Value of hosting, indexing, and then redirecting expired domains?

[jediviper]

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System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/5022848.htm [webmasterworld.com] by phranque - 10:17 pm on Mar 5, 2021 (utc -8)

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I have a question about indexing expired domains.
At the moment I use some expired domains without any content which 301 redirect to one of my money sites. I have done this through the registrar menu.

Will they offer more value, if stop the redirection, host them, create a homepage, index the homepage and then redirect this page to the money site?
Is it going to push more link juice or it will change nothing in comparison to the current situation?

[Robert Charlton]

Will they offer more value, if stop the redirection, host them, create a homepage, index the homepage and then redirect this page to the money site?

Basically, you should NOT do this for Google. They don't like it if you do it frequently.... and the fact that they don't like it has always suggested that there is some spammy benefit. Yet many sites have lots of alias domains that are 301ed to a main domain with no problems... so what's the issue?

This is how I look at it... What Google doesn't like is previously promoted domains (and, I suppose, currently promoted, too) feeding into a main site to manipulate rankings. Oversimplifying a bit... if previously promoted, these essentially are doorway sites. If there are a lot of them (I've heard the figure of 30, but I suspect that a smaller number might also send signals), the arrangement could get you flagged.

I'm not sure about current algos, but in the keyword algo era, 301ed keywords in anchor text together with inbound links did allow you to target extra keywords. I've seen the arrangement used also for hijacking a site or part of a site, and for a multitude of "link schemes" (as Google's guidelines word it), including those where you are attempting to hide bad quality pages linking into you.

If you do the math, though, you don't really gain anything. You've still got to get those links... and though you might think the redirects hide them, Google definitely can see them.

Frankly, I suggest you avoid wasting time with trying to trick Google, and use the energy to give G what it clearly wants... unique, useful content that is not merely just good... it needs to be extraordinary. That's where you should put your efforts.

[jediviper]

Thanks for the feedback Robert.

Just for testing purposes, I have decided to rebuild 2 of the 5 expired domains that I was redirecting to a small business site. These 2 domains are local domains, but on a different niche from the targeted site.

My plan for these 2 domains is:
1) Stopped the 301 redirect to the money site through the registrar
2) Bought new hosting and installed WP
3) Rebuilt only 3 pages for each domain with different themes and plugins. My content is based on the original content, but it's spinned. Also new similar photos were added with proper alt tags etc.
4) Both domains were indexed in 2 days which is good.
5) Will wait 1 month to settle and then I will redirect each domain to the target site, through the hosting.

[Robert Charlton]

Sounds like a colossal waste of time and effort... and a complete misunderstanding of what SEO is about. I answer this only to warn newbies against this kind of crap... and please excuse my frankness, but that's what it is.

Most blackhats who survive know what they're doing. This approach, which is blackhat, is clueless... and is likely to get the "money site" penalized. .

When you 301 redirect a domain, essentially the old site vanishes... and what you are actually redirecting to the target site is the accrued backlink value of those new WP sites. Nothing of the detail that was on the pages those redirected sites will exist... which in this case is probably for the good, because spun content is worthless. Those stuffed alt tags will be gone. as well.

The "sneaky" 301 redirects that remain will be known to Google.... Google can track this kind of hidden redirect, and they've demonstrated that they can. Given the one month "to settle" that you're allowing for the doorway feeder sites, chances are almost certain that the sites wouldn't have had time to earn backlinks of any value, even if they were good sites. This is in part because one month is not generally long enough for a site "to settle"... but, more important, with spun content you're not going to get any "freely given editorial links" from high quality sites, which is what Google values... and pretty much now, can detect.

This kind of setup is a throwback to 15 years ago.... It still might work briefly in a large network of churn and burn hijacked sites, where the original sites actually did have good inbound links. It's certainly not going to work the way you describe it. And to re-emphasize, there is a good chance that you might pick up some penalties in the process.

I should conclude with a question... mod's hat on... as I truly can't tell. Are you trolling the forum right now with this scenario, or do you really think there's something to be gained by the approach?

If you think the latter is the case, I really suggest you spend a month or two or three reading up on things here... Use our site search and the forum library and the New to Web Development forum, before you go testing sites that have any value.... I've seen companies get put out of business for less.

[Jori]

Only redirect old domains if they were established websites (even a blog) in the same field as you. All other cases are to be banned, if you care about your money site.

[jediviper]

So just a short update after following the steps of my 3rd post by recreating the content of 2 expired domains, waiting for 4 weeks and then using a 301 redirect to my money site.
The first domain was redirected 1 week ago and the 2nd one just yesterday.
I can't say with certainty if this is the reason, but I have noticed a boost in Ahrefs metrics. No other link building campaigns or site changes took place during this period.

The targeted website had a 19/13 UR/DR and since yesterday it's up to 20/14. Also it increased by 1mil points at the Ahrefs Rank, with the new rank at 13,7mil.
Nothing changed for its rankings or kw numbers, as still it's a very new website with not many long content articles.

[lammert]

Your observation is basically correct. A tool-site using methodologies of ten years ago sees an increase in ranking. And Google didn't blink their eyes at the same time.

Who would you trust? Or better, who in the end helps paying your bill and who's bills are you paying now?

[jediviper]

I get what you are saying, but I think all help towards the final end: increasing traffic and rankings.
What I did here it's an alternative linkbuilding method, which helped acquiring some really good links at a very small cost. If I was trying to buy directly all these links, the cost would be maybe 10x higher.
The fact that I don't see any important move in rankings yet is because I need more than just links. For sure we need to build more content, but I think that this whole experiment has only positive effects.

