Exp 6 - Playing on Easy Mode with Expired Domains

[alexodysglobal]

At some point, you’ve undoubtedly run into the concept of “expired domains”. Then you quickly hear about how complicated it is and how easy it is to mess up and waste your entire investment.

Half of this is true, and the other half is fear-mongering. It’s not as complicated as some people (sellers of domains, PBN builders, your competitors) want you to believe, but you definitely can mess it up, too.

I’m hear to clear the air. I’m going to tell you everything I know about picking up expired domains. When you’re done reading this you’ll know how to vet the domains to make sure they’re not only free on penalties but are extra powerful. You’ll know how to set them up with redirects so you get the maximum value out of your investment.

And if you don’t want to deal with finding and vetting the domains yourself, there’s an easy solution to that too. Let’s get started.

Let’s Cut to the Chase… Do Expired Domains Work?

Why bother reading this guide (or bother buying one) if expired domains don’t work? Would SEO’s and Internet Marketers use them if they didn’t work? Of course not. The simple answer is that they not only work, but they work a little too good.

Have you ever been to one of the giant amusement parks and waited in line for 45 minutes for each ride? You’ve planned all year to come to this park, just like you’ve carefully planned out your new project. Then you find all you’re doing is waiting in line. This is what SEO’s do. They plan and plan and finally roll out their new site only to have to wait on Google for what seems like forever.

Then you notice there’s a handful of people with special wristbands. They aren’t waiting at all. In fact, they’re cutting EVERYONE in line and causing you to wait longer. What’s the deal? You want to know where they got these VIP wristbands RIGHT NOW.

In our search engine amusement park, the VIP wristbands that shortcut you to the front of the line are expired domains.

And yes, that’s exactly how they work. Everyone else publishes 100 pieces of content and then wait for 12 months for Google to accept you’re not a spammer and finally let you rank to your full potential.

Not you, though. Your expired domain has already gone through all those age-based tests and passed with flying colors. In the meantime it has collected a ton of great backlinks, too. And to top it off, it’s a nice, brandable domain name. What’s not to love?

Of course, I can’t just say all these things without showing you some proof. @Ryuzaki was the first Builder Society member to use one of our expired domains. He ended up inviting us here and showing us what he’s been doing with his domain here in his case study called The Eternal Grind. It’s been a year now and here’s where he’s at, in terms of organic traffic:

This is one total year of the site being alive on one of our domains that had the following stats:

• Domain Rating 35 / URL Rating 15 (Ahrefs)
• Trust Flow 10 / Citation Flow 30 (Majestic)
• Domain Authority 49 / Page Authority 37 (Moz)
• 350 Referring Domains / 15k Backlinks

I’d call this a mid-tier domain. He also had a big lapse in posting content at one point, so this Google traffic comes from about 44 posts. Anyone can use an expired domain and get that amount of content up, even a complete beginner.

So how did it go? We care about the money. He told the Builders in another thread that he spent about $2,000 on this domain. Where is he at now? Last month was $1,225 and he told me that this month is looking to be just under $1,500.

He’s almost earning the entire price of the domain PER MONTH now.

It flat out works and works good. But don’t think it’s some magical method that helps you escape from the responsibility of doing your part. You will have to work hard yourself. In fact, the harder and faster you work at the beginning, the bigger your results will be.

There are even more impressive results out there, but @Ryuzaki’s are pretty indicative of how it goes on average. You publish some content, get busy and distracted, come back to it, etc. As long as you get content up (the more the merrier), the age and backlinks will do the rest.

What are Expired Domains?

There’s many millions of registered domains out there. As we all know, most get registered and don’t even get used. Many that do get used suck in some way or another. They have trash names, unappealing TLD extensions, never gain backlinks, etc.

But there’s a bunch that get registered and are used for real businesses. These do real PR work and marketing. They make a big splash on the scene and over the years business dies down and they eventually stop renewing their domains.

That’s where we, as SEO’s and Internet Marketers, can step in and scoop them up. These are expired domains. They’re aged (in the eyes of Google), have great branded names, and have existing backlinks pointing to them.

