Learn How To Find Powerful Expired Domains Step By Step

Are you taking full advantage of expired domains at the moment?

Imagine being able to buy a domain name that already has an awesome backlink profile and existing targeted traffic for the same price as a new domain.

You can use expired domain names to:

Whatever you do, you simply cannot ignore the power expired domain names offer and today you are going to learn how to harness that power properly.

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What Is An Expired Domain?

Expired domains (also called dropped domains or aged domains) are domain names that have been registered, but weren’t renewed beyond the initial registration period.

That means they become available for re-registration and anyone can snap them up!

Domains can expire for a number of reasons such as a business closure or just forgetting to remember to renew the domain, which is more common than you might think:

googles domain name expired

But expired domains come with a number of hidden benefits such as established link profiles and authority that can be repurposed in a number of different ways.

Check if you are using blacklisted backlinks

What Can You Use Expired Domains For?

Although there are lots of things expired domain names can be used for, I personally use expired domains in 3 different ways:

  • Building authority sites
  • Building a private blog network
  • 301 redirects

In a moment I am going to show you the easiest way to find powerful expired domain names with traffic & how to check domain name availability.

But before I do that, I want to make sure that you understand exactly what you can use dropped domains for in a bit more detail.

Method #1 – Building Authority Sites

When I build a new authority site or niche site, I never do it on a brand new domain.

The problem with new domain names is that you have to invest in building up their page authority and from an SEO perspective this costs significant time & money to do.

Instead, I prefer to buy an expired domain that already has high domain authority and an established link profile.

expired domain organic traffic growth

That gives me a huge head start and quite often building out a content-rich site on a powerful expired domain is enough to crack the first page rankings without any work.

You just wouldn’t have that advantage with a brand new domain!

Method #2 – Building A Private Blog Network

In essence, you use expired domain names to build a fleet of high quality highly authoritative sites in a specific niche and then you use those sites to rank your site.

Look at how we used them to 14x search traffic for this site

14x Search Traffic SEO Case Study Infographic

But all of that starts with finding & buying expired domain names in your niche that have a clean link profile and spam-free history which I’ll show you how to do shortly.

Method #3 – 301 Redirects

Simply take the expired domain you bought and 301 redirect it to your main site.

This will pass over a portion of the link juice and authority of the old domain to your site immediately. Bonus points if that domain name has existing traffic!

However this method comes with a warning, you can get away with doing 1 or 2 of these to your main site for a quick shortcut:

But I wouldn’t recommend it as a regular link building habit.

download the link building checklist

How To Value Expired Domains

Ultimately when buying expired domains, I am doing so to get a head start with SEO.

In fact – it gives you such a head start, that at this point there is no reason to build sites on new domains anymore unless it’s a branding play.

With that said:

95% of an expired domains value comes from it’s backlink profile.

referring domains

Essentially the question you want to ask when valuing any domain name is:

How much would it cost to replicate this backlink profile?

And not just how much would it cost financially, but also how long would it take you to build a similar backlink profile.

Reputable link building services are charging-

  • $170 each for high quality niche relevant links
  • $2,000-$5,000 each for editorial links from sites like the BBC & New York Times

So that makes it very easy to appraise the backlink profile of an expired domain and figure out it’s true value from an SEO standpoint.

Click here to learn how to check domain ownership history & historic domain authority

Check out our SEO case studies

How To Find Powerful Expired Domains Easily

Now you know how to use expired domains to your advantage, I am going to show you the easiest ways to find them.

If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty there are two tools you can use to find expired domains.

  1. Spamzilla – A cloud blased platform (read my full SpamZilla review)
  2. Domain Hunter Gatherer – A desktop application (read my full Domain Hunter Gatherer review)

Both of these tools will help you to find expired domains but you must pay close attention to vetting the domains to avoid any of the most common pitfalls.

For example:

You should make sure the domains have clean backlink profiles, a clean histroy in archive.org, were never used in a PBN or deindexed from Google because of a penalty.

We build links that rank

Wrapping It Up

So there you have it, now you know not only how to use expired domains to your advantage but also the easiest way to find them.

Whether you want to buy expired domain names with traffic or a huge SEO authority – you are armed with the knowledge you need to gain an unfair advantage and compete against other domain investors.

So I only have one question for you

How will you take advantage of expired domains in your business?

