Aff website on expired domain - I need some advice/help from the experts

[Florin]

I need an advice from the SEO experts here:
Lets say that I want to build an aff website, I choose an expired domain with very good metrics and backlinks, I put the old content on it for 2-3 weeks and I reindex it... What should I do after that? How do I keep the linkjuice if I change the content and start building the new site on this domain? Should I 302 all the existing content to the root domain? (will it keep the power? Will I loose the links?) Should I keep the pages linking to my domain but do not link from the domain to those pages? (I would never put them in the menu of the new website, practically making them orphan pages)... How do you guys proceed after buying a domain with good backlinks and want to setup a new website on that domain, with new content and keep the existing linkjuice?

 

[built]

I've always just looked for the pages with the most links and 301d them to the root domain.

Never bothered with re indexing old content etc.

Worked for me but might be better ways to do it

 

[Florin]

I see,
should I keep the url for the pages with powerfull links and put different content and title or should I just redirect all old urls to the root domain?

 

[Al Ed Zoo]

I did this and it worked well.

Just put your 80/20 hat on and keep the pages that have the most links pointing to them. Rebuild them and 301 old URLs to those new ones. Then continue building the site as normal.

I think the biggest benefit is going to come from having an aged domain anyway, so just start building that site out!

 

[Ryuzaki]

Should I 302 all the existing content to the root domain? (will it keep the power? Will I loose the links?)

No. This is a risk that has already been "attacked" by Google. They look for mass redirects to the homepage since that's what lazy SEO's do. Also, you want to use a 301 for a Permanent redirect, not a 302 which is Temporary.

About to About. Contact to Contact. Homepage to Homepage. All of those boilerplate pages can be 301'd to each other. For the main pages on the old domain that received a lot of links, you can copy and paste the old content and keep it, or rework it to match your new style. But it needs to very tightly stay the same in terms of topic and relevance, down to the keywords if you don't want to risk a reset of link juice.

Those mass-301's to the homepage... It's a toss-up. Some people manage to get it to work, others see disaster. I wouldn't risk it if it's not a spam play but a serious authority site.

You also need to make sure this old domain was in the same vertical at least. Trying to 301 an old Wedding domain to a new Skateboarding site isn't going to work at all. They need to be related. It doesn't have to be a 1-to-1 match, but it needs to at least be in the same ballpark.

should I keep the pages linking to my domain but do not link from the domain to those pages? (I would never put them in the menu of the new website, practically making them orphan pages)...

I wouldn't orphan anything, ever. If you choose to, you'll want to have them in the sitemap at least, and either submit that to Webmaster Console or at least stick a link to it in the robots.txt.

There are ways you can not orphan them but set it up so visitors never find them. Think about having links to them in your sitewide pages or in the footer in a smaller link that's not noticeable, etc. You can cram them under a parent page or something and link to that page from somewhere, while having the parent page have some content that links to them. I'm not saying to do that exactly, but illustrating that it's easy to not orphan them but not really have them as part of the user experience. The best move is to recreate the content and tweak it to make sense with the rest of the site and let them roll through the blog like normal.