Raising A PR 4 Domain From The Dead? - Case Study

Wow this is great. I actually never touch domains like that at auction and because they've been spammed (I POUR over wayback machine before bidding) and usually pay around $250+ for quality PR4's - this may be a great way to snap up some quality PR domains for a better price, thanks for sharing this is killer - I, like you, always assumed it would be very hard to actually recoup from a past SEO's carnage.

I would tighten the site right up, put up/keep a smaller amount of quality content, redirect all the junk pages you don't want to the home page or to some other page, or just delete them altogether if you think they have bad links, either way that'll flush the index out after a few weeks and hopefully give the impression the site has turned over a new leaf. Maybe create a few new, quality backlinks if possible.

I think you are in fairly uncharted territory, all I can say is I have seen long-unregistered domains (though not spammed ones) bounce back and start ranking again for some terms that are related to their former niche, even with new pages/content.

I find it hard to believe that once a domain had been spammed to death, that's the end of it, for ever and ever - maybe giving strong signals of new ownership can turn it around.

Anyway, this is obviously where SEO is going now - digging around buying up old domains and rehabilitating/redeveloping them and/or using them in site networks, so you will want to watch the results of your own experiments and see what advantage it could give you. Of course, there are people who have been doing it for years, but it looks like being the next thing Google is going to have to target , so anyone going this route ought to be intelligent about it from the get-go, creating quality-looking sites with these old domains (like certain people have been repeating like a mantra round here for the last couple of years ) else it's going to be short-lived.

301 redirect all those old URLs back to the 4 live web pages. At least do a sitewide 301 redirect on the 404 URLs.

Actually I haven't done any of the redirecting yet... I don't want to do anything at this point to show that the site is being used by anyone who knows anything about linking. Probably being paranoid, but I want Google to think that the site is just a regular site for a month or so.

But to answer your question, I use a plugin for Wordpress called Link Juice Keeper. It automatically redirects all 404s to the homepage. You can check it out here - WordPress › Link Juice Keeper « WordPress Plugins. It is old and hasn't been updated in a while, but it still works on my sites.

Good point Mike. I use it on a few sites, but not all. Haven't had a problem yet, but with Google, it could be coming at any time. If you want to be safe, find the few old pages with the most links coming in and do a manual 301 redirect. A bit more work, but it won't leave a footprint. Here is a plugin that will help with 301 redirects - WordPress › Safe Redirect Manager « WordPress Plugins. This way takes a bit more work, but it should be safer.

What will it give if you recreate those URL's? how would you link to your money site then?

Does the links keep their value after the site has changed? I heard that google can detect massive redirection of pages to the home page and can mark them as soft 404 or just devalue those link...is it true?

For most expired domains, you can easily see the top pages in OSE (by authority and inbound links). Keep it simple and rebuild the top 20 or so.

@HeadStart
What good will it do if we rebuild those pages? say we did that, what's next?

I don't know if that is much of a footprint, lots of sites shift content around and redirect back to the homepage. Though best practice would be to create specific redirects for known URLs on that domain, NOT just flat redirect all 404s (though I don't think Google need see the 404 header anyway, so I am not sure it makes any odds). I actually think it's no more natural to have a site throwing loads of 404s, so what do you do..?

Kurt,

I read your experiment and wanted to see if our domain crazymikesapps dot com has any hope. I do not have as vast SEO experience as you and probably am more of an SEO problem to my own site than a benefit.

We were a pagerank 5 then Penguin and Panda hit in 2010 and the site was lowered to a page rank 5.

We are in the highly competitive app content industry and are about to give up because we only get pages to rank by luck.

We have over 3,700 YouTube videos and I have integrated a video sitemap into the site, had a Yoast website audit, redesigned the site and all to get around 1500 hits a day that mostly come from search yielding a bounce rate of 70%.

Is there any hope for our site?

No pressure or worries if you do not answer, we are desperate and trying to find answers.

thank you

Mike

I don't want to do anything at this point to show that the site is being used by anyone who knows anything about linking.