With the internet steadily growing and millions of websites launched every day, trying to show up #1 is becoming a more challenging task.
Terms you should know for this article:
Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of improving the quantity of traffic and search rankings for a website.
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric that was developed by MOZ. It considers various SEO factors when providing a score out 100 to websites.
If you’re a business owner or web designer that has recently launched a new website, then you either already understand or about to find out the uphill battle to establish an online presence for your website.
Optimizing a website can take months if not years depending on your competition or niche and a large part of this process is your websites backlinks.
A backlink is essentially a link on another website that points to your site. If the site has a high DA score and relevant to your industry/niche, it can essentially give your website a boost in the search results.
It should go unsaid that having the coveted top spot for a targeted search term in Google can put you ahead of your competition and even determine the success of your business.
For example, if you’re a painter in the town of Stouffville and you rank #1 for the term “painters in Stouffville” in Google, this could potentially lead to more customers.
Of course getting to the top of the search results take a lot of time and work including building backlinks to your website.
In this article we’re going to look at why you want to register a previously owned domain name and how your website can benefit from having it point to your domain.
Hint: It can boost your search rankings and drive traffic to your website.
Registering a domain name
If you’re looking to register a domain name for the first time then I recommend using namespro.ca which is a reputable Canadian domain registrar.
A new domain name will have zero backlinks. As mentioned previously, backlinks are a key factor in determining how a website ranks in Google.
Buying an expired domain
Previous website owners or domain owners often let their domains expire which later be picked up after they go through a 90 day redemption period.
This allows the domain to be picked up by anyone.
So why is this important?
Let’s say you have a business that promotes mobility equipment online and you just registered your newly branded domain name.
Using online tools to search for expired domains can help you identify expired domains that were in your industry or niche that had a good backlink profile or links that pointed to their website already from popular websites.
For example, I recently purchased a previously owned domain name that was mentioned on several forums including a popular reddit thread instructing people where to find a particular product.
I forwarded the domain to my site selling the same product. Now, when anyone clicks on the links in any of those threads they will end up on my site.
Not only did I improve my domains backlink profile by inheriting all the backlinks from the expired domain but over time I should expect an increase in my domain authority.
Tools to find expired domains
If you’re looking to register an expired domain you can use the following online tools or websites.
Expireddomains.net
This tools is free and allows you to search by keyword and provides information such as the number of backlinks based on Majectic SEO and the year it was originally registered.
SpamZilla.io
This tool costs around $40 USD per month and can be cancelled anytime. This tools provides a lot more information such as spam score. The last thing you want to do is point a domain that has a poor spam score to your domain which can negatively affect your SEO.
Godaddy Auctions
Godaddy Auctions probably has the largest database of expired domains. It costs $6.95/year to join and is a great resource to find expired domains. Domains can range in price from $20 to over a million dollars depending on the domain.
Conclusion
Pointing the right domain can certainly boost your online presence and improve your SEO. On the contrary pointing the wrong domain can negatively impact your SEO, so it’s important to properly evaluate the expired domains backlinks and history.
If you’re interested in purchasing an expired domain and unsure about the process or a domain in question you can hire a web consultant at NexToronto.