Buying expired domains in niche and 301
- Thread starter dilonious
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I'd personally recreate the website or create a new variation and let the website sit for several months (12 months) as it regains it's SEO rankings and keywords. IF it had referral traffic only and no SEO rankings I 301 it and call it a day. After gaining SEO traction there is the chance for a 301 redirect no matter how many domains I have. I've gotten up to 30+ on a single domain and the rankings just keep going up.
However I go the extra long and tedious route of 301 redirecting page by page to the corresponding pages, and moving the content (and updating the content), so the 301 redirect make sense. If you are just buying dropped or auctioned domains and 301ing it, you are asking for trouble.
If there are pages that cannot be 301, I create content on the money domain and then do the page to page redirect. If there is absolutely no reasoning to create the new piece of content, I just do a redirect to the homepage or purposely do a redirect to a 404 page that has a sitemap (or list of resources), and still flags it 404 in the http status (yeah I know, but I do things differently than what your gurus taught you - and that's why I survive).
And what I mean by "SEO traction", I mean getting the site to 1000 visitors from organic Google rankings a day. Anything under that I consider a website that's not worthy in Google's eyes and therefore can cause problems for me down the road. If Google trust a website to send it 1000 visitors a day, then that's a website worthy - that's just my own internal metric. I've seen people do it with higher SEO traffic, I've never seen anyone do it successfully with lower than 1,000 daily organic visitors.
However I go the extra long and tedious route of 301 redirecting page by page to the corresponding pages, and moving the content (and updating the content), so the 301 redirect make sense. If you are just buying dropped or auctioned domains and 301ing it, you are asking for trouble.
If there are pages that cannot be 301, I create content on the money domain and then do the page to page redirect. If there is absolutely no reasoning to create the new piece of content, I just do a redirect to the homepage or purposely do a redirect to a 404 page that has a sitemap (or list of resources), and still flags it 404 in the http status (yeah I know, but I do things differently than what your gurus taught you - and that's why I survive).
And what I mean by "SEO traction", I mean getting the site to 1000 visitors from organic Google rankings a day. Anything under that I consider a website that's not worthy in Google's eyes and therefore can cause problems for me down the road. If Google trust a website to send it 1000 visitors a day, then that's a website worthy - that's just my own internal metric. I've seen people do it with higher SEO traffic, I've never seen anyone do it successfully with lower than 1,000 daily organic visitors.
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I grabbed a Godaddy expiring domain with just under 1k (alleged) views because it had a lot of content. I manually added all of the expired website's content to my domain and then 301'd page by page. Took a while...
The expired domain had quite a few backlinks and had been around for 5 years. Lots of the content was actually still indexed in G when the auction ended, although pages were dropping right and left by the time it showed up in my account. I can't say that I think it provided a big or quick "boost" to the new domain, but my site is slowly gaining back keywords the expired domain was ranking for. The biggest plus was some solid content, referral traffic from a few blogs & Pinterest pins, and email subs.
A substitute for a PBN? I dunno. Worthwhile if you can find closely related domains? Absolutely.
The expired domain had quite a few backlinks and had been around for 5 years. Lots of the content was actually still indexed in G when the auction ended, although pages were dropping right and left by the time it showed up in my account. I can't say that I think it provided a big or quick "boost" to the new domain, but my site is slowly gaining back keywords the expired domain was ranking for. The biggest plus was some solid content, referral traffic from a few blogs & Pinterest pins, and email subs.
A substitute for a PBN? I dunno. Worthwhile if you can find closely related domains? Absolutely.
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My personal experience has been mixed. I've redirected non-related domains after hosting some niche content on it for a month or more. I didn't see any boost but also didn't see any penalty and that particular site has been ranked for over a year now... My thinking was to get anchor text dilution easily via myriad of random anchor texts...
I've also had redirects completely tank a site (-50 penalties and similar), luckily it wasn't revenue generating at the time and it rebounded virtually instantly after removing the 301 (although I waited a month just to see how it would play out).
Not quite a substitute for PBNs or anchor text backlinks to money pages, but very effective when they work. Just they are sort of hit-or-miss, and I'd be very careful doing it to any site thats currently generating revenue for you.
I've also had redirects completely tank a site (-50 penalties and similar), luckily it wasn't revenue generating at the time and it rebounded virtually instantly after removing the 301 (although I waited a month just to see how it would play out).
Not quite a substitute for PBNs or anchor text backlinks to money pages, but very effective when they work. Just they are sort of hit-or-miss, and I'd be very careful doing it to any site thats currently generating revenue for you.
