When you start a new blog or website, the first thing you do is choose a domain or domain, for example, if you start with a blogger it will give you a free subdomain. But many people regret choosing them later and it's not easy to find the perfect range.
In this article, we show you the tricks and tools that are used to choose expired domains for certain blogs and take advantage of them by profiting from the Internet..
How to Find a Strong Expired Domain for Your Next Project – Tools & Tips
There are three ways you can start your journey in creating a new website:
- Start your blog in a completely new niche.
- Purchase an existing domain.
- Register an expired/deleted domain.
What is an expired old domain?
An expired domain is one whose owner didn't renew its registration. When the website owner fails to pay for the domain registration, the domain expires, and the domain host makes it inactive, leading to its dropping or deletion.
As a general rule, website owners receive notices that their domain names are about to expire. There's a grace period for the owner to renew the expired domain. During this time, the domain becomes available for bidding in domain auctions. If no one shows interest in the domain, it enters the deleted list.
Use SEO SpyGlass to choose your domain
Example for an individual; In November 2017, the idea of starting a blog about sales funnels crossed his mind. The search phrase has around 8,000 monthly searches, indicating that anyone wanting to sell products will need a sales funnel.
Here, go to ExpiredDomains.net (I recommend creating a free account for more features; the website doesn't charge fees but earns when users register new domains through affiliate links.)
- Enter the keyword you want, like "funnel," set the filter to "Deleted domains."
- Then, sort the results based on "DP," which stands for domain pop, the number of domains linked to the listed domain. (You can also sort by "BL," the number of backlinks per Majestic.)
These numbers are usually inaccurate but provide a good starting point.
Tip: There are Column Manager settings to add or remove metrics you're interested in. Move your cursor over the statistics, and you'll get tooltips with explanations and references to major markets that sell domain names. You can find out the age of the domain, the status if a specific domain is available for a particular domain name extension and so on.
Here are the important metrics for domain verification:
- LE: Length of the domain name in characters.
- BL: Number of backlinks.
- DP: Domain popularity.
- ABY: Earliest mention date of the domain on the global archive site Archives.org.
- CF/TF: Citation Flow and Trust Flow metrics (similar to Moz's domain authority and page authority).
Note: Search engine optimizers typically look for expired domains with high domain authority and a set of backlinks. However, having an aged domain doesn't guarantee immediate high ranking on Google.
When choosing a domain name, adhere to these best practices:
- Make it easy to spell.
- Keep the domain name short.
- Avoid numbers and hyphens.
- Choose memorable names related to your brand or website's focus.
- Select the appropriate domain extension (.com, .net, etc.), especially when targeting specific regions (e.g., .uk for the United Kingdom).
Expired domain availability depends on the keyword. For some keywords, you'll find expired domains with great backlinks through Google, while for others, you might only find domains with random email links.
- Now, take the chosen domain and verify it using the SEO SpyGlass tool.
- You may receive a message stating that SEO SpyGlass can't find the website, which is expected for an expired domain. Click "Yes" to continue anyway.
When he originally did this research, I got the following result:
FunnelXpert.com – Branded name, 304 backlinks from 74 reference domains. It seems to be a good choice.
After that, you have a little manual work to check the web archive with the Wayback Machine. The search on the website dates back to 2012 and it looked like this - an online marketing company operating in Australia and India:
 |
| Wayback Machine |
We registered the domain for $8.99 and created a nice blog on it. This is what was mentioned in the example and he got good profits.....It was absolutely worth my investment, because that's what I've come out of so far:
Another example of choosing an expired domain
Let's look at a different example in real time. The keyword is "Paleo diet" in the same way above.....
- We chose the first domain, "PaleoDiet411.com"
- 150 external backlinks, from 26 reference domains.
.png "Links tab for the domains:")
- The cookie looks good, it even has a .edu tutorial backlink.
- Links from Chinese or Arabic domains may be a sign of spam.
Take a look now at the Linked Pages tab:
.png "Links tab for the domains:")
You can see that links point to several different pages, which is good, it's a balanced link structure.
You'll need to recreate these pages on the new blog if you decide to use this domain, this way the link juice is retained.
Off-topic pages, such as iPhone and other branded things will exclude the domain.
Another thing to check is to check through the Internet archive Archive.org:
Make sure you don't forward the domain or send spam. It also makes sense to look at InLink's ranking of the potential domain (Google's PageRank SEO PowerSuite alternative):
Additional tips before buying an expired domain
You can also follow the above steps when purchasing an auction domain. Often, buying such a domain might be a complete waste of money due to numerous backlinks, mostly from random websites containing Chinese anchor text.
Avoid expired domains with hundreds of links, all pointing to the homepage without references to other pages. These domains are overly optimized and will be penalized unless you plan to create substantial links for individual pages.
I've used this method to discover expired foreign-language domains with a nice backlink profile. I found two Romanian domains, one translating to seduction.net, and the other to giftisland.com.
It's worth noting that foreign-language domains require far fewer backlinks to rank high. You can compromise on quality, such as directory link links, and still maintain a good ranking and traffic. The reason is the lower competition in foreign languages.
Benefit from great backlinks from expired domains
There's another useful application for SEO SpyGlass, which is entirely similar to the way of building broken links:
1. Enter an expired domain recently in your niche or a domain still up for auction.
2. Look at the backlinks pointing to this domain.
3. Analyze the backlinks you can 'steal'...
4. Contact the referral domain owners associated with this expired domain, inform them of their connection to an expired domain, and request them to link to your resource instead.
Here's a free outreach template shared by Jason Acidre that you can customize and use for your link-building:
Subject: Found a Broken Link on [Site Name]
Hello [First Name],
This link pointing to [Site Name with a 404 page] is no longer working:
[Enter URL of the broken link]
I discovered this through your useful links section for [their resource page topic]:
[Enter URL of their resource page]
Also, I thought that this content from [Your Site] would fit perfectly into your resource list [Additional comment on why your content deserves inclusion in their list]. Your visitors should find it helpful:
[Enter URL to your page]"
