An expired domain may have been used by one or more persons in the past. They may have designed a website, advertised it, linked it to search engines, done business deals on it and even had reciprocal link connections with other websites.
Why are valuable domains ever allowed to expire?
There are many reasons, including but not limited to:
- Not enough funds to renew them
- Invalid contact e-mail address
- Loss of interest in online world
- Closing down of business
- Lack of knowledge about value of domain names
- Being away at time of domain renewal
There may have been any of the aforementioned reasons or any other cause, but whatever the case, the domain is now an available option for you. You can use it by designing a website on it or divert traffic to your existing website.
The main advantage of taking over an expired domain is the traffic. There may still be visitors, who, on finding the better alternative offered by you, can redirect their business. It is not impossible to know the exact amount to expired traffic to a particular domain. However, the analysis of some specific aspects lets you gauge the amount of expired traffic. They are as follows:
Link Popularity
This will give you an estimate of the number of portals or web pages that are linked to the expired domain. The more the number of links, the higher the possibility of future traffic. Also, higher link popularity betters the probability of quality traffic.
Alexa Rank
An Alexa toolbar keeps tabs on the number of hits for a domain and then awards a rank based on this. If the site has had no traffic for the past three months, it is automatically dropped by Alexa. So, look for an Alexa rank to get an idea about the number of visits and the domain’s worth.
Google PageRank
The PageRank is a value that Google gives to a web page, based on the number of and quality of incoming links. The popularity of a web page is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 and this is called a Google PageRank. This ranking system takes into account the number of quality web pages that have links to the web page. Normally the homepage of a web page would have the highest PageRank.
About PageRank, Google says: “The heart of our software is PageRank(tm), a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Serge Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.”
A Google toolbar is required to obtain a Google PageRank. You can type in the website name in the address bar of your browser and get the PageRank.
Yahoo and DMOZ Listings
A domain may have been indexed by search engines. The domain owner may have paid for registrations on search engines like Yahoo and LookSmart. A domain also may have been approved by a DMOZ editor. If you take over a domain, these listings are automatically transferred to you. You can do your own research by visiting these search engines and typing the full URL in the directories section. Your results page will show you whether the domain is listed with them or not.
An inclusion in the top search engines does not ensure continuous visits but it certainly increases the chances of receiving worthy traffic. If you do not want to use the domain yourself, you can easily turn it around and sell it. It will certainly be profitable if the domain is registered with the top ten search engines.
Where to Get Those Domains?
There are many sources, but the author considers ExpiredDomains.com to be the best where he managed to get many valuable domains. Happy hunting!
