Are you wondering what expired domains are and why people buy them? Are you looking to buy expired domains but don’t know where to find them?
You can find many expired domains online, especially from Odys Global Domains Marketplace. However, it would be best if you understood how they work before buying any.
Getting high-quality expired domains has a lot of benefits, such as helping you get more SEO value, more traffic on your own web pages, and increasing domain authority.
We’ll delve deeper into how these allow you to grow your web presence and how you can find and buy expired domains to meet your needs.
How to Find the Best Expired Domains
In this section, we’ll be showing you where and how to buy expired domains. If you’re wondering how to find expired domains online, these sites and criteria will help you.
1. Domain Marketplace Websites
Domain marketplace websites like Odys Global Domains Marketplace are some of the best ways to find the information you need, such as powerful expired domains.
These marketplace websites allow you to organize these expiring domains into categorized expired domain lists and to purchase the aforementioned expired domains.
2. Domain Brokers
Source: Nameboy
A domain broker is a bit more hands-on when finding expired domains. Besides just buying, they can also find, appraise, and sell domain names for you.
However, it can be challenging to find good expired domains if your broker isn’t meticulous in their search or the broker isn’t that experienced.
They can help you find the perfect domain but may charge extra for their services.
3. Domain Auction Sites
Source: Elegant Themes
Domain auction websites are another method for finding expired domains. It’s good if you want the best/lowest price possible for expired or dropped domains.
This is because you can usually find an expired domain for lower prices on auction websites and can bid for them at great prices.
However, the organization is usually not great on auction websites because they don’t give you info on spam, authority, and other important factors to consider.
4. Monitor Domain Expirations
Source: AwardSpace
The most hands-on method if you want to find expired domains is to monitor expiration dates. This is only recommended if you have a lot of time on your hands.
If you really want a particular domain name and find out that it’s not an expired domain yet, you can monitor and wait for the date when they expire.
Therefore, if they expire and are put up for auction, you can quickly snatch up the domain from the website owner before anyone else can.
What Are Expired Domains?
Expired domains are domains that once went through domain registration and were online but were not renewed beyond the initial registration period.
A domain expires for a few reasons. Sometimes, the website owners forget to renew the registration, but other times they simply don’t have enough money to renew it.
The domain registrars usually have a contract with the domain owner that says they own that name until a certain date. After which, they will have to pay to renew their ownership.
What Happens When Domains Expire?
Source: Cloudflare
Many domain registrars will give a grace period of days to months, although some registrars will only give a day or two. This depends on the contract between the owner and the registrar.
If the registration fee is still unpaid by the grace period’s end, it is considered “expired.” The registrar will then list it on domain name marketplaces.
This is listed on auction sites for 10-15 days, where whoever wins the bid becomes the new domain owner. If nobody is willing to invest money in it, it becomes a dropped domain.
These dropped domains will not be available for a few weeks. They will then be placed back into a pool of domain names. You can then purchase expired domains for a cheaper price.
What to Look for in Expired Domains
There are many factors you should consider when choosing expired domains. The best expired domains will be more expensive because of their value, but they may be worth it for you.
1. Domain Age
Source: Buy Backlinks
One of the things to look for in an expired domain is how old the domain is. Old domains typically have more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) value and marketing use than new domains.
This is because such domains tend to have a lot of high-quality backlinks, a high domain authority, and have been visited by a lot of web traffic for some time.
2. Domain Authority
Source: Moz
Another factor to consider in how to find expired domains is looking for high-authority sites. High-authority websites have both high domain and page authority.
Domain authority is a metric from 1-100 that shows the ranking of a domain when it’s displayed in search engine rankings. The highest is 100, and the lowest score is 1.
Page authority is more of a comparative score, also from 1-100, that shows you if a particular site does better than your competition on a search engine results page.
3. Backlinks
Source: Backlinko
Good quality domains have a lot of backlinks pointing to them from other high-authority websites that are also within the same topic, field, or niche.
Make sure to buy domains that also have natural/organic backlinks. This will ensure that you will get the best results on search engines.
4. Spam Score
Source: Moz
Spam happens on an expired domain when spam links point towards it. If most of the incoming links are not organic, then it will have a lousy spam score.
You can easily see the spam score when you find expired domains by checking the organic search history on any SEO tool.
If you see that the organic search history dropped suddenly and never recovered, you should avoid buying that expired domain or any expired domain names related to it.
5. Indexed Pages
Indexed pages are good expired domains because it means that the “Googlebot” has checked the page for content and meaning and has been stored in the Google index.
This is good because only indexed pages can be shown in the Google search engine. It takes longer for non-indexed sites to appear on search engines, which is not ideal.
If Google has never indexed the website, try to find powerful expired domains already found on Google.
How to Evaluate an Expired Domain
These are the steps you need to take when evaluating expired domains. These are vital when you need to know how to find expired domains.
