Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Buying Expired Domains with Decent DA/PA for SEO Purposes
-
Hey guys, i've seen some stuff about this before but I recently found an opportunity to put it into action and wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into!
I am looking at buying a domain (expired and now only 10 dollars) that has a decent domain authority and has some keywords in it related to my clients practice. I plan on using a 301 redirect to pass "link juice" because this client is looking for a quick bump in rankings.
Thoughts? Benefits? Problems with this?
-
So interestingly enough, and without trying to identify the people involved, I have found a local SEO company that has somehow acquired a fully unrelated domain which supposedly used to have something to do with students and kids lives and was a resource of sorts back in the day.
This site has FOLLOWED backlinks (with the student resource context) from the United Nations, from cbs.com, and from a wide range of websites mostly referencing it as a student and kids life resource.
Given the looks and feels of their site, they seem like a shabby SEO company with rather grey or dark themed SEO tactics.
This company ranks on page 1 for City+ SEO combination of keywords for three to four MAJOR cities in the US.
I want to find out what you all think of this...
Is this ok?
How is this ok?
Is this going to cause them to be flagged eventually automatically for a penalty or purge?
Does Google have anything against this sort of thing at all?
Danke
-
what is a good resource to find expired domains? for instance a list or like wise instead of purchasing scraping tools.
-
I tried this procedure but was not very successful and the blog was penalized by Google.
What I did, I bought a fairly good command with AD and a good amount of back-links it was indexed.
I created new content for the blog and redirected all the old pages to the home.
I was punished because the content that the user should see is not the same as the search engines, not entendie well. -
In my opinion I have seen both tactics work, it really comes down to how much Google trust the domain and your web site. If you are going to do a 301 redirect, I would do a very in depth link analysis and make sure that nothing is spammy. Make sure you really dive into the quality of back links that the URL has as well as how diverse the link profile is from a link standpoint and anchor text standpoint. A buddy of mine thought a URL was good but got penalized because to many links were coming in from the same type of sources even though it wasn't the same source.
You also need to check your link profile and make sure it is well diverse as well. This will help the url blend in more natural. I agree with Moosa, I would only use this tactic one or two times. If you are thinking about doing a PBN I wouldn't recommend it. However there are plenty of legit ones that really build out great content and information and are legit, but in my opinion if your going to spend all the time and money doing that you could spend it on your website. Good luck
-
OoOPs! I forgot this is only white-hat forum/QA board. but buying domains in bulk and redirecting to main site is also blackhat. 301 was supposed to be a transfer, If your website is shifted from domainA to domainB then you can redirect 301 from domainA to DomainB. Anyways, Do make a try with your strategy. I've shared what worked for me
-
Thanks guys! I've got a solid checklist now to complete to qualify a site!
Though for anyone else reading this [email protected] like a very old-school, black hat SEO tactic! Not only do I doubt that would work short term, I KNOW it is something that Google will be looking to penalize. A link network/ link farm like that is not really a legitimate SEO practice and violates Google's guidelines.
-
Its a good thing, but I'd prefer to use expired domain as a backlink source.
Its called Site-network or Blog-network. Register 10-20 domains with different PR's and DA's. Put high quality content (related to your topic) and then link to your client's website with different anchor tags. then see Boom in rankings! I ranked a 52% Keyword difficulty keyword using this method in 1 month.. Exact! -
I never say No to it, unless you have like 20 domains 301ing to the main domain but one or two are fine in my opinion.
When buying an expired domain, having a decent DA is not enough, also check their links that are pointing the website and if they are fine, go for it otherwise, 301ing the domain to the main domain might hurt!!
-
I agree that this is a great idea, when handled properly.
Oleg pretty much covered everything but this 2013 post from SEORoundTable.com covers this tactic as well: http://www.seroundtable.com/competitor-domain-name-17032.html
-
- Check if domain is indexed
- Check the anchor profile of the domain - too spammy means it would affect your current site's anchor profile and possibly penalize it
- View the site via archive.org and make sure it was good site. Spam/porn/hacked sites will probably do more harm than good.
Also, the best 301 strategy would be to link individual pages to specific new pages on your site. I would focus on the pages that have external backlinks and do a catch-all redirect to the homepage for the remainder.
-
Hey,
This is good idea if implemented properly! You need to check few things before redirecting this domain
- Verify that there is not Manual Penalty to this domain (Verify it through Google Webmaster Tool )
- Check the back-links of domain if any. It might be victim of Penguin 2 & 2.1 (You can use ahref.com or Moz Explorer)
Redirecting this domain without above verifications could lead to further trouble!
