Oftentimes, individuals and businesses will have made a domain only to leave it to expire. This happens when the involved party chooses not to renew the domain, thus having the registrant forfeit their rights to it.
Although new domains are always up for grabs, expired domains still have an appeal to them, which has earned the love of many people. However, as odd as it may seem, people would rather go through the apparent hassle of purchasing an expired domain over choosing to make an entirely new one, and here is why:
How to Purchase an Expired Domain?
The acquisition of an expired domain may seem to be rather lengthy and difficult. However, it is not. The moment a domain is not renewed it becomes instantly put up for auction after 30 days from the registrant’s failure of renewal.
The process to buy the domain is quite simple from then onwards, as all you have to do is make sure your bid is the highest. These auctions last for 7 days, and during these days you are able to place a bid at any time you desire.
Typically, you will keep yourself posted with the auction and place a bid as you go. However, there is another way you can place your bid, and that is by placing a proxy bid.
This is where the system will automatically place a bid on your behalf until it has reached the maximum proxy bid you have chosen. If you were to place a bid in the last 5 minutes of the auction, the end time for the auction becomes extended by 5 minutes. Though, this can only happen 20 times before the end time becomes set and unchanged.
When the auction ends, if your bid is the highest, you will be given 2 days to pay for the domain. However — side note — the auction may get canceled if the original owner, the registrant that is, renews their domain before you have made your payment to the auction.
Benefits of Buying an Expired Domain
The appeal behind expired domains becomes particularly noticeable for businesses and individuals that hope to benefit from employing said domain. Oftentimes, the chief benefit of an expired domain lies within its Search Engine Optimization (SEO) value. Though, you would like to be wary of the SEO spam that comes with the baggage. The expired domain wizards at SpamZilla explain the importance of spam checking, especially with domains that hold a lot of backlink data and historic data. Doing so will take the hard work and risk out of buying expired domains.
1. Authority Site
Part of the love people have for expired domains is their ability to utilize it into building an authority site. This becomes uniquely useful for people who are looking to build a new site or blog. With the help of an expired domain, you will be able to benefit from its existing backlinks and SEO value, which will have your site or blog rank higher right away.
2. Backlinking
Old and expired domains contain a lot of ‘link juice,’ which primarily comes with age. Often, people or business organizations will use a sort of mini-site and have it linked to their website. This will have that ‘juice’ transferred to your site or blog. As you will find, people mostly do this by linking their site to a Private Blog Network, which helps in making things look natural whilst benefiting from the traffic the expired domain holds.
3. Redirect The Site
Sometimes, people will divert from the hassle and troubles of building a mini-site and will use the expired domain to redirect to their existing domain. This also transfers ‘link juice.’ It will be done by having site X.com (which is the expired domain) redirect the user to site Y.com (other existing domain). Though, keep in mind that you will need a domain that is in the same or similar industry.
4. Make Profit
Expired domains are often acquired so that they are then sold for profit. What you will do is continue to increase its SEO value, which you can do by adding to the already existing backlinks, and then resell it for a higher price. A process is similar to private equity.
Expired domains hold many advantages that surpass the advantages of a new domain. This is simply because of the SEO value garnered and accrued over its time. They make everything easier and expedite the backlinking process. Though, you should be careful when acquiring an expired domain, as they may contain spam.