Has anyone build a blog on an expired domain?

Hundreds of thousands of domains expire every single day. Some of these are legitimate businesses that have shut down. These domains have backlinks that the website procured over many years of its existence - backlinks that now go nowhere.

SEOs have found that by purchasing such an expired domain and setting up their website on it, they get the full benefit of having those backlinks. If you hate link building, buying an expired domain for your main site makes a lot of sense.

Additionally expired domains are never caught up in the Google sandbox - Yes - the sandbox is real and it typically lasts around 6 months for normal websites. Since expired domains are already more than 6 months old, they are never held back in Google's sandbox. As soon as you put up a website on the domain, you can start ranking right away.

Some SEOs purchase a bunch of expired domains and then redirect them to their money sites using 301s. I don't think that is a good idea. There is no reason for a normal website to have multiple domains redirected to it. I suggest you stay away from 301s.

Now that you are excited about buying expired domains, you need to first figure out how to evaluate which of the thousands of the domains you should buy for your business.

Be very careful with this, as you could end up buying a spammy domain or a domain that has no backlinks or worse, a domain that has been penalized by Google.

I like using metrics to figure out the good domains from the bad ones. You probably have already heard of the top 3 backlink providers in our industry - Moz, Majestic and Ahrefs. These guys have the best backlink metrics.

First metric - Majestic categorizes all the domains into their list of topical categories. For example it knows which domain is in the health category, and which domain is in finance.

You want to ensure that the expired domain you choose has backlinks from the same industry that your business is in. You therefore want to ensure that the expired domain has the same Majestic topical category as your industry. This is very important.

The second metric I like to use is the total number of referring IPs that a domain has backlinks from. I like using AHrefs for this metric as they seem to be having more accurate results. I like to see at least 50 referring IPs.

The third metrics I like to use is a combination of Majestic Trust Flow and AHrefs Domain Rating. I like to see domains that have a value of more than 15 for each of these two metrics.

Finally, all the metrics in the world cannot beat a manual review. Before you buy a domain you definitely want to check it's backlinks. This will help you figure out if the domain has been spammed before and whether the backlinks it has are any good. You also want to check the history of the domain at the Wayback Archive. This will show you what content the domain had when it's website was online. Stay away from domains that have irrelevant or spammy content.

Now that we know whether an expired domain is worth buying, we need to figure out where to purchase these from.

Typically you have three options - (i) buying from domain auctions, (ii) placing back-orders to catch a domain when it drops and (iii) buying from a domain broker.

The best domains will always be found in domain auctions. This is a highly competitive industry and you can find domains in auctions that range from a few hundred dollars in price to many thousands of dollars. If you are buying just one domain for your main business website, I suggest you buy the domain directly from auctions. Godaddy auctions are the most famous expired domain auctions at the moment.

The next way to purchase an expired domain is to place a backorder with a company like SnapNames or NameJet. These companies will charge you around 70 dollars to place a backorder and you only pay after they catch the domain for you. Some people like to compete directly with backordering companies by trying to manually catch a domain, but this never works. Trust me. Save your time and purchase a backorder.

The third way is to find a domain broker and purchase the domain directly from them. Buying from a domain broker is costlier than purchasing it yourself from the auction. However, the time saved is generally worth the higher price. You do have to be careful in doing research before you buy the domain from the broker. Make sure the domain is spam free and has valuable backlinks.

I have done it. There may have been some good links to their profile but there is no specific way to tell that how much time it is going to actually take to rank them.