Expired website questions on value

[gelsi]

Hello, I'm new here, pleased to meet everybody!
I've been looking at the potential of expired websites for about 6 months. I have read tutorials and read forums but have never seen answers to some very pertinent questions.
For example;
1/ a website in my niche was born originally in 2003 (15 yrs old) was active until 2008 then inactive until now (10yrs) has no traffic, no pages/content and no links. a/ Is it worth reactivating, creating a few pages and adding content and having as a money site? b/ Would google recognize it had been dead for 10 yrs?
2/ Same site but has good, 'non spam' links and pages/content that can be retrieved from 'wayback machine' but has still been dormant for 10years. c/ Would it be worth rebuilding the site with the original content? d/ How much value is there in an aged site over a new one? e/ Does anybody have any experience of these situations?
Thanks in advance for all input, thanks!

 

[Ryuzaki]

@gelsi, welcome to the club. I've ignored some of your questions since I'll wrap them up within others. Here's my thoughts and experiences:

Would google recognize it had been dead for 10 yrs?

Yeah, they would. But that's not some catastrophic thing. A lot of times, if you don't repurpose the domain, but resurrect the exact same content at the exact same URLs, you jump right back into the game. If they see you toss up the domain and do a ton of 301's to the homepage from old internal pages, they'll consider it a PBN site and eventually devalue everything. If you play it by the book, it can be very worth your time.

Would it be worth rebuilding the site with the original content?

This is one of two ways to deal with expired sites correctly. You can change the theme or whatever, but what you want to do is recreate every single page at the exact same URL it was at previously, or be very meticulous in mapping each old URL to its new location with 301 redirects. But the most critical thing is that nearly every single piece of content is recreated in the exact same way. Keep the same headers, same images, etc. Once all this settles, then you can start making changes if you want by getting rid of crap content, 301ing those posts to others, etc. But at first, you want as close to a 1:1 resurrection.

How much value is there in an aged site over a new one?

Tons, if you're worried about SEO. A new site is going to be throttled in traffic for around 12 months. That's a lazy way Google is fighting spam. An old site will already be past this hurdle and have tons of time baked into the algorithm. It's all about time.

The second part is that you can get an insane value on content and links. On an old defunct site, you'll get the entire site including content and backlinks for the cost of the domain. The domain cost might be inflated due to these things, but if you were to separate it all out and add it back together, you'll get a tremendous steal.

The third part is that there might already be some traffic flowing to the site.

Does anybody have any experience of these situations?

I've done this several times. It works. The links are still powerful, they still pass juice, they still rank content.

What I do these days is merge all the old content into current authority sites and then set up 301's there. Everything still holds true that you get far more value this way than if you paid for it separately. The one thing though is that you start seeing (not actually getting) diminishing returns.

The thing is... if your site is PR1 and you add a PR3 site to it, you'll get huge boosts and become PR3. Add another PR3 site and you might become PR4, might not. Eventually you have to up the ante and start buying bigger and more powerful sites, link wise, if you expect to see any positive movement out of it. They're all still worth it, but you just don't see as big of a bump, if one at all, as your site gets bigger and more powerful. As a cruddy example: 1+3 is a 300% increase. 4+3 is a 75% increase. 7+3 is a 43% increase. Each time you get less of an increase but regardless, you're still adding 3, so it's a boost.

 

[gelsi]

Thank you Ryuzaki, may I compliment you on your excellent command of the English language and thank you for your succinct and in-depth reply. I'm going to reread it a couple more times over the next day or so to fully understand it.
Do you know of recovery software to resurrect the content of dormant sites?
Thanks again for your help

 

[Ryuzaki]

If you Google around for stuff like "Wayback machine recovery" you can find software and/or services to download the sites for you. I've always done it manually. The one time I did it with software, it included a ton of crazy wayback machine HTML that I had to strip out. It was far faster to browse through the site live in their archives and copy & paste the content out while taking note of the original URLs so I could cross-reference them to the backlink reports.

