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. I found a backlink from one of my industry’s manufacturers by buying an expired domain.They wanted me to put £25000 of business through them each month in order to get on their stockists page. I just paid £9 for a domain and redirected it instead. Authority backlink, no relationship needed. Result. Cheers Matt.

  2. I want to buy an expired domain but because this is my first time. I was little worried about how thing works?But after reading this, I get to know lot of new information and things to keep in mind before buying a expired domain. So, thank you for this Kulwant Sir. This really helps.

  3. I get this error Matthew: No connection with the plugin. Please close this window and try again.Could you take a look and fix it?Thanks

  4. Thank you sir for this wonderful enlightment.But please sir I checked my blog url on semrush and I saw that my blog has 2k backlinks (with 80% NOFOLIW backlinks) which I didn’t build please what causes that sir?Thanks

  5. Hey Matthew,Again great job! It gets way easier to get ranked and make money. Btw, your checklist doesn’t work. I tried to download it but it doesn’t go anywhere!

  6. Wish I had known about expire domains before spending a year working on an authority site, from scratch. You can buy expired domains that rank fast and start getting traffic in less than a week…took my brand new site MONTHS.Thanks a lot for the info! 🙂

    1. Yep – Building an authority site it’s hard work, especially when you start from a brand new domain! But now you have the solution, all you have to do is finding the expired domain you need. 😉

  7. You have given very good information about expire domain. Your post got me to understand a lot about expire domains

    1. Well, it depends. If your domain expires (so it becomes an expired domain) then, it will immediately become inactive. This means all the services that are attached to it also stop functioning – including Google Adsense. But, when you buy an expired domain, you re-register it to your name so it becomes “active” again and then, it can be connected to your Google Adsense account.

  8. Thanks for this really informative article. I have recently started blogging and learning about SEO. Had never thought of SEO in this way, sounds really promising way to look at SEO.

    1. That’s great! I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do! Also, if you need more info & tips about blogging you can go on my page -> rubric blogging, here: https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/There, you can find out how to start a blog the right way, how to generate traffic on your site, etc… Let me know if it helps!

  9. This article is years old I have read it before but recently dated this month. What gives? other than cheating the search engines with dated and older content and switching the date?

    1. I’ve updated the article with more recent and relevant information so people can still apply this strategy (in 2020) to find Powerful Expired Domains!

  10. Hi, Matthew i watched your demo on Domain Hunter Gatherer. It was impressive but i do not wish to buy the software as i only need some expired domains to setup my PBN. Is there a cheaper way to get it done?

  11. Great stuff. Honestly I have been having a terrible time find decent domain names. Thanks for the write-up!

  12. Nice Tutorial I am going to check out that tool. I have been looking for such a tool. Searching on expireddomains.com one by one is excruciating.

  13. Hi, I found your website through search engine. I’m looking for some expired domain for 301 redirection. But I didn’t understand the warning you were talking about for 301 redirection

  14. Hi Matthew, I found your site through some Facebook ad. Great site, will bookmark it for sure.Anyhow. You forget to mention the topic “This is how I would use an expired domain”. Your article was useful, but you forget to mention “how you would do it”. I hope you’ll update the article on this. Thank you. Chris

    1. H Chris. If you read the article and watch the video you will find both these questions answered.

  15. thank you for sharing these useful information.these will surely help me in increasing traffic on my website.keep up the good work.

  16. Thanks for sharing such nice article.I don’t know about expired domains.Thank you so much.Now I can buy good expired domain.

  17. Thanks for the Awesome article, as usual!All the points have been beautifully explained on Expired Domains, thanks for sharing! :)Cheers,Rishav

  18. Hey Matt, SpamZilla is a brilliant domain finding site! Till now I have used ExpiredDomains but this is so much better. Thanks a ton for the post. BTW you ranked first in my Google search! 😀 Regards, Janek

  19. Hi Bro, Nice article. I have worked out with some of my client’s websites it worked. It changed positions from 50 to No 1 for big Keywords. I redirected a domain with 60+ PA & DA, now my client’s websites also above 60+ Authority…Thanks for the guide and suggestions.PJ

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