But it’s not all that simple. The industry has come up with a lot of various names to try to clear up the confusion. Aged domains, expired domains, dropped domains, non-dropped domains, etc… they all refer to different things. But most of us still simply call them “expired domains”.

The two kinds you want to know about are:

• Dropped Domains
• Aged Domains (or Non-Dropped Domains)

Dropped Domains actually “drop” from the registry. They can end up on drop lists if another registrar buys them or they can fully drop and anyone can re-register them for cheap. These have their WhoIs date reset and probably fell out of the Google Index (causing their “Google date” to reset, too, sometimes). In my opinion, these are riskier purchases. For every person you see saying these are still good and work fine, there’s a dozen more saying they saw no noticeable boost. Think carefully if you go this route. You’ll lose time, money, and energy if it doesn’t pan out.

Non-Dropped Domains are sometimes called Aged Domains purely because their WhoIs date wasn't reset. And typically, they go to auction instead of a drop list. This is where the good and really good domains end up and where we pick up ours.

It’s not absolutely critical, but I find it best if you can get the domain in your hands and begin using it before it completely drops out of the Google index. As long as the homepage remains indexed, you’re okay.

Is This Method Safe in the Eyes of Google?

You’re probably wondering if this is white hat or more of a black hat method that Google frowns upon. Google has not discouraged this at all and has actually affirmed that the backlinks still count.

I think the reason for this is that there’s a barrier to entry. Anyone ponying up the cash for an expired domain is likely going to build something of quality. And if not, then Google will find out when they root out the PBN or you blast spam links at it. So it’s no skin off their back for this method to be out there and effective. Just build a real, white hat authority site on them and you’ll not only be fine, but enjoy a sizable head start.

Why Use Expired Domains?

We’ve covered some of this already so I’ll keep it short.

You’re going to get a big SEO boost, for one. The domains are aged and have had the “throttle” released and can perform at their full potential. Simply put, you bypass the Google Sandbox.

​

Though we can argue about the details, Ryuzaki shared this example of the throttle being released at the 1 year mark for WhoIs / Google Index age. Sufficiently aged domains let you bypass this completely.

These domains also come jam-packed with tons of great backlinks. You can publish 1,000 posts, but if you have no backlinks then good luck really competing out there in the SERPs. But with these existing backlinks from powerful domains, your content will really soar.

A benefit that you never see people talk about is the “brandability” of the domain. A domain like BestWeddingDresses-2018.info might have some backlinks (and not good ones), but good luck with your branding.

Meanwhile, something like EcoState.com (I made that up, it does happen to exist) has a much greater brand associated with it. It’s short, has fewer syllables, is easy to read, etc.

When it comes to getting more backlinks, doing outreach to other real businesses, getting social shares and going viral, you already know which one has infinite more potential to win. Make sure, when you buy an expired domain, it has a great brand. It’s a huge secondary benefit that few people seem to recognize.

How to Vet an Expired Domain

You can come at this from two angles: you already know the niche you want and now you need to find a domain, or you just know you want the best expired domain you can find no matter the niche. Either way, the process is the same. Look for the following attributes:

Number of Referring Domains

The more there are, the more you’ll pay. But don’t be lazy. Many expired domains will boast hundreds of RD’s but most of them will be spam or nofollow forum links, for example. You want as many as you can from the best sites possible, but they have to be the right kind.

Contextual Links

Forum links, blog comments, social bookmarks… all of this is fine if they aren’t spam links. But what you’re really looking for are contextual links within articles. This is what Google values the most because they’re not user-generated and they went through an editorial process. You want dofollow, contextual links from high-quality websites!

Topically-Relevant Links

The majority of your links should be related to what the topic of the expired domain was about. Relevance is a huge factor these days. Make sure the site wasn’t used by someone else before (another SEO) who changed the topic and got unrelated links. You want it directly after it leaves the original business’ hands.

Branding

If you’re going through the effort, the best way to filter for quality at the start is to reject anything that doesn’t have a good brand name. Good brand names means they cared and probably attracted good links. Bad brand names means the opposite and is probably loaded with low-quality spam links.

