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How to Find Quality Expired SEO Domains

by DRL Team | Domains

Updated on
Mar 1, 2023

SEO domains are those that carry with them strong metrics and backlinks, making them a prime asset to fast-track your search engine rankings.

These domains can be found in the secondary market for this type of assets, which usually includes deleted domains and expired domain marketplaces (auctions such as GoDaddy, Dynadot, etc.)

SEO domain names can provide you with a huge advantage at the time of launching a website or building backlinks to an existing one, and you can learn how to find them in this comprehensive guide.

Just think about how much money you could save if you acquire a domain name that has an established history and a solid backlink profile, plus targeted traffic already coming in, all for the same price as a new domain, or for a price that is a fraction of the cost of building that history and backlink profile (and the authority that comes with it).

There are several ways in which you can take advantage of expired SEO domains, but to understand this we must first delve into a basic concept.

Expired Domains, What Are They?

Expired domains are those that were registered at some point but not renewed for another year, so now anyone can re-register hem given that they have expired and become available for purchase.

There are several potential causes of a domain name’s expiration, including the closure of an organization or the owner’s simple forgetfulness to renew the name.

Expired domains have several advantages that are often overlooked, such as preexisting link profiles and authority that may be used for other purposes. These domains are precisely what is known as SEO domains.

What Can You Do and How Can You Benefit from Expired SEO Domains?

There are many potential applications for expired domain SEO domain names, and I will share with you four of the most common ones.

#1: Building a Dominant Online Presence in Your Niche

Since I discovered the power of SEO domains, I have rarely started a new authority or niche site on a completely new domain.

The reason being that from an SEO standpoint, it takes a lot of effort and money to build up the page authority of a brand-new domain name, whereas using an aged SEO domain brings in massive savings in terms of time and money while significantly increasing your chances of successfully competing for the top positions in the search engines.

So nowadays I opt to purchase previously used, but highly authoritative and well-linked-to domains that have expired due to lack of renewal by the previous owner.

This offers me a significant head start, and more often than not, all it takes to break onto the top page of search results is to build out a content-rich site on one of these powerful authority packed SEO domains.

With a new domain, you simply won’t have this advantage.

#2: Building You Very Own Private Blog Network

With this approach, you will be able to boost your site’s ranking by using a battery of high-quality authoritative sites with topical relevance to your main website, sites that you will have created using expired SEO domain names.

This strategy can be very effective even in today’s state of SEO; however, it is important you learn how to identify and purchase expired domain names in your topic that have a clean link profile and spam-free background.

#3: 301 Redirects

You may easily 301 redirect the previously expired domain you purchased to your active website.

This will immediately begin transferring some of the ranking and authority of the previous domain to your new one. The presence of preexisting traffic to the domain name is highly preferred.

You can get away with doing a few of these to your primary site for a quick shortcut, but this approach comes with a warning, because Google and the other search engines will generally dislike the presence of more than two or three 301 setups.

Therefore, it is not a good idea to make this a regular part of your link-building strategy, just reserve it for a couple of very high quality or high traffic domains.

#4: Reselling

The market for SEO domains is huge, and there are thousands of players in this arena constantly looking for domains with strong link profiles and metrics, because they know that the cost of building links and authority from scratch is very high, so paying a few hundred dollars (sometimes even thousands) for one if these domains is actually a bargain for the trained SEO expert.

That is why SEO domain prices can go into several hundreds or thousands depending on metrics and other factors. Just as an example, take a look at this domain, which at the time of writing this post has the following metrics: TF10, DA51, SS1 and DR 48 and has a current bid of $2,650 with 4 days to go, meaning it will likely end much higher.

And keep in mind that this is not even a great name, so it is actually pulling this price on the heels of its SEO value alone.

This gives you an idea of the kind of price you can get for one of these SEO domains, even if the name is not catchy.

So, if you manage to find expired domains with good metrics at or below $300-$400, you can then flip them for a higher price at the GoDaddy auction marketplace for a nice profit.

I have personally purchased domains for around $250 at GoDaddy’s auctions marketplace and then flipped them right there for twice that price or more within the next couple of months.

What is a Good Price for an Expired SEO Domain?

The major reason I invest in expired SEO domain names is to jumpstart my search engine optimization efforts.

This head start is so substantial that, unless I am aiming for a very specific branding goal, I will always choose an expired SEO domain as a starting point for any new web development project.

When determining the price of a domain name, the primary question you need to answer answer is:

How much money would it take to create the same set of backlinks and build up the authority this domain offers?

It’s important to consider not just the monetary expense, but also the time commitment involved in creating a backlink profile on par with that of the competition.

This makes it very simple to analyze the backlink profile of an expired domain and calculate its real SEO worth.

The Simple Way to Discover Highly Authoritative SEO Domains

Now that you understand why it’s a good idea to take advantage of an expired SEO domain, I’ll teach you where to look for them quickly and easily.

Expired domains can be found using both paid and free tools, so we will have a look at some of the best ones in both categories, starting with the ones you can access at no cost.

