Many people are now buying expired domains based on the number of backlinks or the ranking of an expired domain, only to discover that these have mysteriously disappeared a month or so later. Is it that the search engines have black listed the domain, or could you have done something at the beginning to prevent this from happening?

There are several checks you should do before purchasing an expiring domain, to avoid losing all the value after you have purchased your expired domain.

One of the main reasons that an expiring domain can look attractive is the number of backlinks, but a word of warning - sometimes search engines can treat one domain exactly the same as another - same ranking, same backlinks, same everything. This can come about as a website based on a domain name can have several other domains pointing to this same website. For example, domain.com could be the main domain name, but domain.net may also be pointing at the same website. Depending on how the domains have been set up, some search engines will treat domain.net exactly the same as domain.com.

One way of finding the number of backlinks to a domain is by doing a search on a search engine using the word “link” followed by a colon and then the URL of the domain, eg link:http://www.domain.com

Using our example, if you were to check domain.net and found it had thousands of backlinks and soon to expire, then you may be tempted to purchase the domain name the second it expired. Once purchased you would then go about setting up a website on your new domain expecting the visitors to be pouring in. At this point, domain.net no longer points to domain.com and so any affiliation to domain.com stops. The search engines will no longer treat domain.net the same as domain.com, but will now treat it on its own merits. This normally results on zero backlinks and no ranking. You will have lost all the benefits you hoped to gain from the domain name and need to start promoting your new website from scratch.

To avoid this from happening, after you have done your link search on a search engine you should then visit several of the websites that are listed as linking to your domain and check the links are actually there. You will find that in a surprising high number of cases the links you expect to find are simply missing from these webpages. If this is the case with your chosen domain, then I would suggest ignoring this domain name and finding another.

I have conducted several experiments on expired domains. If the backlinks were real and existed prior to the domain expiring, then in most cases the domain would retain its original ranking. If the backlinks were fake then within a few weeks of obtaining the expired domain all rankings were lost.

There are several services on the internet that can provide data on expiring domains, and some of these include checking to see if search engine rankings are real or fake.



Cheap domain registration

l domain traders, the most important goal is to monetize their expired domains to create sizeable online income. In fact, the big buck lies in how you flip and empower your domains. Domain traders also understand and accept the reality that a large inventory of expired domains is a wasteful expenditure and wastage of time. The real money lies in how you enable your domains as viable commercial units and not in maintaining them by spending lot of invaluable cash. You will need to look for ways and methods that can limit wasteful expenditure, while you are holding on to the domains. Here are some of the simple and effective techniques that will help you monetize your domains:

Using technique of creating type-in type of traffic: The most precious thing with an domain is the existence of type-in type of traffic. In essence, an domain based on a great keyword will receive plenty of type-in type of traffic. An intelligent domain trader will ensure that he or she will place the domain on a beneficial PPC program just to utilize or exploit the accumulated type-in type of traffic. There are domain traders who make more than $500 with a single top and premium expired domain! This is a better way of flipping your domain, instead of just holding on to a domain. Once you add enough value to a good type-in type of domain, you can consider selling it at a premium price. A type-in type of expired domain can help you recover all overhead expenses incurred in maintaining and managing domains.

Using advantages of parked domains: A number of service providers allow you to utilize the services of domain parking by adding useful content and promotional banners over a simple web page. When you display a well designed landing page, you can milk all the positive benefits of domain parking to their maximum possible extent. However, you will need to try out a number of different combinations of promotions and advertisements to derive the best possible returns. Different domain traders use different types of methods and promotions to float their parking pages. Most of the parking agencies provide you simple default type of landing page that may not be really efficient to derive the best results.

Redirecting traffic from a parked page to your web site: If you own a full-pledged web portal, then you can use the power of parked pages to import additional traffic to it. This simple action will allow you to monetize your web portal with additional income as well. What you need to do is to simply redirect the traffic from your parked pages to the web portal.

Using Web 2.0 community: One of the newest trends in expired domain industry is to use the positive benefits of Web 2.0 community to advertise your domains. When you convert your domains with traffic into useful Web 2.0 community, you can supplement the value of your domains.

There are several other ways and means that can help you monetize your list of expired domain names. You may need to assess and evaluate each one of them before using them to monetize your domains.