Drop History

Some will argue otherwise, but I personally don’t want any drops from the registrar. I want to see that the WhoIs date never reset. Domains can change hands without resetting that date. If it stays dropped for long enough, there is a risk that Google will discount the links. They can also be “re-counted” as you gain trust, but there’s no point in battling this issue. You want the head start, not to have to re-earn trust.

Here's BuSo as an example:

Domain Name: BUILDERSOCIETY.COM
Updated Date: 2019-10-15T23:40:02Z
Creation Date: 2014-05-23T02:12:33Z

It's the "Creation Date" that I'm concerned with. If someone's telling you a domain is 20 years old but the creation date only goes back 3 years, then that means the domain completely dropped and was re-registered. To me, that means the domain is 3 years old, not 20 (although I care even more about how long it's been in the Google index).

Traffic History

This one is tricky. Many real businesses have no clue about on-page SEO and never get a lot of organic traffic, but they got tons of referral traffic, social media traffic, and direct traffic. Take this with a grain of salt.

For example, @Ryuzaki’s domain ranked for a lot of keywords but never high enough to get much traffic. That’s because there was zero on-page SEO being done. You can see that below:

The links can be the best in the world but without active SEO work, the old business never ranked well. That’s their loss, not yours.

Previous Uses

Check and make sure some other opportunist didn't pick up this domain, soil it, and then let it return to the auctions or drop lists. One example is domains that get a lot of type-in or referral traffic will get bought and the traffic cloaked and redirected to seedy sites and end up penalized. Other times they may have been used in a PBN or for some unrelated niche site.

The fastest way to check is to use the Wayback Machine and go through the history. You can actually pull up the site as it was throughout the years between the original owners and you, to make sure nothing unsavory happened with it.

This is what you can expect to see. Along the top you can travel back through time and see how the site was being used. You'll find interesting things, like BuSo actually existed for a split second in time in 2011 with nothing on the page but the URL itself. Then in 2014 it took the form above and has evolved ever since. You need to do this kind of check for any domain you want to buy.

Indexation

I find it best if the homepage remains indexed at the minimum. The reason is that Google has is own age that it counts from the moment of indexation. As long as the homepage stays indexed, this timer is still ticking.

Domain Age

This is related to Google’s timer as well as the original WhoIs date. The older, the better. Of course, there is a point in time where you don’t get any more benefit out of Google, but there is a chance that you’ll find more and stronger backlinks on older domains. I’d look to have a couple years of age at least.

Trademarks

Something you’ll want to consider, especially if you’ll register a trademark, is if one already exists for the old business. Typically they won’t be renewed but you don’t want someone trying to take the domain back after you spent a lot of time building out the new site. They won’t always succeed but why risk having to waste the time in a legal battle?

How to Use an Expired Domain

Finally, the real meat and potatoes! You’ve vetted (or let us do it) and picked up your expired domain. Now what?

This isn’t just for SEO’s. Everyone should be concerned with salvaging all of the backlink power they can, and this is how you do that.

Build Out Your New Site First

I like to build out the new site way ahead of time before I even shop for the perfect domain. That means designing it and pre-loading it with content on a staging server.

The reason for this is that once you have the domain in your own registrar account, you want to hit the ground running. You don’t want to waste any time because every passing day is a chance the domain falls out of Google’s index or another backlink is lost when a big site crawls their own outbound links and removes dead links.

Do not build out a crappy site! It needs to look as good or better than the previous site if you don’t want to lose backlinks over time. The webmasters on the sites that link to you must see your site and find it acceptable to link to or you’ll lose many of the links you’re paying for.

Also, don’t get clever. Build a site in the exact same niche as the previous site. It’s a must to not lose backlinks, to retain the power of the existing backlinks, and to stay topically relevant compared to what Google had in its index before.

Let me say that some people suggest you need to recreate the old site and let it sit for a while first, to make sure Google trusts it. This is pointless and not necessary. The old site already existed and achieved that goal, so there’s no need to recreate it. You don’t need the old site to be on your new hosting for a while either. Websites change IP Addresses and servers all the time. Don’t buy into this time-wasting myth.

