Buying Expired Domains

[Rosemary Xanders]

I have a website whose backlink profile is not strong and whose rankings have suffered with repeated Google algorithm changes. If I were to buy a domain (expired or otherwise) in a niche that’s similar to mine—say, musical instruments—but with a much stronger backlink profile then TRANSFER my site’s entire content to this new URL, would my keyword rankings increase? Obviously, this would require me to first deindex my old site entirely before moving the content to this new site where, I hope, Google will re-index the articles with the new site’s much stronger backlink profile propelling the articles upwards? Any issues or problems with this method? Thank you.

[tangor]

@Rosemary Xanders ... Welcome to Webmasterworld!

This is an old and well-known method to the search engines, and generally ignored. Expired or otherwise with currently deceased link profiles (they are expired and otherwise) might give a smidge of boost before ignored. invest in more proactive methods ... note, you don't deindex, you REDIRECT old to new... and keep the old for at least five years to make sure it "sticks". Just bear in mind they (search engines) will know that the old was "this domain" that has moved to "that domain".

Keywords are irrelevant in this scenario. Past experience, but you might have better luck!

[not2easy]

Hi Rosemary and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

From the experiences of others, it does not seem to work very well for that purpose. Here are a few discussions on use of expired domains:
From September - [webmasterworld.com...]
From last year - [webmasterworld.com...]

[jediviper]

@tangor,
the OP is talking about something else from what you are mentioning.
His proposal is to terminate his own domain and transfer his content to the expired (valuable) domain.

Regarding the worth of expired domains, I keep my doubts, as I have heard about many successful examples.
Myself, I have bought 2 expired domains for testing and already monitoring if and when will bring any value to a brand new domain.

[engine]

One other thing to add: It's probably not worth it to keep swapping domains. Choose wisely in the first instance, and stick with it. Some expired domains are expired for a reason, and the worst case is it could be toxic. Always dig deeply into the history of an expired domain.
If you find a better domain has become available you might want to consider it, but only from the point of view of usability.
For example, if you have "longwidgetdomain" and "wd" comes up, you'd want to seriously consider it.

[Rosemary Xanders]

Thanks for all your responses. Really good food for thought. I still have 3 more questions, though, and if anyone can answer them, I’d really appreciate it.

1. What’s the advantage of 301’ing your old website? As I mentioned before, I don’t want any connection between my old site and a “new” expired one with a more powerful backlink profile (my plan is to deindex the old site and all its articles, wait, then publish the articles anew on the new site). Bottom line: I want to start fresh, particularly if there’s a penalty associated with the old URL, which again makes 301’s a bad idea. So . . . what advantage would 301’s have?

2. People mention how expired domain don’t help, but I know of two sites, <snip> and <snip> that have done very well. I’m not sure if either is an expired site. However, both have been radically changed by their new owners. <snip>

3. <snip>

OK, those are my questions. Like I mentioned before, any help would be sincerely appreciated.

Rosemary

[edited by: not2easy at 6:35 pm (utc) on Dec 12, 2020]
[edit reason] Please see ToS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[not2easy]

Sorry about the edits, but we do not discuss specific website in the public forums of Webmasterworld. We prefer to educate webmasters to make their own judgements, rather than discuss specifics of any site.

[mzb44]

The advice that expired domains are ignored is objectively false and extremely misleading.

The correct answer is that they sometimes work and sometimes do not.

I know of examples of revived expired domains with a strong link profile that have exploded massively after being relaunched even with completely irrelevant (and bordering pure-spam) content.

I also know of examples of seemingly powerful expired domains relaunched but being completely ignored.

You never know in advance. It's a big gamble.

[tangor]

1. What’s the advantage of 301’ing your old website?
2. People mention how expired domain don’t help

1. Your current past history is tied up on the old domain (you want to move). Failure to put a forwarding (redirect) to the new address simply means those who had bookmarked you, or linked to you from other sites, will get a 404 (fall into a black hole and you never see them).

2. Expired domains expired for a reason, sometimes a simple as the webmaster died and the estate did not renew, or could be they ran out of money or interest (a walkaway). The search engines know the domain went silent. They will also know the dns record changed when someone else picks it up. Does it work? Sometimes. Does it work fast? Hardly ever unless the new stuff is absolutely stellar and unique (hard to do these days).

As noted above, keep the old site active (just don't update it!) and REDIRECT any access to that site to the new domain/site. Keep it active (paid up) for the next five years (minimum!) to gradually move all OLD TRAFFIC to the new domain ... don't lose what you already fought for and gained!

You are changing your name from X to Y (who you are) and also taking on the identity of somebody previously known as Z who had "this many kind of friends" who aren't YOUR FRIENDS. That's the main confusion for users and search engines ... you are not merely changing your "address" to a more popular neighborhood, you are changing your "NAME" as well.

An expired domain name needs to be pretty special for me to do anything EXCEPT take it over and make it something else. IE. all new content and NO LINKS or REDIRECTIONS from any of my other sites.

Last thing I want to do is confuse any one, including g or other se's!

[tangor]

Whoops! I left out the most important reason for redirecting old to new:

YOU WANT TO AVOID APPEARANCE OF DUPLICATE CONTENT or SPAM COPYCAT DUPLICATION on the web. If you redirect your old site will "disappear" and the new site gets all the old glory.

[Rosemary Xanders]

@not2easy. I understand. Thank you.

[jediviper]

I am running -mostly for educational reasons- an experiment with redirecting 4 expired domains to a new website. Simple 301 redirection through the registrar settings to the homepage of the new website.
- Expired domains: 2 of them are .com and 2 are co.uk
- Target website: .com and targeting different country from the expired domains
All of them are in the same nice, but the first 2 have domains with kws based to the name of some specific people and the 2 are including the main kw that we want to rank for.

What is your estimation?
How much time before we see any gains, if any?
Also, any idea how to measure the effectiveness of such strategy?

[antigravity]

Buying expired domains can work.

Here's a prime example <snip>

That site's traffic is exploding like a rocket ship. After being purchased at auction and going back online in July, the site has gone from zero to 60k unique per month in a mere 5 months...and in a hypercompetitive YMYL niche as well.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:53 am (utc) on Dec 15, 2020]
[edit reason] Please see ToS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[not2easy]

As mentioned a few days ago - we do not discuss specific websites in the public forums of Webmasterworld. We prefer to educate webmasters to make their own judgements, rather than discuss specifics of any site.