Do you have a website and want more traffic? If that’s the case, link building is an important part of your SEO (search engine optimization). In this article, we’ll discuss how you can link to expired domain names and give you tips and tricks to get started. Sounds interesting? Then you should definitely keep reading.

A good link from another website to yours gives you two important benefits:

• Quality links create a direct connection from another website to yours and therefore generate more traffic.

• Quality links guarantee a better position in search engines and therefore generate more traffic.

There are several ways to get quality links to your website. One of them is through expired domain names. For the rest of this article, we’ll call your own website the “main website.”

In the past, many companies have been successful in buying and using domain names that have been cancelled. Such a domain name already has content, backlinks, history, and authority, giving you a good foundation to build on and saving you a lot of valuable time.

Keep in mind that in recent years, Google has become increasingly critical of link building, making it more difficult than before. However, it can still be a very useful tactic in your SEO strategy if you know what you are doing and what you need to pay attention to.

WHERE DO YOU FIND OR BUY AUTHORITY EXPIRED DOMAIN NAMES?

At catchtiger.com, under the domain name auction listing, you’ll find a list of all multi-ccTLD domain names expiring in the future. To make it easier, relevant data is collected for each domain name. This helps you judge whether a domain name is suitable for link building. If you have found a domain name, you can make an offer.

After the auction expires, CatchTiger will attempt to register the domain name (this process is also called Drop Catching). But how do you know which domain name is suitable for link building and which is not?

SELECT THE RIGHT DOMAIN NAME FOR LINK BUILDING AND TRAFFIC

Choosing the correct domain name is very important. Eventually you want a return on your investment and you don’t want to get penalized by the major search engines. Below are some points to consider when buying an authoritative domain name to get more traffic and a better search engine ranking.

1. Find a domain name that is relevant to your main website. You can do this by going to Catchtiger.com and using the search function where you will enter a keyword. You will immediately receive a list of released domain names containing the keyword of your choice. If the correct keyword is not listed, you can always add a free alert on this keyword. If you do this, you will automatically receive an email when a domain name with this keyword is added to the auctioned domain name list.

2. Once you’ve found the correct domain name, see how much domain authority the site has. You can easily see this in the CatchTiger Expert overview. The higher the authority, the higher the possibility of traffic.

3. Other tests that are often used to verify the authority of the domain name, and that also check if this authority is of “quality”, are the Majestic Trust flow and the Majestic Citation flow. You can find both reviews in the CatchTiger Expert Overview. The flow of trust/flow of citations is known as the trust rate. When a website has many incoming links (High Citation Flow) from unreliable sources (Low Trust Flow), the Trust Ratio is very low. A high trust index means more quality inbound links.

4. If the authority and trust relationship is good, you can look at the number of backlinks. You can easily find this in the CatchTiger Expert Overview. The more backlinks, the higher the chance for traffic and authority.

5. Do you want to know how long a website has been active on the domain name? Then look at the archive.org score. The higher the archive score, the more often the website in the domain will be indexed by archive.org and the longer it will have been active. Also, on the archive.org website, you will be able to see what the website looked like and if it was a “real” company.

Do you want to research the domain name beyond the reviews you can find on CatchTiger before buying them for traffic or link building? Then take a look at the following points:

1. Once you’ve found a suitable domain name, make sure it’s indexed by Google by searching Google for “site: http://www.examplesite.com”. In addition, you can also search for “http://www.examplesite.com” to see how often Google finds this domain name on other websites.

2. Check if the domain name has a “spam” score. You can verify this with the free tool opensiteexplorer.org. The higher the spam score, the higher the chance of inbound links from spammy websites.

3. Check with Google if there was any negative publicity about the brand.

If all the above points are positive, you can participate in the domain name auction. Auctions start at €25. When the highest bidder is known, CatchTiger will attempt to register the domain name for you. If this is achieved, then it is time to take the next step.

HOW TO USE THE DOMAIN NAME FOR MORE TRAFFIC AND A BETTER POSITION IN THE SEARCH ENGINES?

You can use a domain name in two ways. The first and easiest is a 301 redirect to your own main website or to an underlying secondary website (within a network).

One big downside to this is that the value of the link decreases over time. And thus, the value of your domain also decreases. This can build momentum in the short term, but it is not suitable for the long term, so we do not recommend it.

Also, it is very important that the domain name that links directly to your main website is of good quality. This prevents your main site from receiving tainted links.

A better way to use the domain name you purchased is to create relevant content. Keep in mind that search engines are not fans of link networks, so to achieve maximum results you need to be more creative.

Create a secondary or tertiary website with your purchased domain names. In this way, you build a pyramid of websites aimed at boosting the main site in search engines and generating more traffic. Here are some steps to set up your own network:

1. Use the best and cleanest domain names (that meet the points discussed above) to create a secondary website with unique content relevant to your main website.

2. Apart from the fact that your domain name has received a proper boost because it already has authority, it is advisable to keep this authority intact and improve it as much as possible. Good ways include writing guest blogs, signing up for quality directories, forums, etc. If you’re interested in a good overview of SEO link building strategies, read Creative ICT’s Link Building Strategy 2017 blog.

3. If you have a number of quality secondary websites linking to your main website, it’s time to build your tertiary network. Again, you will be using released domain names that already have value. For your tertiary network, you can use domain names with lower authority, of which there are more available. Please note that it is important that these are “clean” domain names that comply with the points discussed above.

4. On your third-party websites, create mini-sites or blogs with content relevant to your main website. Then link this tertiary website to your child websites.

If you want to go further, it is also possible to create a quaternary network. Below are some of the key issues when setting up your own network:

1. Start mapping your network, which will help you choose the right domain names and give you an overview.

2. Make sure you always have control over the links between the different networks. If one of your websites gets a penalty from Google, you can easily remove this link.

3. Try to host different websites in different places, so they don’t connect through a shared hosting IP address. Another option is to use SEO hosting. This is a service where each website is hosted on a unique IP address, which means that they are not associated with each other. Do you want more information about this? Then look at http://www.privateproxies.nl.

CONCLUSION

Using expired domain names is a great way to boost your main site and is a great addition to your overall SEO strategy.

In addition, the creation of your own network of websites can also be relevant for third parties. You can place link requests on secondary or tertiary sites in exchange for links from others.

However, keep in mind that building your own website network is a time consuming task. You need a good plan to acquire the right domain names, create good content, and rank for the right keywords.

Do you have any questions about buying SEO domain names? Contact us today and we will help you.