Things to Look for While Buying an Expired Domain

Thousands of domains expire every day, many are abandoned and some expire due to the carelessness of registrant. Whatever be it, there’s always a catch in the expired domain market if you are cunning enough. It’s obvious that most of the expiring domains are expiring for some solid reason and might not be good for you as it wasn’t for its previous owner. There are countless profitable things to be done with a great expired domain if you managed to bag one. You could make backlinks to your own site from it, put it for auction and make good money or use the domain to make a great website. Anyways, let’s look at some of the most important things to look for while buying an expired domain.

Make sure Google does not hate it

This is the first logical thing to do before buying any previously owned domain. If google has banned it from their search index, it’s probably of no use to you. You can easily find a ‘google banned checker’ online and check the status of the domain with it. Domains with high PA/DA does not mean it couldn’t have been banned. If the domain is too good to let go, you may buy it and try applying for a google reconsideration request stating that you are the new owner of the domain.

Check if the PageRank is legit

There are some black hat methods to manipulate the pagerank of a domain so that it looks legitimate and of high value. If the PageRank of a domain sounds too good to be true, it’s probably fake and you need to check it with some ‘fake pagerank checker’ tool which is just a Google search away. Such domains are also likely to be associated with some scam and you might end up getting a blacklisted domain.

Make sure it wasn’t banned from Adsense

Adsense is still the most popular way of monetizing a website and if you can’t go for it, the domain isn’t worth it. Most of the expired domains are likely to be Adsense banned and that’s one reason why many domains expire. Use the ‘Adsense Sandbox Checker’ tool online to find if the domain was banned by Adsense. As the Adsense policy goes, they wouldn’t accept a domain once banned; so this is a very important thing to look for before you buy an expired domain.

Evaluate the domain

This should be the final step in buying an expired domain name. Once it’s clear that the domain is safe to buy, the next thing to do is make sure it’s worth buying. You need to check important domain value factors like pagerank, page authority, backlinks, domain authority and alexa rank to determine the quality and potential of the domain. It goes without saying that the domain name should be short, without numeric/special characters and moreover a good fit for whatever you intend to do with it.

Finding a good expired domain is like finding a diamond in the trash. But if you play it safe, you can actually find a worthy one.