1. Check Domain Authority
Source: WebFX
The first thing you should check when trying to find expired domains to buy is the authority of the expired domain. You’ll see this score on many marketplace websites.
When checking the DA (Domain Authority) score, you should make sure that the website itself is related to the topic or category your website will be about.
If you get a specific domain that doesn’t match the topics or niches you’ll be talking about, the backlinks and authority won’t mean much.
2. Analyze the Domain’s Backlinks
Source: SEOClarity
The backlinks of the expired domain that you’re looking at are also essential to check out. They also need to be of high quality and authority.
If an expired domain has many backlinks, but they’re not organic or spam, you should avoid buying it altogether. It might be banned from appearing on any search engine.
3. Check for Penalties or Bans
Source: Google APIs
The bans that happen to expired domains or deleted domains happen when they have too many spam backlinks, the content posted is illegal, or many other reasons.
If the website age is pretty old and it has no bans, then it should be good to go. On the flip side, if it’s pretty new and already has a lot of bans, you might want to avoid it.
4. Research Domain History
Researching the history of expired domains is another part of how to find expired domains. This will help you avoid getting domains that are notorious or associated with illegal activities.
Remember: websites and a fresh domain aren’t just banned because of spam. There are shady businesses and activities that happen that you don’t want to be caught up in.
PRO TIP: You can search for old content using the Wayback Machine tool.
5. Look for Trademark Issues
Source: Online Tools Expert
While researching the history, you should also check if there are any trademark issues or lawsuits filed against any of the domains you’re looking at.
The worst case scenario is that the name of the domains themselves are copyrighted and cannot be used – in which case you just wasted money on buying it.
You also don’t want to go through the hassle of being sent plenty of legal notices. Even if you may not be implicated, it’s best to just avoid the hassles entirely.
How Can I Utilize Expired Domains?
There are a few ways that you can use expired domains to give you benefits that a brand-new domain may not be able to.
Building Authority Sites
Source: Authority Hacker
The advantage of using expired domains to build a new website on is that they already have high authority and backlinks to begin with rather than a new domain.
This means that you just need to focus on building the content of the same website instead of worrying about building the SEO score.
Why start from the bottom with a new website when you can use the existing website to your advantage?
Build Private Blog Networks
Source: SEObility
Building a private blog network involves using expired domains to build a collection of highly authoritative sites in the specific topic or niche that your website is about.
This requires more domains than building from one, but the growth is much faster, and you’re more likely to reach higher up in search results.
You can then use these sites to grow incoming links and redirect traffic from there to your site. This is organic because you’re using real expired domains.
301 Redirects
Source: Motopress
Finally, the most straightforward way to use expired domains is to use them as 301 redirects that will just load your main site instead of building many smaller ones.
Although the setup process depends on your server, the 301 redirect is a type of status code or protocol that instantly transfers users to the most relevant page you want.
This passes a small part of the link juice and all existing traffic from the old domains to the newer ones.
Advantages of Expired Domains
There are a few advantages when you find domains that are expired and use them in the ways we’ve enumerated above. Here are a few of them:
- Cheaper than registering new domains
- Uses the existing performance metrics like web traffic and authority
- Saves time in making the new site better
- Can perform domain flipping to earn a quick buck
Disadvantages of Expired Domains
However, there are also disadvantages when it comes to using expired domains. Here are the most notable ones:
- Risky if the last website has a bad reputation
- Users used to the old site might get confused
- Good quality domains dropped are still pretty expensive
Extra Tips for Finding an Expired Domain
We have a few tips for you to follow if you want to find expired domains and not get scammed or waste your time and money.
Tip #1: Use Multiple Sources
Source: CloudFabrix
Even if a marketplace website has good info and you can usually create a free account to save your progress, you should still do further research.
It doesn’t hurt to individually check a certain domain’s SEO score and other performance metrics before buying it, especially if it’s quite expensive.
Tip #2: Set Up Alerts
Source: Apple Support
The second tip we’d recommend is setting up alerts if you’re watching a bid or waiting for domains to be dropped or expire.
This makes it easier to monitor which ones are available and if the price goes up or down. This allows you to snag your ideal domain name before anyone else gets it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Now that you know more about expired domains, how to find them, and what to look for, you may still have some questions relating to them.
We’ve answered the most common ones below.
Are Expired Domains Good for Business?
Yes, they’re good for business because it’s much easier for a business to recover capital from spending on expired domains than building new ones.
Can I Know the Owner of the Expired Domain?
You can try checking through the WHOIS lookup tool. However, if the expired domain has been expired for a long time, the data might have been deleted already.
How Do You Register a Domain?
You must find a domain registrar through a marketplace or broker or search for one online. Marketplaces and brokers are more convenient but might charge extra fees.
Conclusion
How to find expired domains and make the most of them for your business, website, or online blog can be tricky because of the many options available.
We hope this article helped you understand the best process to find one and what to look for to get the most for your money.
The most important thing to remember is to do a lot of research before buying expired domains – especially their history.