Regards
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Looking for opinions on structuring meta title tags/page title/menu title/H1
Hi everyone I am hoping a few of you can share your opinions. I have been having conversations (okay, healthy debates) about how to write/structure meta title tag and how to compliment them with the H1, page title, menu name. To help explain the thought processes I will use a pretend keyword. How about "screwdriver". Case: (I made this up) we are redesigning a website for a construction tools manufacturing company (pretend name: ABC Tools) targeting OEMs who are interested in purchasing large quantities of tools. The product categories (to become main menu items) are Screwdrivers, Nails, Drills, and Hammers. (bear with me .... this is just an example I am making up on the fly) K. Circling back to screwdrivers - let's say we have one landing page (a primary category page and in the main menu) listing products and great details about screwdrivers. Focus keywords are screwdriver manufacturer, screwdriver supplier, construction screwdrivers Below are questions being debated. If you are willing ... how would you address these questions? And, can you explain WHY? QUESTION ONE: How would you structure the meta title tag (feel free to write one of your own) Screwdriver Manufacturer - Construction Screwdriver | ABC Tools ABC Tools - US-based Screwdriver Manufacturer Supplier Near You High-Quality Screwdrivers for Construction with ABC Tools QUESTION TWO: how would you write the H1 on the page? Would it match the meta tag? OR, would you write something different using the primary keyword? QUESTION THREE Remembering this is not a blog post ... it is a primary landing page linked to the main navigation. What would the menu title be? (remember the product categories above are how the main menu items are bucketed) Screwdrivers Screwdriver Manufacturer Typically in WordPress, the H1 and the menu title is auto-populated using the page title (not the title tag)... So, if we use Screwdrivers as the page title but we want the H1 to match the meta title tag, would we manually change the H1? Or, have the page title and title tag match, but manually change the menu item?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brenda.Haines1 -
Should I keep, or disavow PA 1 DA 0 backlink?
Hi, I am doing link cleaning, and still a bit new to this, and would appreciate the community's help 🙂 So, I have a site which has quite a lot of low DA (or no DA) follow backlinks. BUT, the links are from my niche the sites are not spammy the anchors are okay and they are from good Geo location for me The only negative thing is that these sites are a bit "dead" meaning that there is no new content, and thus there is no traffic or clicks coming from them. Should I keep those links or disavow them? To me these links are natural, but do they help me at all.... FYI I have plenty of good DA links. But what do you guys think, if I disavow all these low DA backlinks, does Google think that I am trying to manipulate my backlink structure to look better than it naturally is? Cheers guys and girls! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RistoM0 -
Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?
I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fulanito1 -
Linking from & to in domains and sub-domains
What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages? If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder... Do we need to link to example.com from /blog? Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog? Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
How to outrank a directory listing with high DA but low PA?
My site is at 4th place, 3 places above it is a gumtree (similar to yell, yelp) listing. How can you figure out how difficult it would be outrank those pages? I mean obviously the pages would have low PA and they are top based on the high DA of the site. This also seems to go back to keyword research and difficulty, when I'm doing keyword research and I see a wikipedia site in top 5 rank, or a yell.com or perhaps an article in forbes.com outranks your site. Typically the problem seems to be Google giving a lot of credit to these pages rankings based on the high DA rather than PA of the pages. How would you gauge the difficulty of that keyword then if the competition are pages with very high DA which is impossible to compete with but low PA? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | magusara2 -
Domain dominance
I've just started to work for a company who've purchased masses of domains with every conceivable permutation based on all their products with every extension possible e.g .biz . eu. .net (including .co.uk and .com of course). I have two questions: 1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire? 2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LJHopkins0 -
Buying a domain banned by google
Hi , I came across a super domain for my business but found out that it was a great domain with 100s of link backs but is now banned by Google search engine meaning Google does not index content from that domain. Since the domains linkbacks are from my domin does it make sense to but that domain and redirect those link backs to another (301) and hope that the new domain gets some juice ... I know it is sounding crazy and may not be the best thing to do ethically but still wanted to check if its possible to get some juice.. Rgds Avinash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Avinashmb0 -
How to perform Local SEO for sites like Angies List/Task Rabbit or Craigslist
I have a new SEO client that has a business model similar to Criagslist and Angies List or Task Rabbit, Where they offer local based services nationwide. My first thought was Local link building and citation building etc. But the issue is they are a purely online service company and they don't have a phyiscal address in every city/state they will be offering their services in. What is the best course of action for providing SEO services for this type of business model. I am pretty much at a stand still on how to rank them locally for the areas they provide services in. it's a business model that involves local businesses and customers looking for services from those local businesses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0