[Robert Charlton]

What I did here it's an alternative linkbuilding method, which helped acquiring some really good links at a very small cost.

Again, these will be considered "sneaky redirects", to use the term in Google's guidelines.

Google definitely tracks the 301s. See this old thread...

Domain name replaced in SERPS with alias domain name
June, 2011
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4327200.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[lucy24]

Value of hosting, indexing, and then redirecting expired domains?

On average, zero.

[FranticFish]

helped acquiring some really good links at a very small cost

Did you build links to the sites you briefly put content on and then changed back to 301s?

If so, then I suspect that you probably lost potential link value compared to having those links point direct. There is a damping factor on links. It was announced a few years back that there is an identical damping factor on redirects. No doubt one of the reasons it was introduced is to make the sort of hoops you've jumped through pointless.

So, if you built any links to your redirect domains, you'd have helped yourself more to point them straight to the money domain (assuming they are counted).

That's also assuming that if you built links to the domains you redirected that you did so from domains that do not already link to your main domain. This depends on the domain, but there have long been measures in place to lessen the value of additional links from the same domain to any other domain. There is (and I stress this) POTENTIAL value from additional links but there is dampening factor, and I believe the type of site involved (and its reputation) comes into play.

This kind of setup is a throwback to 15 years ago

+1. This stopped working perhaps a little before SEO directories and mass anchor text campaigns did. I joined this forum in 2009 because my one-size-fits-all factory SEO tricks were failing more often than not. This particular trick I never tried myself, but I did see it stop working for businesses I was competing with back in 2005/6.

[jediviper]

@FranticFish
I am sorry mate, but I disagree.
If you are so many years in the business, then you should know that there are many examples around that are proving that the expired domains strategy is working just fine. Not for everyone though and not always.

I have searched around and I have found many examples from different countries, from pet affiliate sites, to sexshops, with plain expired domains, that anyone can track easily through Ahrefs.
So I am sure Google is aware of it and there are no penalties.

Regarding the loss of link juice through 301 probably there are different opinions around. I have found some comments from Google's people that the link juice passes almost 100% normally through 301.
Finally, I haven't built any new links to these expired domains. After I resurrect the sites, Google is indexing all pages of them (usually I create 2-3 pages per domain) in just 2 days. Then during the 1 month of waiting period I guess that many (probably not all of them) of the old links are getting back in life.

If you ask me, the best scenario would be to buy an active domain, before it gets dropped. But first of all, this is very difficult and secondly the low cost of acquiring an expired domain still make it worth.

[FranticFish]

Not for everyone though and not always

This is why I stopped doing tricks. I work on sites for other people, bricks and mortar businesses, and get paid for doing something where I've made my best-educated guess that I'm doing good (and more importantly, not doing something that can do harm). I don't work on domains that can be discarded.

There is no more valuable thing than your own personal experience, but you do need to make sure that you conduct experiments to test only one thing at a time if you're going to get insight as to the merits of what you're doing.

I think you've convinced yourself this works, even though you've stated that you've seen no changes as far as Google is concerned when you've tried it yourself.

In my experience redirects at a domain level are counted instantly. That said, I've only used global 301s when moving domain with shared ownership in GSC to preserve existing traffic and rankings (something Google endorses) so my experience there may not be applicable. Maybe you need to give it more time. But, to be satisfied you can track cause / effect you'd need to down tools on this completely, wait a few months then check back. Or, you could try only more of the same: buy some more domains, build a bit of content on them, redirect them. If you do anything else you won't have any insight you could rely on as to what has produced results.

You've stated you've seen this work on other sites. If you were actually privy to those experiments (i.e. you know the webmasters involved) and can be certain no other work was done then you could be confident that an increase in rankings / traffic / pages indexed in Google (and NOT better Ahrefs metrics) was attributable to this. Then you could ask yourself why it worked there and has not (or has not so far) for you, and end up with some actionable insight.

However, if you've seen that there are domains doing well in Google who have this in their profile, that's not proof that it's helping them. They could be ranking despite this. It could even be that every link you can see counts for nothing and the domains are ranking from domain networks that are invisible to anyone but Google.

[jediviper]

First of all, regarding the results of my test domain, I have stated many times that it's a very small and young business. Basically it's a 6-7 months freelancing website in a small English-speaking country. So anyway the performance is no great. Just 21 kws ranking mostly in the 50-100 range with a very small investment in content: 3 supportive blog articles and around 25 main pages regarding services and portfolio of older projects. Only recently one of the blog articles hit the Nr.4 ranking position for its main kw.

So yes it's a weak domain, but the metrics are not bad, if you pay attention to them. There are currently more than 1.200 links from 202 ref. domains and probably that's why it scores as 21/14 UR/DR.

Now about the examples that I have mentioned: I don't know the SEO guy behind the pet affiliate site, but it was part of a case study and I am pretty sure that the info that was mentioned there was to the point.
Regarding the sexshop, I know personally the SEO guy behind it and he has explained to me his strategy. He is using dozens of expired domains. The most surprising element is that he has managed to redirect even an expired Governmental/ministry domain to it and there was no Google penalty! And we are talking about a EU (non English speaking) country, not for a 3rd world country.

Next step of my experiments is this:
After these 2 local resurrected domains, I plan to do the same with a UK domain that is 100% relevant. The fact is that is not from the same country, but it has some really good links that really worth the trouble. For the last 3-4 months I had a generic 301 from that expired domain, without doing anything for the website.
Now I plan to build the website again with 3 pages, leave it to mature for 1 month and then do a generic 301 again to my test domain.

[lammert]

How much--if any--organic traffic from Google is hitting your site? That would be my first metric to look at.

[jediviper]

Nothing special.
Around 7-10 users per day.