
If you want expired domains for SEO purposes, try some free SEO tools to check the authority and SEO value of the domain before buying it.
Here are a few things that you must consider:
- Age of domain
- Backlinks Quality
- Site Quality
- Check Moz Rankings
- Traffic Average
- Google Bans
Now that you have discovered all about expired backlinks, here is how you can use a tool to check the aspects mentioned above through one window only.
What Is SpamZilla? How Does It Work?
SpamZilla is an all-in-one tool that helps you work with expired domains for SEO purposes. This tool helps you find and qualify expired and dysfunctional domains. It is up to you whether you want to use these domains for SEO or building niche sites.
It is the easiest way to acquire domains of your choice as it helps you filter out the best options and streamlines the entire process.
Here is how you can find the best expired domains on auction using this tool:
- Integrate Ahref in your SpamZilla dashboard
- Leverage the filters by setting your preferences
- Search for the available domains from the results
Once you have the search results, you can visit any registrar like Namecheap or GoDaddy to available domains. This way, you don’t have to struggle with the auctions.
The Process To Qualify Expired Domains
Here are a few important factors to consider when qualifying expired domains for buying:
Relevance
To find relevance between your site and the available domain, you can use Majestic’s metrics integrated within SpamZilla. You can find the feature by the name Topical Trust Flow. Scan the “Maj Topics” to identify the most relevant domains, which may offer the best opportunity.
Link Profile
Once you have discovered the most relevant domain, you need to examine its link profile. From the SpamZilla metrics, you can click on the “SZ Score” and click again on the arrow beside a number to “see more data.” Once you see the data, click on “backlinks” to see the link profile fetched by Majestic.
Once you are done, you should run the domain through Ahref, which you integrated into the SpamZilla dashboard to crosscheck the domain’s value.
It would help if you looked up natural link profiles for acquiring editorial links. This means a link profile with directory links is of no use for you.
However, if the link profile has links from a highly credible website, you should not overlook it. Furthermore, you can also identify a quality link profile by filtering and sorting the links in Ahrefs. Select “Do Follow” from the menu and sort the link by their DR.
Anchor Text
Another important factor to consider is the anchor text. It should not be an exact match, foreign language anchor text, or optimized at all.
History Audit
Now that you have discovered the relevance, link profile, and anchor text, you must audit the history and check if the domain was used for spamming or SEO in the past.
Click on “Archive” from the SpamZilla dashboard to discover how the domain has been used throughout its life. Also, be skeptical; if you find anything that conflicts with the original purpose of the domain, take a moment to rethink your decision.
Indexed Domain
An expired domain is ideal for you if it has been indexed on Google. It is hard to find one as sometimes they are removed from the index when redirected, get out of commission, or has blocked google crawlers. However, you must not overlook anything identifying that the domain has been used for spamming.
Wrapping Up
Looking up expired domains to link with your website significantly improves your SEO practices and boosts your ranking on the SERPs. However, when buying an expired domain, you must carefully use the best tools at your disposal.
You must use the expired domains for SEO purposes as if they are your business centers when qualifying them for purchase. It’s best not to speed up the process and work with SpamZilla and other tools to find the best opportunities.
Furthermore, if you haven’t given a thought to SpamZilla, you must look into it now and uncover the best metrics and insights for making mindful decisions when choosing an expired domain. Start Using SpamZilla for SEO to get comprehensive data on the preferred domain.
If you find the details confusing and need to buy a domain for your website, try to seek professional help for the best results.
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