Expired Domains
Considering purchasing expired domains? I am sure that you
have
heard about the “benefits”.
As you probably already know, millions of
websites are created every year. A domain is required for each of
these
sites. Now of course it doesn’t just stop there. Every new
website/domain must also be optimized.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
is simply a way of structuring or organizing your site in order to
improve its visibility from a search engine’s standpoint. This is
extremely important when ranking and if you ever hope to receive unpaid
or organic traffic from the search engines.
This all leads back to the “benefits” of purchasing an expired
domain,
what are they?
A domain that has been previously owned and has expired
is re-cycled. This expired domain, just like a new domain, is
available
to anyone wishing to purchase it. The difference between the two
is
obviously in its history and the fact that one has been previously
used. Why is this important? What could possibly be the
benefit?
The previous owner of our expired domain has probably invested a
good
amount of time and money promoting it and getting it to rank. A
ranking
domain, although expired, may still have a number of backlinks.
Many of
these backlinks may be from other authority sites, forums and even
directories. If so, this would mean that the previous owner had
already
done quite a bit of work for you. Just think, any traffic to this
domain, even though it has expired, is now your traffic.
Now obviously
if you had purchased a brand new domain name, the time, effort and the
expense needed for its development would have been yours. You would
have done the planning, the promotion, the SEO work, the advertising,
forum posts and directory submissions. It is a lot.
An expired domain represents an opportunity. An opportunity
for
potentially cutting the work load in half. It makes sense, when
possible and there are good domains available, to take advantage.
If
some of the legwork has already been done for you then you should
consider.
One final caveat. Not all expired domains are the same. Some
have more
backlinks than others and some rank while others do not. You also
have
to be careful of purchasing bad domains. Bad domains (banned),
those that were
previously used for purposes frowned upon by the search engines (Spam,
Keyword stuffing schemes etc…). You can find some great domains
out
there but you still have to do your homework in terms of the
history. The saying “there is no such thing as a free lunch”
still applies.
Although most established but expiring domains are auctioned off at fairly decent prices, every now and then you can find something that was overlooked. Check out the auctions at Godaddy.com. I’ve found a few needles in the haystack so I am sure that you can too. Happy domain hunting.
