Where Do You Find Good Expired Domains?
Where to Find Good Expired Domains?
So to answer this, this is quite a well-asked question and it’s something I’ve answered a lot of times at different conferences and what-not, but it’s a great one to add to the FAQ. So why use expired domain names?
Say, for example, you’re a builder and you’re looking to use some kind of strategy to build up the power to your domain name. What some people will do is use the power of an expired domain name, so there could have been one of your competition who’ve done SEO, had loads of content and basically just went out of business, retired, sold on, let their domain expire, whatever it may be.
No matter what the reason is, this domain name’s got or potentially got a ton of links and juice flowing to it, and what a lot of people do is look for expired domain names to utilize that power.
Get an Existing Backlink Profile
So for the sake of, say, £10 to buy an expired domain name, you can potentially get domain names with a hundred, a hundred and fifty, five hundred, a thousand backlinks pointing to it, and it’s up to you how you distribute that power.
That’s obviously where people start talking about building PBNs or whatever it may be, but you don’t just buy expired domain names just about PBNs. I would buy an expired domain name potentially to launch an affiliate website, and the reason I would do that is rather than start from scratch with a domain name that has no history, no backlinks, no nothing, then an expired domain name can give me the kick-start I need to get to where I need to be quicker.
So there’s a number of different uses for expired domain names. Most commonly PBNs and potentially people just looking to utilize a powerful domain name to take their website to where they need to be quicker, so it’s a smart way of working.
Where do you find these expired domain names? Now, this is where it gets a bit sketchy and stuff like that. There are websites out there like expireddomainnames.net which is totally free, and you can look at domain names that have dropped, Domain Hunter-Gatherer and various other tools out there. What I would say about that is these are the domain names that no one else wants.
There are people out there called drop catchers and if they want a domain name, then they’re going to get a domain a name before it drops, essentially, or as it drops, and you’re never going to beat these guys.
Tools to Find Expired Domains
There are private sellers, brokers, Facebook groups and stuff like that with guys that sell domain names with specific metrics, but there are other cool tools out there like Spamzilla.io. That can keep an eye on domain names for you, that shows you when domain names are going to expire. It shows you if the domain name has been spammed previously, it also shows you things like what the website was like on the Wayback Machine, all from one dashboard, and these are all things that people will look at when they’re looking for an expired domain name. It also gives you the kind of metrics from all the various tools that are out there as well.
So Spamzilla.io’s a good one to keep your eye out, but realistically you probably need to use a drop catcher to catch a right good domain name unless you do have your own nominate account and stuff like that as well.
So you can either do that or you can go to GoDaddy auctions and get domain names. So like, dotcoms and stuff don’t drop. They go to auction and then just, what you want to do is DotCoDot UK is going into a suspended status for 60 days and people can see that they’re about to drop when you go into suspended states and stuff like that, and then after the 60-odd days or whatever it is, they kind of drop. With a dotcom, the expiry date’s the expiry date and, of course, they do drop, but a lot of them go to auction and stuff like that, especially ones with metrics.
You can go to things like GoDaddy auctions. There are loads of different auction websites out there that you can potentially use to power up a website or grab a good domain name to start an affiliate marketing campaign. So that’s probably a couple of the reasons why you would do that.
I will list a few of the drop catchers and some other information below the video as well so that you can quickly speak to some drop catchers. I will list the auction places and stuff like that as well that I’ve used in the past.
If you need any help with your SEO campaign, get in touch!
Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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