Find Out Which Old Pages Have the Good Links

The first thing you want to do is use a tool of your choice that can tell you which of the old URLs have all of the links pointing to them. You don’t need to save every single link since many may be trash anyways. But you must save the top 80% of them at least. Tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Majestic can achieve this for you.

Decide Where to Direct the Existing Backlinks

The homepage URL will stay the same or will redirect to the new version (I mean with www or not or http:// to https://. You won’t need to worry about this.

Though they may not have backlinks, I still recommend redirecting the old boiler plate pages (like the About and Contact pages, for example) to their new locations. It could be a trust signal, so I’d take advantage of it.

The main concern is all of the backlinks pointing to old inner pages that no longer exist. You have a choice to make. Some people try to recreate content on the exact URL path like .com/category/sub-category/date-plus-title-random-numbers/. I wouldn’t bother doing that. It’s a headache that’s not necessary.

Identify any content pages that you need to recreate and have content written for them. Then you can publish them on a new, clean URL slug like .com/exact-keyword/. You can then redirect the old, ugly slug to the new one.

What you’ll find is there will be pages that got some good links but the content isn’t worth recreating or doesn’t make sense to recreate for whatever reason. So where do you aim these redirects?

The best thing is to redirect them to the closest matching page on your new site, even adjusting the content so it makes sense to the reader (maybe adding a couple paragraphs). The next best option is to redirect them to a category page that makes sense. The worst choice is to redirect them to the homepage.

That’s because PBN creators are lazy and 301 redirect all pages to the homepage. Google caught on and has admitted they use this laziness to root out PBN’s, so that’s the last thing you want to do.

Set Up the 301 Redirects

The question becomes, how do you create the 301 redirects. First take note that I’m specifically saying to use 301 redirects (not 302). 301 means it’s a permanent, purposeful redirect. 302 means it’s temporary and for Google to not be overly concerned about it. Use a 301 redirect each time.

I can’t cover every type of server and CMS, so I’ll talk about Apache and Wordpress, which is how the rest of the Digital Strategy Crash Course works too.

You have two choices:

• Manually set them up in .htaccess (fastest for the user, but complicated)
• Use a plugin to manage them (uses PHP and is slower, but easier to implement)

For the second option, the Redirection plugin by John Godley is the go-to. It’s self-explanatory once you start using it. PHP redirects are slower, but they aren’t slow enough to care. It also offers an import from CSV file, which is a big time saver. The user interface is good for non-developers:

The faster method (for you to set up and for the user) is to add the redirects to your hidden .htaccess file. This comes with an inherent risk. If you make a mistake, you can cause your entire site to break. If you are unsure about what you’re about to do, ask for help!

Where you place these redirects in the .htaccess file matters. They need to be above anything that Wordpress puts in there by default and above any code that forces http:// to redirect to https://. Not only does this save you (and Google) unnecessary redirect hops, but not doing it this way will break Wordpress.

There’s more than one method to set up the redirects. One looks like this:

# 301 Redirects
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteRule ^/maybe-a-category/old-url-location/ https://expireddomain.com/new-slug/ [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

Another method looks like this and is much simpler, but you can’t use any Regex matching:

Redirect 301 /old-url-location/ https://expireddomain.com/new-slug/

That’s it. In both cases, you need a new line for every URL you’re going to redirect. This could be an entire guide in and of itself so I’m having to keep it short. If you end up needing help, ask for help! Everyone here at Builder Society is happy to pitch in.

A Note About Archived Content

Be careful about going to the Wayback Machine and resurrecting old content that was on the expired domain. The reason is two-fold.

First, you don’t own it. The previous owner of your expired domain holds the copyright on those articles and can cause you a world of trouble for using it. Have it rewritten at the least.

Second, a black hat method is to look at all the dropped and auction domains and then go steal all the old content from the archive. So there’s a chance some moron has already used it on a spam domain and had their site penalized or de-indexed.

It’s not worth the potential waste and risk in either case. Just use brand new content and rest easy. It’s not worth saving a few bucks once you’ve already invested into an amazing expired domain.

That’s It! You’re Ready to Ride Down Easy Street!

It’s been my pleasure to share with you the entire process of understanding why you’d want to start your new project on an expired domain, learning how to vet them, and then actually using them.

