SOWPub Small Business Forums - Question on Buying Expired Domains

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Originally Posted by Jay Mitchell (Post 14864)

Hi Everyone,

It is a pleasure to be here. I have "lurked" here on an off for a while and have learned a lot!

This is a very knowledgeable group here and I have a question for anyone with experience / theories on buying expired domains for profit or to use as a tool for an existing website.

Welcome, Jay! Great to have you here!

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I have read recently that buying expired domains can be helpful in harnessing existing traffic and also gaining quality back links if the site had good page rank and you use it to link to an existing site. Of course it is better if the original site was relevant in content and domain title to your own site.

My question is, that if the site owner let it expire and there is no longer a web site there, how long can I expect to get a boost from that domains page rank?

If I put up a simple content site related to the domain and my existing website
I would not have the same page rank as the original more established site had.

How often is the site spidered and updated? If I never submit my new site / domain to the SEO's for spidering/indexing, will I continue to get the old page rank indefinitely?

I've experimented with doing this... I should probably do it some more, actually...

One thing to keep in mind is that, there are a number of other people doing the same thing! So some of these expired domain names can go for quite a bit of money...

However, here's how it works. One way is to take part in the expired domain name auction at http://www.snapnames.com . It's an auction, and the highest bidder wins. So some domains will go for quite a bit of money...

Another way is to look at any deleted domains search engine. One you can use is http://www.whois.net. (Does anyone know a better resource for this?)

When you find a domain name you want - and if it's still available - you just buy it, using whichever domain name registrar you prefer. (I tend to use both NameCheap http://www.namecheap.com and also 000Domains http://www.000domains.com .)

What you want, ideally, is a domain name which is related to whatever product(s) you're selling, which also has a lot of "back links" to it from other websites. That is, a lot of other people linked to it when it was a working website. Even though the website is now gone, many of those links in to that site are still there - and are valuable. People will click through on those links, and it might also still help with search engine ranking.

A very useful tool you can use to easily see how many links there are to a domain name (or to any web site) is this... http://www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com . Also - it's free! The great thing about this tool is you can check many domain names in one shot...

Once you've purchased a deleted domain name, put a website there! That means getting hosting etc., like for any other website. And do something with it (eg. link to your main site, if they are about related topics). Or you can put Google AdSense ads there (be sure to add some relevant content too). Or put up a website with some content, and sell some related products as an affiliate. Another option is to "park" the domain name for money as discussed in this thread... http://www.sowpub.com/forum/showthread.php?p=13932

I hope that helps!

Cheers,

Dien