Even though expired domains are critical, they can hurt your SEO if you do them wrong.
So in this training post, I will walk you through a buying checklist that you can go through step by step anytime you want to buy expired domain names.
When an expired domain meets each of these criteria, then it’s a perfect expired domain name you should buy.
Key takeaways:
Within this training, we will give you the buying checklist as a downloadable PDF so you can be able to download it and have it in your Google Docs or print it out if you want,
And check it off anytime you’re buying an expired domain.
As you read through this post, I wanted to go through it repeatedly and try to understand each criteria and why they are essential.
So that when you start, you can know what you’re looking for in your expired domains, and you will be able to spot them right away, knowing which one is okay and which is terrible.
Best Tools To Search For A Good Expired Domain (Free & Paid)
There are two tools that we use to find good expired domains.
- ExpiredDomains.net
This website is free, and it takes time. But If you do the work, you can find perfect domains.
- Spamzilla.io
It is a paid tool. It doesn’t cost much, but the capabilities that it gives you are incredible. It simplifies the whole process for you.
It does all the hard work for you, showing all the necessary data.
You have to pay a little bit of money, but it is mind-blowing what it allows you to do. You can find domains much quicker.
I recommend you pay for a month, then use it for that month to find stacks of domains that you will use for the rest of the year.
Now you have your domains lined up for the different websites you want to create.
Look, no matter which one you want to go with, in the next couple of posts, I’m going to walk you through step by step how to use each one of these tools to find good domains,
So if you’re on a low budget, you can use the free tool.
Next, you will be looking at what we call the buying checklist.
It will help you buy perfect domains that will not hurt your SEO but instead help you rank higher and much faster in Google and other search engines.
How To Use Our Buying Checklist To Buy Good Expired Domain Names
So, again, we want you to print out these checklists in a PDF format so that whenever you want to buy expired domain names, you can go through them to make sure you’re making the right decision.
Domain Authority
The first thing we’re going to look for is Domain Authority; this is the level of the domain’s authority.
The Domain Authority score can range from 0 to 100, 100 meaning it is a huge authority website like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
But zero means no domain authority, a brand new domain.
We are not looking for domains with a domain authority score of 100, not even 50.
We are just looking for a domain with a higher enough authority. The higher, the better.
You can strive for domain authority of at least 15, but if you can’t find that in your niche, you can look for 10 or 12 and grow it.
Page Authority
Page authority, like domain authority, is the authoritativeness of the whole domain; page authority is the authority of individual page pages on the website.
Again, you should strive to find a page authority score of at least 15, but if you can’t find that number due to your niche, you can go for 12 or 10.
Trust Flow
Next, we have the trust flow, which means how trustworthy those links pointing toward your domain are.
Trust flow can have a score that ranges from 0 to 100. And the higher the trust flow, the more trustworthy the links pointing to your domain are,
And the lower the trust flow, the higher the spammy links on this domain.
You should also strive for a higher trust flow of at least 15, and if you can’t find that score in your niche, you can go with 12 or 10 and grow from there.
Citation Flow
It is also about links, a measure of how many websites link to the domain you’re looking to buy ( Link Quantity).
Like the others we’ve discussed, you should strive for a citation flow score of at least 15; you can go with 12 or 10, depending on your niche.
Trust Ratio
The trust ratio is one of the most important things you’re looking for.
To get the trust ratio of the domain, divide the citation flow by the trust flow.
If you can get a result closer to one, the better, you should strive for at least 0.8.
For example, the Facebook domain has a trust flow of 99 and a citation flow of 100. When you divide 100 by 99, you get 1.01, which is very good.
So I’m not saying you should find domains with a trust flow of 99 or 100 like Facebook. It’s impossible.
But it would be best if you look for a domain with a trust flow and a citation flow that is close to each other.
Backlinks
This means the authority votes given to your domain by other websites.
In the content marketing world, it’s called the vote of confidence.
When someone links to your website, they are telling search engines like Google that they trust the information your website is providing, and that’s why they are linking to it as a resource.
You might be thinking that you need millions of backlinks to be able to compete, but when you’re starting, it’s okay to find a domain that has at least 50 quality backlinks.
Some of the expired domains that have lots of good backlinks are going to cost more,
But it has millions of backlinks and still doesn’t cost much; that’s a sign that some of those backlinks are associated with Sex, gambling, casinos, and foreign languages.
Referring Domains
Apart from having quality backlinks, we also look at the domains referring those backlinks to our domain.
Sometimes you’ll realize that some of these expired domains have lots of backlinks, but those thousands of backlinks are just coming from a few hundred domains, which is very bad.
Maybe one domain is linking to us from all the website pages, which signals to Google that this is spammy.
To ensure you don’t end up on Google’s wrong side, you must find a balanced ratio between the referring domains and the actual links.
For example, if you have 50+ quality backlinks, there should also be at least 30+ referring domains.
Next, we will check to see if the domain contains spammy links.
Spammy Links
You need to check the links pointing to your domain to see whether they are good or bad links,
This determines whether you rank higher or lower in search results. Google hates spammy links.
To check for spammy links, you should use Ahrefs backlinks checker.
For example, the image below shows very spammy links in another language,
Unless this language is the language that you’re going to be using on your website, but if not,
You don’t need your domain to be associated with this kind of language because Google bots will find it difficult to understand what your website is all about, and it will rank you very low.
Domain History
You can check out the domain history by searching the domain on archive.org to see what the domain previously looked like.
It helps you to get a better idea of how the domain looks. But another important reason we find domain history is that you can easily import the old website into your new website.
And this tells Google that you are not creating a new website but are growing the old one.
This helps you rank very fast in search engines.
Domain Age
Although this is not vitally important, everything matters. SEO is a numbers game. The more you do, the better you will rank.
For example, if I find two domains with the same metrics, one is two years old, and the other is five years old. I will always go for the five years old domain every time because Google favors older domains.
Dropped and Aged
When we search the domain on https://whoisrequest.com/history, it will tell us how many times the ownership of our potential domain has been dropped for someone else to buy.
You shouldn’t buy expired domain names that are recent with one drop or an old domain with over three drops.
For example, check out this domain below; it had seven changes, one drop in the last 18 years. That’s a perfect expired domain to buy
Conclusion
Now, you have an overview of the elements of this checklist.
I want you to either download or print out this checklist because, in the next few training posts, we will be working closely with this checklist to make sure you’re buying a quality expired domain.
