Whether you plan to purchase an expired domain name for your PBN, parking, or to flip – Evaluating expired domains before purchasing is essential. At this day in age, most website owners prefer to find an expired domain over hand registering a new one. There are various reasons behind doing so, but one popular reason is the fact that you have a history and backlinks that can help when it comes to things like SEO and type-in traffic. Still, you need to think carefully about what to look for when choosing the right expired domain because you can easily make the wrong choice if you don’t evaluate properly.
There are some specific things you’ll want to lookup before purchasing an expired domain and that includes things like learning about its history and any negativity that could effect your website rankings going forward. You don’t want to be dragged down by things like Google penalties or a spammy history. Continue reading to learn what you should be looking for before ever purchasing an expired domain name.
Use Moz or Majestic – These two tools can help you quickly weed out many expired domains by assessing the metrics they are given. The Majestic Trust Flow and Moz Domain Authority metrics can be very useful when assessing the basic health of a domain name before purchasing. If you plan on using the domain for a website or PBN nd find that is has no authority or trust flow ranking, you’ll want to rule these out.
Check Backlink Profiles – Looking at the historic backlink profile of an expired domain will tell you how the website was used in the past and what types of backlinks it was getting. Majestic can also help you with this. When you do this using the Majestic tool, you’ll quickly get an idea what kind of links were used for the website and likely learn what the website was all about. At this stage of investigation you’ll be wanting to determine whether the links were spammy or of good quality. You don’t want an expired domain to have spammy links pointing into it because that doesn’t say positive things about the domain. Ideally, you want a domain that has good backlinks and a profile that your website will be able to benefit from going forward.
Use Wayback Machine – Along with looking at an expired domains backlink profile, you’ll want to get an idea of what type of content it hosted and you can do that using the Archive.org Wayback Machine. This is important because high-quality original content will only help when it comes to judging the quality and authority of the domain itself. Ideally, you want the previous website to have original content that hasn’t been copied and pasted from elsewhere. The Archive.org WayBack Machine is an impressive tool that allows you to look at the previous webpages used on the site and offer the ability to see what content was published on them.
Check for Google Penalties – One reason website owners let domain names expire is because they received a Google penalty. If this is the case, it will make that domain much harder to get re-indexed and start to rank again. That means anytime you come across an expired domain that’s received a Google penalty it should be immediately disregarded. Penalties can affect a website in many different ways and they can stop you from achieving the outcomes you’re looking for. The tool at IsMyWebsitePenalized.com can help you quickly check for manual penalties and is completely free of charge. Newly acquired domains can always have a penalty removed, but if you go that route remember this will be an extra step for you and it can take some time before Google reconsiders and wipes and penalties which are already in place.
People prefer expired domains over new ones because they can definitely be better. But, only if you actually choose the right ones. The tips explained above should help to make sure when purchasing an expired domain you’re getting one that will actually benefit your needs. When you know exactly what to look for, it’s much easier to get things done right the first time around!