If you don’t want to deal with any of that, ODYS.global is here on BuSo to help you achieve your goals. We offer pre-vetted, branded domains with wonderful backlink profiles, done-for-you sites built on your chosen domain, or pre-made sites you can invest in and flip down the line.

But with the guide above, you can get it done regardless. It’s a benefit that’s available to anyone, as long as you can invest in your project some upfront. Best of luck with your new build.

We’re here to answer any questions so fire away. Thanks for reading.

 

[fatalityhawk]

This question is regarding a domain's age.

If I want to buy an expired domain, and it gets into the auction, nobody buys it and it expires HOWEVER there are still pages in the index...

Then, will the domain keep its age until all the pages are dropped from the index, or it loses the age as soon as it expires? Thanks.

I wanted to also know if I am building out an expired domain, then would its existing link profile count towards the diversity of it? so for example if it already has 50% brand and URL anchors, does it give me the liberty to go loose on some partial and exact match anchors or do I start from scratch?

Moreover, since you have discouraged redirecting to the home page, then all these 404 to 301 plugins are worthless, hmmm.

 

[Ryuzaki]

If I want to buy an expired domain, and it gets into the auction, nobody buys it and it expires HOWEVER there are still pages in the index...

Then, will the domain keep its age until all the pages are dropped from the index, or it loses the age as soon as it expires? Thanks.

I hope you don't mind me answering. In my opinion there are two ages that matter: 1) The one based on the creation date in the WhoIs information (this is the date that resets if a domain fully expires) and 2) The age of the domain (and each individual page's own) length of time in the index.

I don't have measurements or data, but I think what I'd be concerned about is how long the homepage stays indexed. In order of what I care about:

1. I wouldn't want that dropping out of the index, first and foremost.
2. After that, my next concern is the WhoIs creation date.
3. And finally any inner pages still indexed.

I don't really care about the inner pages all that much, but the more indexed, the merrier. If the homepage is still indexed you're bound to find inner pages still indexed. But what really matters is the links pointed to them and your ability to 301 redirect them where you want them to go.

I wanted to also know if I am building out an expired domain, then would its existing link profile count towards the diversity of it? so for example if it already has 50% brand and URL anchors, does it give me the liberty to go loose on some partial and exact match anchors or do I start from scratch?

Yes, the existing link profile, including the anchor text spreads, still count. This is the main point of buying an expired domain. All the age-related stuff is a preliminary filter. After that it's all about the links. They still count if you can pass the previous tests of indexation.

Some say that even if the links get "reset" that they can regain trust over time, too, but I don't see the point in playing that game. Just move on and find another domain. Because another benefit is the time savings you get from being aged. There's no point in moving forward without that, I think.

Moreover, since you have discouraged redirecting to the home page, then all these 404 to 301 plugins are worthless, hmmm.

Yeah, John Mueller I think, or maybe it was Matt Cutts, flat out said that this is lazy, bad for them and users, and an easy way to find lazy PBNs. The main reason it's bad is because infinite 404's can be generated to your site and if you redirect them all, you're bloating out Google's database with redirects they'll try to save instead of 404 errors they'll try to drop. But mainly because you're exposing yourself as an SEO when you do crap like this.

 

[fatalityhawk]

Some say that even if the links get "reset" that they can regain trust over time, too, but I don't see the point in playing that game. Just move on and find another domain. Because another benefit is the time savings you get from being aged. There's no point in moving forward without that, I think.

Right, so at the very least, make sure the homepage and ideally some inner pages are indexed for the domain, cool. Thanks for your answer !!

 

[AlexR]

When you've bought a new powerful domain, it takes time to get new content.

In that time you're getting a ton of 404s and the big players might do link cleanups and remove the links to the 404 pages.

What do you do to prevent this? Where do you temporarily redirect them all while you're building it out?

 

[uzz]

How effective do you find 301ing the whole domain to a new branded domain?
Using your example BestWeddingDresses-2018.info to say MarryMe.com Does age/authority carry over just as well? Anything to look out for going this route?

 

[Ryuzaki]

When you've bought a new powerful domain, it takes time to get new content.

