How to Identify a Strong Expired Domain for SEO Growth Hacking

Expired domains – one hell of a head start, or something that should stay expired in the past. It’s a question asked by many SEO growth hackers who have pondered whether the link juice is worth the squeeze, and if so, how do you leverage it? The short answer is that expired domains can significantly impact the performance of your new or existing business/website, so let’s get deep into the detail and find out if this is the right route for you. 

Let’s Recap, What Is an Expired Domain?

An expired domain is simply that, a domain that has lapsed in registration and ownership and once again available to be bought by a new user. If this domain is searched, it will not yield a website as that domain is (at least for the time) not linked to a website. In the unlikely event that Amazon fails to renew their domain registration, that domain becomes available again to the market for the highest payer. Domain authority is an incredibly important indicator to the success of a website, so click here is you want to learn how that can impact your SEO performance. Now let’s see what that expired domain could look like in effect. 

How Does an Expired Domain Serve My SEO Efforts?

Like any growth hacking activity, it’s a relatively left of field way to bolster your SEO performance, if you’re willing to put in the effort to find the right expired domain to perform for you (we’ll get to that soon). An expired domain has the SEO juice that it garnered over the years (sometimes decades) when it was tied to its predecessor. It might have sold goods, provided a service, or been a niche forum – all of these domains and more will eventually lapse if not spoken for with renewed registration. This means that the new owner of that expired domain inherits the high domain authority, traffic and backlink profile of the domain. In short, you can secure an expired domain that has already put in the hard yards and fast-forwarded those rank-building years so you can skip straight to page one as a recognised source… even if you’ve only had it for three days.

Now you decide what to do with the domain, set up 301 redirects or start your own PBN? Each have their benefits, and each have their risks, so make sure you have considered what you want to achieve from this domain and what that lifecycle could look like. In the purest sense, a budding business can pick up the reins of a strong expired domain and bring their product or service to the market with an inherited reputation. Also remember to start using your expired domain as soon as possible, as the domain authority might start to decrease with extended inactivity.

Ok, Now How Do I Get One?

Your expired domain journey starts with an auction, where users can survey all the domain options that will be expired in the next 24 hours. If there is something that takes your fancy, you can put a bid on it and find out if you have been successful the next day (USA time). www.expireddomains.net is a good place to seek these domains, and from there you can use Ahrefs to signal any positive and negative attributes of the domain so you can decide if it’s worth pursuing. If you are reviewing domains as a ‘batch’, filter by ‘DR’ so that you can get a sense as to whether that batch has any hidden gems. Ideally, you would not be investing in anything below a DR 25 as a baseline.

Expired domains have been a strong strategy from leading SEO growth hackers, and has also provided something of a hobby for those in the know. Whatever your intentions are for your expired domain, do your research and take your time – as the right expired domain is out there if you are patient.

This article was written by Digital Next who is an SEO agency based in Melbourne, Australia. With over 10 years of delivering SEO strategies both in Australia, the UK and the US, Digital Next have seen most of what Search has to offer. 

domain graphic -DepositPhotos