In this article, I will talk about looking for and how to find and evaluate High Authority Expired Domains and How to find, buy and use them in SEO . An expired domain is a domain name that has already been registered and used but has been dropped and has not been renewed by the domain owner.And here are the reasons behind why you do not renew a domain:

• The company closed, went bankrupt, was bought by a big group, etc.
• The site did not keep its promises
• The product promoted by the site turned out to be a failure or is no longer available
• The author got tired or changed his activity
  etc.

In any case, it is possible to find domain names that were used and dropped. The goal is to buy them to create a new site (or make a 301 redirect, we will come in the rest of this article).

The value of an expired domain

Expired domains can be particularly interesting because of important SEO factors that are mainly related to backlinks (also called back link or inbound link) existing. If you are considering acquiring an internet address that is available again, it is therefore important and useful to determine the quality of the domain based on the profile of backlinks (set of external links and information on the nature of these links). You can also evaluate the value of the expired domain based on the relevant keywords in the second-level domain, any references to the products, brands or services present.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

1. How to find expired domain name
2. What software or services to use to find expired domain (free or paid)
3. After Finding Expired domain.How to Evaluate the SEO quality of it.
4. What you can do with expired domain name.

Of course, I do not pretend to provide you with exhaustive information on this subject. There are many other interesting resources on the web that cover all or part of this problem.

Why look for an expired domain name?

Unlike a brand new domain name that has never been used, an old domain name already has a history ,If the website in question has had some success, you can hope that there are people who still talk about the site on the forums (in old discussions), on old articles of blogs see on general sites (regional or national press). All these elements can constitute a beginning of promotion for the site which you will create.

Once the new site is in place with up-to-date information, you can return to the forums to discuss the discussions, contact the authors of the blogs, Also, if the site has belonged to someone who has used SEO techniques, one can imagine finding a history of backlinks on this domain name . They can come from directories, blog comments or less interesting things (beware of spam).

How to know if a domain name is available?

First, if your browser displays an error when you fill in the address of the site is rather good sign,or you can enter directly the domain name at your favorite registrar (example: OVH) who will tell you if the domain name is available or not to purchase.Then you can check the site’s “whois” via an online service.

How to Search for expired domain names?

The number as well as the quality of the links of a domain have a strong influence on the ranking in the search engines.SEO experts distinguish three important characteristics:

• Link Popularity: Link popularity is a value that is used to quantitatively evaluate incoming links to a website. The scale of measurement is linked to the motto “the more links there are, the more important the site”, the whole number of links is taken into account. The popularity of links is usually determined by the PageRank algorithm. However, PageRank plays only a minor role in assessing the relevance of the domain.
• Domain Popularity: The popularity of the domain is more important than the popularity of links in evaluating the link profile of the domain. Indeed, the incoming links of the same site are only counted as a link. This prevents manipulation attempts, especially when a domain references another site multiple times.
• IP Popularity : If you still want to go further, you can also determine the popularity of the IP. In this case, the links are counted only if they come from different servers on different networks. The SEO experts assume that Google takes into account the popularity of the IP in the ranking of search engines to unmask networks links.

If you want to try the adventure, it will take the sleeves and do some research. The easiest way is to start by looking at sites that offer lists of expired domains just like This.

Expired domains offers you, against a free registration, access to a list of domain names as well as metrics and indicators typically SEO (number of backlinks, date of first registration of the domain, extension, etc.). ).

The service is free and you could find some areas that interested. But, clearly, the site makes the funds of drawers and it is not uncommon to find expired domain that have been used for spam campaigns not own from Chinese agencies (which do not hesitate to send more than 5 million links on a site in record time).

There is something wrong too, The best domains are available via a paid platform or auction. This is not a problem in itself, but it is unfortunate because we may end up having to pay tens (see hundreds) of dollars for a simple domain name.

Clearly, it’s a good site to start and the fact that it allows keyword research makes you quickly find its marks. I recommend this site for beginners and those who do not wish to set up a software solution.

By doing a search on Google you can also find many competitors to this site. I have not tested them all and some are paying but offer more services. It’s up to you to see if these sites can be helpful.

Use a crawler: Xenu

Another solution is to use a software “crawl” (or “web spider”) that will help to find the domain names that are no longer active.

My preference is currently for Xenu which has the advantage of being very fast and free. But if you are comfortable with another software of this type you can use it.

The principle of this software is simple, it will browse all pages of a website (very quickly) and find broken links. However, it is possible that a link is broken because the domain name is no longer registered. That’s what we’ll have to check later  manually.

So this is a solution a little less automated than the previous one since you have to configure the software and think a little about how you will proceed.