In that time you're getting a ton of 404s and the big players might do link cleanups and remove the links to the 404 pages.

What do you do to prevent this? Where do you temporarily redirect them all while you're building it out?

The reality is that the domain has probably been in that state you're talking about for months by the time you have it in your account and can build a site on it. I do treat it like "the race is on" but it's nothing to get too concerned about. You will lose some links regardless over time, even if you get a quality site built with amazing and relevant content posted. You always have to outpace link loss with link gain.

But since "the race is on", what I do is build my site out before I even go hunting for a domain. I code a theme, speed optimize it, order and write content on a ton of topics, publish it on a staging server... pretty much everything is ready except the spot where the logo goes.

My most recent build started with 5 posts which was low. Typically I'll start with around 30, because the entire point is to get the webmasters who's sites link to the domain to drop their guard. They need to see a beautiful site that has the appearance of being fleshed out already.

Typically, once you have the domain on your hands, you only need one or two posts written, maybe 5 to 10 at max, to cover 80% of the backlinks pointing in. A lot of those won't be worthy of keeping but they'll be saved regardless with the 301's. Most other posts will have crap links with very low metrics or outright spam. You don't have to save all the links, just the best ones. And this usually gets done by having a homepage and a few other pieces of content written to match the previous topics.

But no, I would not temporarily redirect them in the mean time. I'd rather wait and use a permanent 301 redirect than confuse Google by hot swapping them around multiple times.

How effective do you find 301ing the whole domain to a new branded domain?
Using your example BestWeddingDresses-2018.info to say MarryMe.com Does age/authority carry over just as well? Anything to look out for going this route?

I've done this before. I don't find it remotely as useful as building out a new site on the new domain and treating it as its own entity. But if you do go that route, the relevancy should be a one-to-one match. The tighter it is, the better.

And you don't want to aim everything at the homepage. You should redirect boilerplate pages to boilerplate pages (About, Contact, etc.). You should develop new and better versions of old content pages (that have links, you don't need to worry about ones that don't have links). The more you can make it a professional acquisition, the better. SEO's do mass 301's to the homepage and Google is wise to that trick. It's lazy and obvious and how they catch PBNs, etc.

 

[zelch]

I recently bought an aged domain from Odys. I noticed Almost all the backlinks are pointing to the non secure version of the site. We already setup 301s to point everything http to https, but then I got to thinking...

Do you think the site should be built on http not https to maximize that link power?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@zelch, Absolutely not. The way you've done it is the correct way. Sufficiently old domains are all going to be http versions, and Google has gone on record saying that 301 redirects from http to https versions do not lose page rank through the redirect. You want to be on the secure version. You'll likely suffer in the SERPs by not doing so.

 

[CaptainHustle]

Is it recommended to do 301 redirects for images that have links coming to them? If they do, where would you link them to? New images on the site?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Is it recommended to do 301 redirects for images that have links coming to them? If they do, where would you link them to? New images on the site?

This is a tricky one. Sometimes legit sites will link to images as an "image source".

But 99% of links to images I've seen are scraper sites, automated blogger networks (I've seen this give a Penguin penalty and I've recovered it too, simply image links from an automated blogger network), spam sites trying to game Google Images, etc.

If you can determine the links are legit and worth keeping, I'd probably redirect them to a post that's as closely relevant as possible to the file name of the image, and possibly what the alt text was if you have that info. It's kind of a long shot and a shot in the dark, but I think this would be the best way to preserve the page rank and increase the chances of the links staying live for the long haul.

 

[CaptainHustle]

It's kind of a long shot and a shot in the dark, but I think this would be the best way to preserve the page rank and increase the chances of the links staying live for the long haul.

Thanks Ryu for your insight.

How about expired domains that had country specific landing pages? For example: Let's say the previous website owner was selling blenders and they had specific landing pages for UK, Australia, US, etc. However, the content on the page is more or less the same across the different landing pages and even their general homepage. There are valuable links coming to each of these landing country specific landing pages, depending on who is linking to it.

Now you want to start a site on juice making on this domain. Do you try to create country specific pages to make it as relevant as possible to the original url? Or would you just redirect all of them back to the homepage because there was no intelligible difference between these landing pages and the homepage originally?