Golan
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I never trusted 301. A little effort, and you have restored site, or site with new content on a good domain. Just make a bit more effort so it won't look like obvious PBN. If google would like to manually investigate you, they will find both 301 network and PBN. But if your satellite sites are good looking and not looking all alike, who can say it's a network?
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I recently bought a domain that:
- was a competing business in exact same sub-niche so is super relevant
- he let it drop 1+ year ago (closed the business)
- someone picked it up and parked with text ads
- parking page had "this domain for sale" which linked to a Godaddy "buy now" page
- it's still got 30 live backlinks from niche-relevant pages
Can I 301 this right away or should I put content on it and let it rank by itself before 301ing?
- was a competing business in exact same sub-niche so is super relevant
- he let it drop 1+ year ago (closed the business)
- someone picked it up and parked with text ads
- parking page had "this domain for sale" which linked to a Godaddy "buy now" page
- it's still got 30 live backlinks from niche-relevant pages
Can I 301 this right away or should I put content on it and let it rank by itself before 301ing?
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Super smart on many fronts, I will say (just my humble $0.02) is that depending on how often you use this strategy on your money site (personally I try to do this once a quarter at most) that redirecting all pages to the homepage may not work as well as taking the time to map all the relevant pages 1:1, BUT it definitely looks more natural to Google (this is what usually becomes of Company's websites when they get acquired). If you're going to do this, one key insight is not to use domain forwarding via the registrar, as if the site still has pages indexed OR links to a lot of internal pages these will all now 404, instead attach the domain to a hosting account and set up a proper redirect file (likely htaccess or NGINX config, etc.) and make sure you add a directive to handle redirecting all requests to internal URL's; this will ensure you get the full value of the link flow.
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UPDATE: I ended up 301ing the domain at the registrar level right away and rankings went straight up and have stayed there for 5+ months. Note that the 301 domain was super relevant:
money domain: "dogtraining.com"
expired domain that I 301d : "trainingdogs.com"
So the relevancy may be why it worked so well - maybe Google sees it as "brand defense" which any company would do (like misspellings).
Does anyone have any other 301 strategies that work consistently? Or that consistenly tank rankings (so we can avoid)?
I'm paranoid about testing on money domains and I still can't get consensus (even this thread has conflicting strategies).
money domain: "dogtraining.com"
expired domain that I 301d : "trainingdogs.com"
So the relevancy may be why it worked so well - maybe Google sees it as "brand defense" which any company would do (like misspellings).
Does anyone have any other 301 strategies that work consistently? Or that consistenly tank rankings (so we can avoid)?
I'm paranoid about testing on money domains and I still can't get consensus (even this thread has conflicting strategies).
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What you did sounds fine to me if the Homepage was the only one with links to it. Otherwise I'd have done it exactly like @NickEubanks mentioned in the post above yours. I've been doing it like that for years now and it's gangbusters.
I make sure to set the site up in WHM as a new account so it get's it's own folder on the server where traffic is directed, where I can then use the .htaccess to map each page to a new page. I only take posts that are worth using the content for or that have links.
So i'll map the homepage to homepage, about to about, contact to contact. Then I'll find any content that's worth porting over and do that, and 301 each old location to the new location. Then I check the remaining pages that have links and find the best matching post to 301 them to and do it.
It takes a long time but is the natural way of doing it. Google see's this kind of behavior all of the time so it's not considered shady, nor is it shady. It's acquisitions and mergers.
Slightly related, you may enjoy reading through a test I did recently on 301's on internal pages where nothing changes but the URL.
I make sure to set the site up in WHM as a new account so it get's it's own folder on the server where traffic is directed, where I can then use the .htaccess to map each page to a new page. I only take posts that are worth using the content for or that have links.
So i'll map the homepage to homepage, about to about, contact to contact. Then I'll find any content that's worth porting over and do that, and 301 each old location to the new location. Then I check the remaining pages that have links and find the best matching post to 301 them to and do it.
It takes a long time but is the natural way of doing it. Google see's this kind of behavior all of the time so it's not considered shady, nor is it shady. It's acquisitions and mergers.
Slightly related, you may enjoy reading through a test I did recently on 301's on internal pages where nothing changes but the URL.
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@NickEubanks @Ryuzaki
So you immediately 301 specific urls to the money site without recreating the original page? Or do you recreate the old pages and wait for them to get indexed/crawled before 301ing to the money site?
So you immediately 301 specific urls to the money site without recreating the original page? Or do you recreate the old pages and wait for them to get indexed/crawled before 301ing to the money site?
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Some you recreate. Some you recreate and enhance. Some you don't recreate at all. It depends on whether or not the content is worth having on your site and/or if it has links going to it.
So in some cases I'll paste the content in, set the original date as the publish date, reformat it to match my site, set it live, and then immediately set up the 301. You don't need or want it to get crawled first, since it's not original. You want it to be known that it's coming from another source that you now control.
