When domain expires

Is that a serious question? If you have a ranking site - you don't let your domain expire. The only reason your domain would expire is if YOU fail to renew it.

There is a 'reclamation' period of time when you can renew the domain at a much higher cost. If you backed up your site (as you should) you can put the site on a new domain but you'll be starting over.

You try like heck to get it back. Usually, you will have to pay a premium to get your old domain registrar to let you have it back, if it is still available.

Why did you let your domain expire? That's pretty crazy. Set Auto-Renew to ON

Lesson learned

Hello Rajeev,

This is a very interesting question to ask on SEO forum. You just described every SEO expert's nightmare.

To answer your question as honestly as possible, every single website will go through the same process when it expires, no matter what rankings it has.

Once the due date arrives and website owner does not pay, the domain is parked for a couple of days to give the owner time to renew without additional costs.

When that grace period ends, the owner is still able to renew it but usually with some kind of penalty fee.

After that, the ownership of the website is forfeited or lost and that domain is now considered an expiring domain. The domain is auctioned and sold to the highest bidder during this stage.

If no one buys or places any bids, I believe it is now considered an expired domain where anybody can pick it up after paying a fixed price (no more bidding).

If absolutely nobody is interested in that expired domain, it is deleted and goes back to the registrar pool, where you can register it again as a new domain name.

At every single stage of expiration, you can recover the contents of that website and restore it through the Wayback Machine archives.

That said, expiring domain that has top rankings will be definitely picked up by somebody else and maintained, used as PBN, etc.

If you are not sure whether you want to keep it or not, see if you can monetize it somehow by selling it yourself or at least earning enough from it to return annual maintenance costs.

I hope this helps.

Good luck and enjoy the process.

After a domain drops, Google will slowly update the SERPs over time (week/s) and remove all of the indexed pages. No indexed page/s, no rank.

If you can renew the domain within a few days after it expires and get the site back online your ranked pages will most likely return after a while/days.

When a domain drops it can't be resold right away, you have a few days but you need to move fast and pay the renewal fee ASAP, within a week or less to be on the safe side.

Most decent domain sellers will give you a week, week and a half before they start tacking on additional fees.

If your website is really ranking at the top then you would never let your domain expire. But still, even if it happens then you have to renew the subscription.

Nevertheless, the domain doesn't go for reselling just after getting expired. You can surely renew the subscription. But this way to have to start from the first step reason being the updated Google SERP will remove all your indexed pages. And it goes without saying that no indexed pages mean no ranking.

Thanks for the valuable time and important suggestions experts. I really appreciate the answers you all have given.

If you won't pay for domain provider to extend domain life time, you will lose your ranking on next Goolge update as Google does not find your website or any content.