Also, which metric on Ahrefs do you use to filter the pages worth recreating? I typically use the DR of the sites linking to the page to determine that. But I also wonder if you should be looking at relevancy, anchors and what not.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Do you try to create country specific pages to make it as relevant as possible to the original url? Or would you just redirect all of them back to the homepage because there was no intelligible difference between these landing pages and the homepage originally?

In this case, since they're all almost identical (doorway pages), I'd redirect them all back to the homepage. Usually I wouldn't say to choose the homepage but it is probably the most authoritative version of this content, with the country pages all being "copies" of it. In any other case I'd tell you to create one, better version of those pages and redirect them all there.

Also, which metric on Ahrefs do you use to filter the pages worth recreating? I typically use the DR of the sites linking to the page to determine that. But I also wonder if you should be looking at relevancy, anchors and what not.

I like to look at the list of all pages, ordered by number of dofollow referring domains, and work my way down. Don't skip out on the ones with only nofollow links though because some might be massive sites linking in that are worth keeping. While I do care about the DR of the RD's linking in, I care more about saving all the dofollows, unless I can see they're the typical automated spam nonsense.

And I'm always making the decision of: recreate? redirect? create new target? and then of course 404. I don't worry about maintaining the same URL. The redirects can take care of that without problem.

 

[harrytwatter]

Anyone got an average time-to-impact after the 301's are in place? Recently implemented the most juiced 301 yet and seeing wonkiness, total ranking keywords (Ahrefs) dropping, but when looking at daily movements also seeing some big jumps at individual page levels.

Feels like G is trying to make sense of it. I'm not worried there. The domain was 99.9% topically aligned, my site already had a ranking piece covering the same topic, etc. The RD's from the 301'd domain contain a lot of industry links my competitors have.

Waiting for a hockey stick so I can retire already! jk.. but quitting the corporate grind would be nice.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Sounds like you 301'd a domain to an existing site?

In that case, my experience is that the impact is "smeared over time" meaning it's kind of released to you gradually. This could be because Google is "re-trusting" the domain again after the move, or it could simply be that it takes them time to crawl the backlinks again and re-apply them to the site. That theory makes sense except it's also my experience that when you remove a 301'd domain you'll see the drop in traffic happen pretty suddenly (due to ranking loss, not direct traffic through the redirects). But yeah, it's a gradual gaining and a quick loss, in my experience.

Adding the most juiced 301 redirect and seeing wonkiness makes sense to me. If you just pushed over a ton of new page rank, and if it's relatively a lot compared to what you already had, you'll probably see some disruption, just like gaining a ton of powerful links. You can see temporary bounces (drops), delayed reactions, etc. All par for the course.

Feels like G is trying to make sense of it.

It can be some of this, but I think it's largely "let's confuse and scare this person. If they do nothing, they're probably not an SEO and even stressing that much about it. If they reverse course, they were probably manipulating in some way, in which case we can also probably keep their reduced ranks because we don't like manipulation".

It's an old game they've played in their quest to make it harder to reverse engineer their blackbox algorithm. The other weapon they have is simply smearing results out over time so you can't draw a correlation that well, let alone a causation.

Stay the course!

 

[harrytwatter]

Sounds like you 301'd a domain to an existing site?

Yup, existing site with over a years worth of steady consistent growth, averaging 1200 visits a day. Felt like I maxed out the industry links I could obtain myself. The 301'd domain had industry-specific links that are hard to get without GREAT editorial type content or large event marketing and industry sponsorship budgets.

let's confuse and scare this person. If they do nothing, they're probably not an SEO and even stressing that much about it. If they reverse course, they were probably manipulating in some way, in which case we can also probably keep their reduced ranks because we don't like manipulation

Oh boy do I hope this is the case. I've been fortunate enough to be doing SEO for long enough now where the increase in time-to-impact is very noticeable and I'm inclined to agree that their internal philosophy is to obfuscate as much as possible. It becomes more difficult to reverse engineer that which you can't easily measure cause and effect.

Thanks for the insight. Will keep publishing like nobodies business and report back if things change (up or down).