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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Does redirecting from a "bad" domain "infect" the new domain?
Hi all, So a complicated question that requires a little background. I bought unseenjapan.com to serve as a legitimate news site about a year ago. Social media and content growth has been good. Unfortunately, one thing I didn't realize when I bought this domain was that it used to be a porn site. I've managed to muck out some of the damage already - primarily, I got major vendors like Macafee and OpenDNS to remove the "porn" categorization, which has unblocked the site at most schools & locations w/ public wifi. The sticky bit, however, is Google. Google has the domain filtered under SafeSearch, which means we're losing - and will continue to lose - a ton of organic traffic. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this, and appeal the decision. Unfortunately, Google's Reconsideration Request form currently doesn't work unless your site has an existing manual action against it (mine does not). I've also heard such requests, even if I did figure out how to make them, often just get ignored for months on end. Now, I have a back up plan. I've registered unseen-japan.com, and I could just move my domain over to the new domain if I can't get this issue resolved. It would allow me to be on a domain with a clean history while not having to change my brand. But if I do that, and I set up 301 redirects from the former domain, will it simply cause the new domain to be perceived as an "adult" domain by Google? I.e., will the former URL's bad reputation carry over to the new one? I haven't made a decision one way or the other yet, so any insights are appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaiaslastlaugh0 -
Cleaning up a Spammy Domain VS Starting Fresh with a New Domain
Hi- Can you give me your opinion please... if you look at murrayroofing.com and see the high SPAM score- and the fact that our domain has been put on some spammy sites over the years- Is it better and faster to place higher in google SERP if we create a fresh new domain? My theory is we will spin our wheels trying to get unlisted from alot of those spammy linking sites. And that it would be faster to see results using a fresh new domain rather than trying to clean up the current spammy doamin. Thanks in advance - You guys have been awesome!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | murraycustomhomescom0 -
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 -
Paragraphs/Tables for Content & SEO
Hi Does anyone know if Google prefers paragraphs over content in a table, or doesn't it make much difference?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
How to rank for a location/country without having a physical address in that location/country
How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)? I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it. Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
Would changing the file name of an image (not the alt attribute) have an effect of on seo / ranking of that image and thus the site?
Would changing the file name of image, not the alt attribute nor the image itself (so it would be exactly the same but just a name change) have any effect on : a) A sites seo ranking b) the individual images seo ranking (although i guess if b) would be true it would have an effect on a) although potentially small.) This is the sort of change i would be thinking of making :  changed to 
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam-P0 -
NEw domain extensions, are they worth it seo wise?
Hello I am curious if all of these new extensions for domains are worth it? So say you are a home builder and you bought homebuilder.construction - where as construction is a new extension, does this help seo? Or is it all just a big sales gimmick? Thank you for your thoughts
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Berner1 -
Does domain WhoIs Privacy affect SEO efforts?
Hi guys, I got a hopefully quick question. I am designing a site currently that is made up of many different domain names as part of a network. I've heard that Google will penalize however is linking is passed back and forth between these domains if the registrant information was the same. I have WhoIS privacy information on all the domains to stop telemarketers and spam as well as (hopefully stop Google from getting suspicious). I'm not doing anything bad or against Google rules but I can see how they might think that if I have a huge network and links are being passed between these. It's a friend of mine who owns like 2000 domains and he wants to put legitimate information on each one and rank them higher, it's an interesting concept but I won't go into to much detail. So my question is basically, does having WhoIS privacy on all these domains, will it affect me in anyway in the SEO process? Will google count the links passing back and forth as legitimate? Or might it get suspicious and think I am spam? Are there ways to see what server it's coming from? Should all these sites be on different servers? Any help is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | itechware0