Free Tools for Finding Expired SEO Domains

Believe it or not, it is possible to find domains with great metrics and valuable backlinks without having to pay any fees, and you are about to find out all about them.

ExpiredDomains.net

This tool, which has what is probably the largest database of expired domains of any other, is 100% free and offers many features and filters to narrow down your search based on different factors.

ExpiredDomains.net pulls data from several popular domain metric tools (such as Majestic and SEMRush) that will allow you to customize your searches and find good prospects with SEO value.

The downside of this tool is that it has limited information in terms of SEO metrics and lacks important data such as Moz DA and spam score as well ahrefs DR. This means that once you build a list of possible SEO domains worth looking at, you will still need to go ahead and run a manual check of the missing metrics yourself (something that will usually come with a cost both in terms of time and money).

But other than that, ExpiredDomains.net is a great tool to keep in mind in your quest for valuable domains, and a good place to start, especially if you are looking for domains beyond its mere SEO value.

Domain Research Labs

This is us, and as much as our opinion could be considered biased, we certainly have no reservation in ranking our tool as one of the best for SEO domain search.

The reason is simple: we build our database by analyzing and curating daily lists comprised of hundreds of thousands of expired domains every day, leaving only those with some level of SEO value; then we weed out all the assets with high spam scores and run a metric check on the resulting domains to feature only those with low spam and overall solid metrics.

This means that by looking at our database of SEO domains, you will be working with a clean and fully vetted list of prospects for your SEO projects without having to spend a single dime or even a single minute doing research or running metrics scans on thousands of domains, because we do all that heavy lifting for you and provide you with one of the best SEO domain database you can find anywhere, and the best part is that it is 100% free; no membership fee of any kind is required.

Our database includes the most important metrics such as ahrefs DR, Moz DA and spam score, Majestic TF and more.

We update our database daily to make sure you get the freshest data and metrics on 800 – 1000 SEO domains. On top of that, we offer several useful filters that will allow you to refine your searches based on price, specific metrics or name, all at no cost to you, so make sure to check out our tool before deciding to spend money on any of the paid options.

Paid Tools for Finding Expired SEO Domains

As it happens with any valuable information, there are always options to obtain it for a fee, and this section of our article is dedicated to sharing the best ones that you can access by paying their price.

Spamzilla

This service adds hundreds of domains every day, pulling data from some of the top domain metrics providers, such as Moz and Majestic, and they have an automated system that allows you to perform custom checks on any specific asset you may be interested in.

Similar to our free SEO domain database, Spamzilla will have all the relevant metrics in one convenient location that you can access as a member, to assist you in figuring out which domains are worth your time and which you should avoid.

They offer some great options for filtering and organizing information on the domains present in their database, which is one of the features I personally like about their service.

However, unlike our SEO domain database, Spamzilla does not offer what I think is the most important metric of all, which is ahrefs’ domain rating or DR, considered to be the gold standard in the SEO industry for domain strength evaluation.

This means that once you select some possible assets from their database, you will have to go to ahrefs and pay for an additional subscription in order to check the domains’ DR.

This tool has a monthly price tag of $37 and will get you access to about 1800 domains per month depending on the flow of expired domains with SEO value entering the secondary market.

DomCop

This domain name search tool is very popular among the paid options because, similarly to Domain Research Labs and Spamzilla, it allows you to quickly find lists of expired domains and helpful metrics such as Moz DA, Majestic TF, and more, however, like Spamzilla, it lacks the ever-important DR metric provided by ahrefs.

As a result, users will always have quick access to the main domain metrics, meaning they will waste less time doing manual searches for expired domains. However, unlike our database, they update their metrics and data every seven days, meaning that you may get outdated information from time to time whenever there is a variation in any of the listed domain’s profiles.

The idea behind this service is also to help you narrow down a potentially overwhelming number of domain names to just a handful that fit your needs based on metrics and other data provided by DomCop, so it will certainly allow you to complete a job that used to take hours in just a few minutes.

DomCop has a rather steep price tag of $64 per month, which may be justified if you feel there are features necessary to your SEO domain search that only this service can provide. Otherwise, you are better off using our free service or one with a lower monthly fee.

Domain Hunter Gatherer

This tool requires installation on your PC and simplifies the process of identifying and filtering out expired domains with robust backlink profiles. In addition, it offers a feature that other services do not: you may use it to locate and register expired Web 2.0 subdomains, allowing you to quickly and easily relaunch sites on 2.0 platforms with just a few mouse clicks.

Domain Hunter Gatherer offers important data from backlink and SEO analysis tools like Majestic and Moz. With this information, evaluating the asset’s quality is a much easier job.

One of the problems I find with DHG is that, as the previous paid options, it is also missing information regarding ahrefs DR, which is essential to get a full picture of the overall profile of the asset, and something we offer in our free SEO domain database at no cost.

Their plans start at $27 per month. However, since this one runs on your computer, using proxies and VPS might be necessary in order to run it efficiently, meaning you will likely incur extra costs if you want to make the most of this tool and its features.

Free Expired Domain Database With Metrics