Using Expired Domains for SEO - Cheap high PR links for life

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 dropping today '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.

 

This seems good, finding expired domain names you have benefit of page rank as well as domain age.

If you are using it for link building purposes then make sure that you are using unique IP address too.

 

I have built a large PR network based on essentially the above tactic. It flat out works....
20 domains should be enough to rank most easy to medium keywords

 

I spread them out across different hosts. I like to pick up ones that are listing in DMOZ and have a long domain life. Kind of worthless if you don't keep the context of the original site though, especially if the backlinks are contextual too.

 

I agree with the point about different IPs I know a lot of people will tell you it is a myth, even if it is a myth it definitely does not hurt, so I would also recommend using different IPs for your network. If I were google, it would be such an easy thing to check (if they are on the same IP).

Nice to see other people have had good experiences with this method! Just wondering what people do with the site? Do you clone it exactly? Just use the URL structure or completely re-do the site?

As for context I completely agree again, make sure the content you create is contextual, else it will just trigger google's spam team.

For DMOZ listed I have not noticed much difference in the effectiveness for SEO, has anyone seen differently?

An aged domain, with aged backlinks is simply a gold mine!

 

Different IPs definitely. Normally, I recreate the entire site by viewing the back links and looking up a cached version of the website before it expired. Adimond, I have not seen much of a difference when working with DMOZ listed/unlisted website. In fact, the different was quite minimal. Almost the same difference the alexa rank plays. Little effect depending on the quality of the backlinks said domain comes with.

 

just be careful if you interlink them on the same server because you can get penalized by Google!!!

 

I like the strategy but is it still valid? Will an expired domain really retain its PR long term?

I have watched a few of matts cutts vids, and one thing mentioned is that google does "distrust" sites from time to time, which means that those links no longer pass on pagerank. Of course, google talks about this happening to sites that they find out are selling links, but how do they find this out? Isn't it more likely that its an algorithm that looks at the outgoing links rather then them finding out that a link trade / sale was made?

One thing that was mentioned in a recent vid from matts cutts, was that they were against links that were seen to be manipulating the search engines. No problem against ads, or no-follow links only links that could be seen as manipulating search engines. So on that note, exactly how many outgoing links can a site have before the site can lose google's trust?

 

I just got slammed with a huge penalty for doing this.

NO MORE NETWORKS FOR ME. THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS LOST

 

I don't think its a number thing. Look at real blogs or even big name news sites. They jam articles in every day and often jam packed with links that look suspiciously paid for without any fear of penalty. I make sure the content that goes on the expired domain is niched and decent. If you have a pile of crappy, 150-word unrelated blog posts like the BMR days then you're asking for trouble. Pick a niche for the expired domain, the closer to its original niche the better but there is room to wiggle there. Keep content decent and relevant to the niche you chose.
Another approach is that its so cheap to get these going, you can outpace Google pretty quickly, so who cares about losing Google's trust because you will lose it eventually anyway.

 

I think Corestratagems has got it bang on here, it is not a set number, if you build the site with quality content and then add some content solely for links you should be fine, what I would not suggest is having 5 articles and 100 links to other sites, that looks pretty suspicious. If you would like a rough number, maybe only have links in 1 in 5-10 posts. Just make sure you don't link from every post and the posts are accurate to that site. For example if you have blueshoes.com make sure the majority of the content is about blue shoes. I would also not rely on one site, if you build a network which do not link to each other and are on different hosts, even if one gets distrusted then just remove the links on that site and move on to the next one.

What were you doing? Was it bad quality? Mass links? I would be very surprised if you followed all my own and other users tips in this post.

 

A very nice article and thread. I have been using this method for over 2 years now and I can confirm that it works, and it works well. Many posters have hit on an important point, the ip address. First, it is important that the ip address:
1) Be unique and not have many sites allready on it
2) The ip address needs to no be one from an seo host. Google knows who the seo hosts are and will devalue the site. It's better to have a collection of shared hosting accounts or some VPS or low cost VPS accounts. Checkout lowendbox.com

Also, it is important to provide original content on the site (5-10 500 word articles) and put a decent quality WP Template on the site
--nick

 

I think if you use the public backlink networks (those that advertise and promote their services) you can get impacted. But a properly designed private blog network, that is setup correctly, with no discernable footprints, hosted on regular shared hosting accounts across distributed ips is very difficult for Google to detect. Sites like authority Link Network (ALN) were hit and deindexed by Google as part of panda 3.3, and you can expect them to hit more of the larger public networks. Also using PLR or Spun content is also a big footprint that Google will detect, so it a good idea to stay away from these. Building your ow Private Blog Network (PBN) or getting exclusive access ot a small network does work and is relatively risk-free, IMHO.

 

lowendbox.com is a great tip. Unique IPs are indeed not enough anymore. Unfortunately!
I am seeing decreased value for the networks run on SEO hostings.

 

Yeah, SEO shared hosting may not be the way forward but you can get some dirt cheap VPS'

https://www.minivps.co.uk/budgetvps.php from just £1.50? That is cheaper than most shared hosts!

 

I'm doing exactly this at the moment. I'm looking for a decent PR 5 domain, it's difficult. Looking to pay $250.

 

I agree with adimond and baldonious - I've been moving many of my sites off seohosting type accounts with know IP addresses. I still have many shared hosting accounts, but I'm putting my $$ sites there now, and my PBN sites are getting migrated to the lowend VPS - It takes time, but the distributive effect of the networks is having benefits. I didn't want to become a linux guru, but that's ok as long as my network gets stronger and better protected. I see it as a long term commitment to developing my sites.

 

You should get that easily! Snapnames auctions for PR 5 don't tend to go as high as public domain auctions.

 

I agree on all this but ain't nobody got no time for this.

 

I know allot of people who use this method for SEO purposes. You can use ExpiredDomains.net and search by valid PR for free as well. SnapNames doesn't get every domain with high PR..Those who use drop catching software can usually catch PR3-PR4 domains without a backorder. Just keep a few things in mind..

1) For it to really help you with SEO you will want to make sure you host some the domains you register on different hosting accounts. It's important to have your sites on as many different unique IP's as possible.
2) Always check the domains for valid PR. Before you register them check them manually and verify the PR is not fake - no matter what a website tells you.