How to use Xenu ?

1-First you have to choose a directory that is regularly updated (a directory where you can register your website to have a backlink).

2-Ask the software to browse all the pages of the site,then find which links do not work anymore

3-Then look manually, one by one, the links to see if the sites still exist.

Why does it work? Well firstly because as the software browses a directory, there is a good chance that the links are made to the home site (so the domain name directly and not on a page of the site), This technique thus facilitates the search for an expired domain name.

Specialized software: Expired Domains Finder

The problem of the previous technique is that it is long and tedious. In addition, if you want to find a domain really interesting (see below for metrics to watch), we must generally forget directories and crawler sites authorities (news, wikipedia, how it works, twitter, etc.. ).

However, we are quickly overwhelmed by work if we use a crawler seriously to look for interesting things,That’s when the free Expired Domains Finder search software for expired domains comes in .

It is a software (windows only) that has been specially designed to look for expired domain names on the web.

Make your own software

If none of these solutions suits you (or you are looking for something more specific), it is always possible to (develop) custom software.

This is clearly the solution of last resort because it will be very expensive anyway – either in time or money if you use a developer,But, it is without doubt with this solution that you will obtain the best results and the best domains!

How to evaluate the quality of Expired domains?

If you followed the steps, you should be able to build a list of expired domain names to evaluate. Because, do not go headlong and buy the first domain that passes,We will see some criteria that are to look more closely for each area.

In rare cases, the site of the expired domain name may still be indexed by Google. This means that the site has just expired and that Google has not yet seen that,So you can use Google to check the number of indexed pages and possibly their content (using Google’s cache(Site: Domain.com) and (cache: Domain.com)).

Check the backlinks

One of the main benefits of using an expired domain is to recover all or part of the old backlinks . But for that, it is already necessary that the links are present and useful!

It is therefore necessary to carry out a complete verification of the domain link profile . Although this is not the subject of this article, here are some ideas for doing this.

We can start by doing a search for “quotes” on Google on the domain name:

inurl: domain.com

This will already give an idea of ​​what already exists around this domain name. If you do not find anything at this time, it is  a rather bad sign. But since Google does not know and display everything, we can use other services.

First, there is Moz’s Open Site Explorer service . With a free registration, you will be able to query the site’s database which will inform you about the link profile of your expired domain name.

If this site gives a first impression, it is however largely incomplete. This is why we would probably prefer to use a tool like Ahrefs or Majestic that both offer a similar service with more reliable data .

It is generally accepted that Ahrefs offers the most extensive database of links, but it is quite subjective and it varies greatly depending on the websites.

Other indicators to take in consideration

There are many other items that can be studied before buying an expired domain. Here are, in bulk, some indicators that I like to look at:

• Domain authority(DA:Greater than 30) and Page authority(PA)  from Moz (the “trust” too, more than 3 and it’s top)
• Alexa rank
• The different indicators from SEMRush
• Shares of previous articles on social networks
• If an expression or keyword is present in the domain name
• If a brand is present in the domain name (do a search on the INPI website if in doubt)
• If there are already a lot of results in Google by typing the domain name without
• its extension on the search engine
• If there is an Adwords auction on the domain name (without its extension)
• If a facebook and twitter page already exist
• The language of the sites on which backlinks exist
• If there are backlinks from .edu or .gov domains etc.

These metrics may not match what you are looking for from a domain name. Also, it is necessary to show initiative and test things. It’s also a bit of SEO!

What to do with an expired domain name?

Now that you have a nice domain name that already has a history, you can use it for different things. I have noted below some ideas, but the best ideas are the ones that are unique and belong to you.

Create a new site

Of course, you can create a brand new site. You will use already existing backlinks to quickly benefit from a little notoriety on the domain.Likewise, you will be able to comment on articles that speak about your site and mention the fact that a new activity exists with a brand new site, new ones articles, new products, new services.

Create a blog for an e-commerce site

It’s something I’ve seen sometimes: we use an expired domain to create an editorial site (or blog) linked to a site that sells products (e-commerce) or services .

We use this second site to attract visitors with textual content or videos and we then try to take them to the e-commerce site to make a sale.

If it’s done well, it’s very ingenious and risk nothing SEO level provided you use links in no-follow as it should. This has the advantage of also positioning a second site on the niche of the main site.

Make a 301 redirect

This technique is more than limited , but it must be mentioned to have covered the main techniques related to expired domains,You will therefore purchase the domain name only to make a 301 (permanent) redirect to your main site.

Resell the domain

You can create a page on the domain name you just bought, check that all backlinks are there and then look to sell the site at a good price .