 

[TLivingstone]

I'm using Dom Recovery to download sites from Wayback. I think it's only like $80 lifetime. Give that a try

 

[F5K7]

@gelsi
On an old defunct site, you'll get the entire site including content and backlinks for the cost of the domain.

Buying an expired domain doesn't include the content that was once on the domain. The creator of the content still holds the copy right and could go after you any time, or am I missing something here?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Buying an expired domain doesn't include the content that was once on the domain. The creator of the content still holds the copy right and could go after you any time, or am I missing something here?

You're not missing anything. If someone drops a domain 10 years ago and does nothing with the content since then (you check on these things, of course), I take the safe gamble that they're not going to come back a decade later and repost the same content.

I also redesign the site and grow it far past the original content, so that if the old owner ever checked on their old domain, they'd see a new site and wouldn't go digging through it to determine if their old content was on it. It wouldn't even cross their minds.

Worst case scenario, if they come crying you replace the content on the same URLs with similar content and maintain all the rankings and backlinks. Cry all they want but they can't get the domain back, so all the juice is still yours.

I've done this with sites from NGO's, big dick developers, and medium sized companies. Nobody is watching or cares. If they cared they wouldn't have dropped the domain and kept the site offline for X number of years.

 

[F5K7]

I've done this with sites from NGO's, big dick developers, and medium sized companies. Nobody is watching or cares. If they cared they wouldn't have dropped the domain and kept the site offline for X number of years.

Interesting. Since you seem to do this quite frequently, ever thought about trademark issues that might come with using an expired domain?
I recently got myself and expired domain of a quite big online publication that did a rebrand and fucked up the migration. They 302 the old domain and eventually they let it drop. If that old domain still ranks and I build something on top of it, should I take any steps to prevent them for coming after me, claiming I try to fool users into thinking I am them?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yeah, you need to play it safe if the organization is still alive and active. Any time I've done this for more than an inconsequential PBN, I've made sure the trademarks were expired. I look for as many signs as I can that they are done with the company, the domain, the content.

This is usually pretty clear cut and easy since most of the domains with the best backlink profiles are usually at least 8+ years old or so. I feel that the more risk there is involved, the less emphasis I want to place on the domain. No risk means I might use it for a money site, either building on it or redirecting it to one. Some risk means I might do a rank and bank and accept that one day it might have to come crumbling down. A lot of risk means I'd probably just make a PBN.

I don't deal with PBN's any more. I don't think they're remotely worth the time and effort unless you're selling links to spammers. Otherwise they just put your money sites at high risk, because they will get sniffed out. I'm a quality over quantity kind of player at this point.

The main issue you'll want to watch out for is taking that dropped domain from an active company and reviving it and ultimately ranking for their branded terms. They'll figure you out eventually. What you COULD do is buy it while the getting is good and 301 it to their site to keep it live and active until they finally fold and then use it for what you want. But who knows if they'll fold before you do.

I'd focus on low/no risk acquisitions. If you find a real tempting domain that's high risk, I'd just move on.

 

[F5K7]

Thanks for the input.

Any time I've done this for more than an inconsequential PBN, I've made sure the trademarks were expired.

They never had any trademarks in the first place, I made sure to check that. Also the domain is a combination of english words, think something like cleaninggurunews.com. They rebranded to cleaning.guru. They offer a service and paid subscription model and I plan on building a content website on the domain they dropped, so besides the niche we don't share much. Sounds like "Some risk" to you?

What I also thought about is building the site out for a bit, letting it sit and then just 301 it to a new domain.

 

[Ryuzaki]

In the case of it being an exact-match domain style of domain where it's just words strung together, I think you'll be fine to go ahead and use it as long as you create a brand new website and not using any of their old content. Everything sounds 100% legally kosher. They had an asset they never protected and decided they didn't want. You bought it and now it's yours.

I just wouldn't dominate so quickly that they try to pull a fast one and claim they didn't meant to let it drop or whatever games are capable of being played. Because honestly it sounds like you could immediately outrank them for most of their terms if you add similar content to what they had back on all of the old URLs they had the content on, like recreating the exact same blog URL hierarchy and what not.