There are over 330 million active domains in 2020. In addition, close to 500 new domains are registered every minute but not all domains get renewed all the time. In fact, millions of domains do not get renewed beyond their first year of registration.
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Are Expired Domains Good to Re-register?
Expired domains have a longer domain age and are great for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In fact, re-registering an expired domain is called ‘dropcatching‘. Some domain registrars release domain name drop lists giving anyone access to domains that are just about to expire. The lists have names of domains that are expiring in a day to 30 days span.
When a domain expires, the domain will be put on three categories depending on how long after its expiring. The stages are:
- Registrar Hold Period – This is the period that the registrar will not allow anyone to purchase the domain expecting that the original owner will renew. If your domain is on hold, you’ll receive an email reminder to renew your domain before it expires.
- Domain Redemption Period – The Redemption Period occurs approximately 30 days after a domain has reached its expiration date
- Pending Delete Period
Expired Domains for SEO
I have always liked purchasing expired domains for SEO reasons. Since already or previously registered domains that were left to expired had gathered some backlinks and age, they will always have better domain authority.
Domain authority will influence how keywords in your domain will rank.
I understand that some domain names may not be the most ideal for your brand reasons and the way I am able to get around this is to redirect the expired domain after using it for some period – usually 2 to 3 months.
For example, this website 10Webtools.com has redirected from Webhosting-10.com, a domain that was initially registered on September 1, 2008. I used WhoIsRequest to get the details.
Look at the registration details 11 years ago:
In the eleven years, Webhosting-10.com gained the following:
- Domain Rating of 10 out of 100
- 703 backlinks
- 33 referring domains
Here is its profile on Ahref:
When I purchased this domain, it had been left to expire on May 30, 2019.
I purchased it on 30th Nov 2019 as shown in the snapshot below (note: Domain created or Nameservers Added)
I knew when I purchased this expired domain that I didn’t want to be associated with a domain with a hyphen. It’s hard to brand and does not meet the minimum requirements on what we advise on the best domain names to get.
I built the Webhosting-10.com website and submitted it to Google. I verified it on Google Search Console and on Google Analytics and I started posting posts that got indexed.
2 months later, I redirected the expired domain from webhosting-10.com to 10Webtools.com by using a 301 redirect.
Glady, Siteground has a 301 redirection tool that enables you to change the primary domain from the expired to your new domain.
Below is a snapshot of the new domain’s backlink profile on Ahref:
How did the expired domain help?
The expired domain which had a domain rating of 10 passed 4.2 to the new domain, about 42% of its domain rating. In addition, the new domain got 10 of the 33 referring domains that the old domain had.
But that’s not all.
10webtools.com was also an old domain that was originally registered on December 1, 2003.
However, unlike webhosting-10.com, 10webtools didn’t have a backlink profile and its domain rating was 0.
By redirecting the old domain to the new domain, it passed 42% of the link juice and 30% of the backlink profile.
This is why I encourage anyone to register an expired domain to accelerate the ranking of keywords that the new domain will try to rank for.
As you can see, the high quality expired domain such as webhosting-10.com can pass good link juice to the new brandable domain such as 10webtools.com.
Similarly, if you purchase a low-quality expired domain you won’t get any substantial benefit when you redirect the old domain to the new one. For example, I purchased an expired domain called babymonitorcenter.com and build it for a few months before redirecting it to 10BabyGear.com
The Ahref backlinks profile for babymonitorcenter.com was very poor but I didn’t know how to research and pick a great expired domain for SEO at that time. See the backlink profile of babymonitorcenter.com below:
When I redirected babymonitorcenter.com to 10babygear.com, the link juice passed wasn’t substantial as you can see in the Ahref profile below:
The expired domain, Babymonitorcenter.com passed 0% of the domain authority to 10BabyGear.com as 10Babygear’s domain authority remained at 0 until late December. I redirected it in August 2019. I do not really attribute the current 0.1 domain rating of 10babygear to babymonitorcenter.com.
The two examples above shows you why it is important to pick a high-quality expired domain in order to gain substantial SEO advantage.
Where do you get a quality expired domain?
#1. Expireddomain.net
You can get an expired domain from expireddomain.net. Below is the homepage of expireddomain.net showing the overall number of domains that have been left to expired by its previous owners. As of Feb 20th, 2020, there were 397,168,249 expired domains.
I found out that most expired domains on expireddomains.net are not very high-quality domains. When a domain expires, there are vendors that purchase the domain immediately it is dropped in order to resell it for a premium. By the time domains are ending up on expiredomains.net, it didn’t impress anyone to purchase it. Some domains may have a poor backlink profile and not worth purchasing for SEO advantage unless you like the domain brand.
#2. Bluechip Backlinks Tool for High-Quality Expired Domains
I search for expired domains using Terry Kyle’s Bluechip Backlinks tool. The tool is not cheap as it would cost you $99 per month but if you think about it as a strategy to accelerate your growth and search engine ranking, it is totally worth it.
For example, it would have cost me a few high-quality backlinks from websites with the domain authority of 50+ to get my domain rating to 4+ within the first two months. I hate the hassle of doing blogger outreach and promoting content. That’s why it was natural for me to choose the Bluechip Backlink tool by Terry Kyle.
You can check out the Bluechip Backlink tool here.
Expired Domains for PBNs
Private Blog Networks(PBNs) enable you to create and get backlinks to your primary domain from expired domains that have good trust flow for the topics and keywords you are trying to rank for.
Below is a video by Ruan Marinho, one of the SEO experts I credit for introducing me to expired domains for private blog network (PBN). In the video, he describes how to pick the expired domain while avoiding spammy expired sites and how you can create PBN safely.
Check out the video below:
Expired Domains for Sale
If you are not limited by resources, you can purchase an expired domain that is being sold at auctions such as Godaddy auction or Namecheap auctions.
Domcop Expired Domains
One site that you can purchase an expired domain for sale is Domcop.
You can watch this intro video of how Domcop works:
Check out the website here
Godaddy Auctions for Expired Domains
You can also purchase on Goddady Auctions. What are domain auctions?
Here is a short intro:
Godaddy lists expired domains after 25 days. This only applies to all domains that were registered after May 2, 2005. Here is a link to the Godaddy site.
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]
