This is part 2 of my 4 part expiring domain series. If you haven’t read the first part, then I strongly suggest you read Part 1: Introducing Expired Domains.

I must admit this post is a quite longer than my usual posts, but it is packed full of relevant information and advice for uncovering expired domain names – so it’s well worth reading it!

Before you begin reading part 2, I would just like to say any stumbles, diggs, bookmarking or mentioning of this post to friends is MUCH appreciated. It took me a few hours to come up with this post, so a small gesture would be like a token of thanks for my work.

Happy Reading,

Fox Marketer
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Introducing FreshDrop

Freshdrop is a very useful domaining service with both “free” and “members” options.

Basically, FreshDrop drastically helps with your expired domain research by helping you sort the good domains from the bad ones.

They include a wide range of statistics about expiring domain names including the price, page rank, traffic, indexed pages, Alexa rank and MUCH MORE!

FreshDrop definitely is the place to be if you’re looking for expired domain names.

NOTE: Freshdrop has both FREE and PRO memberships available. Unfortunately the FREE membership limits you to only a few data feeds. To get access to TDNAM data feeds (which is discussed in this post), you need to sign up for the PRO membership. Luckily, freshdrop has a 10 day free trial which I highly suggest you take advantage of.

You can sign up for the free 10 day PRO membership here.

How to search for expired domains:

Click on the “Expired Domains” tab
You now have a list of TDNAM domain names expiring within the next week or so.
Go to the filter section on the RIGHT HAND side of the page. Change the settings to find expired domains that suit your criteria.
You can then further sort the domains that meet your criteria by clicking on the heading i.e. clicking on the PR heading sort’s domains in order of its Page Rank.

That’s the initial step that I conduct to filter out the good and bad domain names.

The next step I follow is to look at them individually and take note of any domains that particularly stand out.

What I like to look for are domains that have development potential. This means I believe they can be developed further into a site that generates money from adsense or affiliate products.

After following the steps I have outlined, I apply the following 4 methods for each domain to determine if it is a hidden gem or not.

4 Methods To Judge A Good Expired Domain

1. What are the Pre Existing Backlinks?

More often than not, you will find that expired domains have been featuring on the internet for some time – ranging from 1 year up to 12 years and have built up a number of backlinks over this period of time.

These backlinks age over time and the older they get the more respected the links are in the eyes of Google.

While researching expired domains, I have found a number of expired domains with links from the quality DMOZ directory as well the Yahoo Directory. I have found these types of links not only help increase the domains PageRank, but also help the site rank better in the search engines.

Remember, just because an expired domain has thousands of links pointing at it does not necessarily mean that it is better than a domain with less links.

It is quality of links, not quantity.

By quality, I mean the calibre of the links – the PageRank and the reputation of the linking site.

There are 2 main tools that I use when researching the links of an expired domain:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
http:///www.backlinkwatch.com

For the yahoo site explorer I use another trusty internet marketing tool – SEO Quake along side it, which automatically tells me the PageRank of the linking sites.

In my opinion SEO Quake is a very handy tool that every internet marketer should have.

It definitely helps with expired domain hunting, by helping you analyze the strength of the links pointing to the expired domain.

It is a firefox addon which can be downloaded for free here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3036

You can read my own personal review of the firefox plugin here: SEO Quake Firefox Plugin Review

2. Pre Existing Page Rank

Page rank is another main reason these expired domains appeal to internet marketers and domainers.

As I mentioned above, some of these sites have a number of links pointing to them. These links have resulted in these domains building up an existing PageRank due to the number of quality links pointing at the domain name.

This existing page rank can immediately give you a head start in Google and help increase your traffic and rankings.

Usually the domains with higher page rank are hot property. For example a Page ranked 5+ usually sell from anywhere between a few hundred dollars and a few thousands depending on the caliber of links pointing to the domain.

However, don’t be discouraged if you’re not willing to spend that much on an expired domain name. You can often pick up a PR 1, 2, 3 and even 4 for under $50 in a lot of cases.

I realise that $50 may seem like a lot of money to spend on an expired domain name (compared to $8 for a brand new domain name) but you will find that over time the return on investment is much more.

Note: I have found with some of the expired domains I have purchased, some of the domains retain their page rank for months after, while others lose their existing page rank quite quickly. Why this happens, I can’t say for certain, although I would say a contributing factor would be sites that remove their link to you once they have found the domain has changed hands.

A Note about page rank:

In FreshDrop they have a handy feature which lets you know whether or not the page rank is “fake” or not.

Basically a fake page rank is a SEO trick used by some people to give their domain, or site a higher page rank that it actually is.

If you want to read more into it, then I suggest you read this post: What is Fake PageRank and how do I avoid being fooled.

If you want to double check the PageRank, and make sure that it is not fake then I highly recommend using this website: Page Rank Checker

That site not only tells you whether or not the page rank is fake or not but also gives a wide range of information about the domain in general – for example whether it is listed in DMOZ, or the yahoo directory, how many links are pointing to the domain and how old the domain is.

It is a MUST if you’re looking at expired domains.

3. Existing Traffic to the Expired Domain

In the past expired domains had sites/blogs on them. These sites and blogs would have received traffic from numerous sources – search engines, links and other places.

By purchasing the domain name and putting a website on it you will receive all the traffic that the domain is currently getting. This could range from a few visitors daily to a few thousand.

The hard part is trying to estimate the ACTUAL number of visitors a site is getting daily.

I must admit that when I started out and first began looking at expired domain names, I used Alexa’s traffic ranking as a basis for how much traffic a site was getting.

However, I soon realized that it is terribly inaccurate.

This is because Alexa can easily be manipulated using a number of methods.

More information is here: How to Game Alexa

As a result I now take Alexa’s ranking with a grain of salt.

Instead I take a different approach when looking at expired domains…

These day’s, I now like to look for domains which have a keyword in the domain. This is because they may already be ranking on Google for that specific keyword and receiving traffic as a result.

Once I bought an expired domain with a keyword in it in a very specific niche. It looked good because it was ranking on page 2 on Google for a high traffic term.

I decided to take a risk and bought it. I quickly put up a site with a few article on the domain and with a bit of back linking I soon got it to page 1 on Google and to this very day it receives a nice flow of traffic to the site.

With this domain I looked at the future traffic potential – from search engines.

Like I said above, this is the hard part – estimating the traffic. It’s hard to know for certain until you have bought the domain.

Sometimes you just have to take a punt and hope that it pays off. It could be a costly mistake, or a very good choice. It depends on your ability to analyze the potential of the expired domain name.

4. Age – How old is the domain?

Also included in FreshDrops statistics is the domain “age”. I have found that older domain names tend to have been in Google’s index for a much longer period of time than younger domains.

Domains that are 2+ years old are a good catch. This is because they are unlikely to get penalized by the Google sandbox effect which is applied to brand new domains – which is definitely an advantage of an expired domain.

I have had brand new domains penalized for any time up to 6 months, while some expired domains I have purchased ranked very well straight away. This factor alone is a huge draw card for most people when they are thinking of purchasing a domain name.

By using these 4 methods, you can quickly and easily separate the very best domain names from the low quality domains. If you have any tools that may assist with research which I have mentioned, then by all means use them! The more research you can conduct on an expired domains the better!

In part 3 I am going to discuss how you should go about purchasing these expired domains from TDNAM.

Hope you enjoyed this post. I would love to hear your comments + feedback!

Fox Marketer