Some pages will have some links but the content is whack. If I can combine them all together is some unified way and 301 them all to this one new super page I will. A lot of times I'll find the most relevant page that already exists and aim the 301 there. Or you can take chunks of the content and add them to an existing page and add it there.
There's no hard and fast rule. You can get creative, but the one thing you do not want to do is 301 every single page to the homepage. Google will devalue the entire thing since that's what lazy PBN builders were doing with a plugin.
It's not too much of an issue. If a page has good enough links to worry about, the content will be good enough to port over to your main site.
So in some cases I'll paste the content in, set the original date as the publish date, reformat it to match my site, set it live, and then immediately set up the 301. You don't need or want it to get crawled first, since it's not original. You want it to be known that it's coming from another source that you now control.
Some pages will have some links but the content is whack. If I can combine them all together is some unified way and 301 them all to this one new super page I will. A lot of times I'll find the most relevant page that already exists and aim the 301 there. Or you can take chunks of the content and add them to an existing page and add it there.
There's no hard and fast rule. You can get creative, but the one thing you do not want to do is 301 every single page to the homepage. Google will devalue the entire thing since that's what lazy PBN builders were doing with a plugin.
It's not too much of an issue. If a page has good enough links to worry about, the content will be good enough to port over to your main site.
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Sorry, I'm a little confused here. All these pages that you're recreating and merging, etc, are on the money site or the expired domain you just revived?
ex "A lot of times I'll find the most relevant page that **already exists** and aim the 301 there." -- already exists on your money site?
If I'm understanding correctly:
1) you don't care about ranking any urls from the expired domain
2) you just set up the expired domain on hosting so that you can 301 pages that have backlinks going to them
3) you either
3a) 301 those links to existing relevant money site pages
or
3b) if the money site has no relevant pages, you create a page on money site with relevant content and 301 to that page
4) you 301 the homepage if the backlink anchor text makes sense
?
ex "A lot of times I'll find the most relevant page that **already exists** and aim the 301 there." -- already exists on your money site?
If I'm understanding correctly:
1) you don't care about ranking any urls from the expired domain
2) you just set up the expired domain on hosting so that you can 301 pages that have backlinks going to them
3) you either
3a) 301 those links to existing relevant money site pages
or
3b) if the money site has no relevant pages, you create a page on money site with relevant content and 301 to that page
4) you 301 the homepage if the backlink anchor text makes sense
?
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Some may, but I never recreate the original site. I know how to confirm if it's going to be a dud or not without needing to do that. I make that confirmation before I ever buy the domain or site. Everything I've said above about content should be understood in the sense that it's being posted on my money site. I don't rebuild the old site when we're talking about mergers.
Correct.
1) Correct. I don't care about that.
2) Yes. I use WHM and spin up a new account with it's own cPanel and everything. I do not do any redirects and the registrar level. It only occurs in the .htaccess (Apache server in my case) and I create these 301's on a page-by-page basis. There are no catch-all's and no crazy Regex. But I'm also not talking about 100's or 1000's of pages either. So what I have is one WHM setup with an account for each domain, including the money site, the domain variations I use to protect the brand (.net / .org), and all of the sites and domains I buy for merging in.
3b) or I choose the most relevant. I don't create a new page just to keep 1 or 2 cruddy links around. I'd do that if the old page had 10-20 good links. Otherwise, I just choose the most relevant existing page and send the 301 there. There's too much work to do to save everything with that much of a one-to-one relationship.
4) I 301 the homepage regardless. That would be extremely unnatural to NOT 301 the homepage. My main site's brand name is the 4th or 5th most used anchor on my site. The most used ones are old brands I merged in. It's fine.
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They're all being 301'd to the same site, with content moving from one to the other. Google knows the same person is controlling it all. It's a completely fine and legit practice that happens in the business world daily. Acquisitions and mergers are 100% above water. Doing weird stuff like keeping the domains on different IP's but pointing them all to the same domain... that just looks shifty. If I was Google and saw that, I'd assume there was a good reason for me to look into that site further. There's no need to be sneaky about doing something that's absolutely fine.
The caveat is that each of these domains needs to be related to the main topic. You can't just buy up 100 expired domains that are all on different topics. I'd really pace out the rate at which you do this too. Keep it realistic. No company buys 20 other companies and merges them in all in one month, or even in 2 or 3 years.
The caveat is that each of these domains needs to be related to the main topic. You can't just buy up 100 expired domains that are all on different topics. I'd really pace out the rate at which you do this too. Keep it realistic. No company buys 20 other companies and merges them in all in one month, or even in 2 or 3 years.