increase your organic search traffic in 28 days

Frequently Asked Questions

When the registration period of a domain expires, the domains registrar will mark it as expired or dropped. Most domains are registered for a year when they are first purchased which means that domains drop every day.
The easiest way to find out if a domain name has been dropped is by using one of the many free WHOIS lookup tools like https://who.is. By doing this, you’ll not only check if the domain name has been dropped but also when the domain name expires (if it hasn’t been dropped yet). Note: WHOIS Tools tell you an awful lot of things about the domain including precisely when it expires when it was registered, who is the current registered owner along with the contact details.
If you want to check who owns a domain, you can use Whois or websites such as Tucows or GoDaddy. All you need to do is enter the exact URL or the full domain name and you can find all the information available about that domain.
If your domain expires then it will immediately become inactive. This means all the services that are attached to it also stop functioning. You cannot make updates to an expired domain but the domain should be available for you to reactivate with your previous rate within the Expired Domain list. Also, your domain will be declared as expired domain and domain registrar will start bidding for that domain.
A domain renewal ‘grace period’ is the period of time that someone can renew their domain registration for the normal renewal price. Most domain providers will offer a 40-day renewal grace period but this could vary so be sure to check out and make note of how many days you have to renew your expired domain when purchasing.
Once the period grace over, the domain name will fall under the “deletion” status, wherein names are officially deleted from the lists after five days, between 11 AM to 2 PM Pacific Standard Time.
Buying an expired domain can be a great way to:
  • Build authority sites - with solid page authority & domain authority
  • Buil a private blog network
...without investing time, effort and tons of money to do so. Indeed, buying an expired domain costs the same as registering a new brand domain!
Yes, it’s completely legal to buy expired domains. Indeed, when the time of expiration comes, the owners get emails to remind them to reniew their domain mane. If they don’t do it, that means that they are no longer interested by that domain name. So, after the redemption period, the domain name will be open for everyone.
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What Are Your Thoughts?

438 Responses

  1. Hi Matt, awesome post once again. I myself have created many authority websites using your method. I personally turn to expireddomains.net to find them. I’ll also try domain hunter gatherer on your recommendation.Thanks so much.Kind regards.

  2. Very nice informative information, I have read your article how to Find Expired Domains and I have got information for expired domains.Thanks for sharing.

  3. Hi, Would you be willing to do a paid job for me where you get a few domains for me using this software?I m not interested in buying this software but would like to get a few domains and direct them towards my site

  4. Thanks For Sharing Such beautiful information with us. i hope you will share some more information about this post. please keep sharing!

  5. Hey, this post is awesome as always. For this SEO technique i often use expireddomains.net and after i check it with majestic seo if backlink profile is good or is spammy. Now i’m going to try this peace of software 🙂

  6. Hello Dear, Always love to read the blog Thanks for sharing awesome stuff i am already working with expire domain these working fine for ranking.

  7. What a amazing method to build backlink if i make 10 blog with expire domain than can i rank of any website with my 10 domain backlink

  8. Thanks Matthew for your good advices and tips to buy expired domains. I think i will try this tool to find cheap domains 🙂

  9. Worth reading! I’m about to make more PBN sites including properpbn.com. Thanks for sharing!

  10. Hey Matthew, This is really a good article. I have been researching on how to build a PBN for some of my websites and came across this well-explained article. I will try the tool you have suggested and follow the steps that are in checklist guide. Keep up the good work Matthew 🙂

  11. This is my first time i visit here. I found so many interesting stuff in your blog especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one having all the enjoyment here! keep up the good workCayman Islands Accounting Services

    1. Yes the comments section on my posts always seem full of other interesting ideas, it’s great!

  12. If i buy an expired domain and with web arhive put the same content on the expired domain, i think its better, but it really is ?

  13. Thank you for your well written article on expired domains. I need to understand a bit more about proxies though, as that is a bit over my head, but it has given me some great ideas on what to do going forward. I may well use someone of Fiverr to do the research for me first though.

  14. I have developed a website http://mozchecker.com for Moz, majestic, Alexa, SEMrush data for any domain.If’s a free of cost. could you please share this website on your fb group page, so people can use free of cost.

  15. Thank you so much sir sharing this information.this post is very useful in my website.beacuase i can find expired domain in my website.

  16. Thanks for sharing the method to find Expired domains. I always pay for expired domains but after reading the article I will not pay again. I will find the domain by self

  17. If I download the content from one of the expired domain(archive) and use in our new domain then it will count duplicate content or Google will count fresh content?

  18. Hi Matthew,Great post! I tried to repurpose an expired domain to build an authority site (your method 1) – but it doesn’t rank as it should. i checked the backlink profile via majestic and archive.org and it’s clean. also checked the metrics of the competition. with the amount of trust and link juice my expired domain has vs. the competition, it should be on page 1 for those keywords. is there something i’m missing here?ThanksMike

  19. Great!!!!!! I really enjoyed reading this post. please don’t stop now to share your important post.

  20. Hi Matthew,I’m ready to purchase domain hunter gatherer after seeing your video but I’m a little scared to spend money because all I need is information for South Africa and the Domains that expire for .co.za if you can do a quick check (not a long as the video ) on the features it has for .co.za and let me know id show my appreciation by purchasing immediately as this is my only concern.

  21. Hi Matthew,I’m on my way to start a niche website – my second one. After working for the first one, I learnt that expired domains give a head start to the hard work I’m going to put in. Searching more on the topic, I came here in your website. I have few queries on this.I have found few domains matching my niche. But there are few issues- some have web archive history or has links from non-target countries.My questions are:1. I have domains which has web archive history and they are not related to my domain. The only thing is that they have my niche keyword in the domain name. Does web archive history affect the ranking? What if the expired domain is not related to my niche?2. What if majority of the inbound links come from countries which I’m not targeting? Most of the backlinks to these domains are coming from non-US countries. But I’m targeting US.Sorry for bit long.Awaiting for your reply

    1. Hi,1) Is the history spammy in any way or only irrelevant?2) It would be better to come from the US but not criticalWhat are the majestic CF and TF values?

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