I bought an expired domain with traffic

[Nat]

Several days ago I bought an expiring domain. I read CCarter's two threads about them and he laid out the options as being

1. Re-create site and throw up banners of your own site
2. 301 the domain to your own website

It sounded like re-creation was preferred.

What about recreating each page of the old website on my site and 301'ing the old URL to the new URL?

This expired site had a lot of content. It wasn't 800 word article content, but it had a lot of posts. I just did a

site:domain.com

check, and Google spit out about 1,000 results. So, lots of the pages are still indexed? ..I thought expired domains should have been de-indexed by the time an auction is won.

In my mind, it seems like the best thing to do would be to use Google Cache / Archive.org and paste the old content into my site and 301 each page individually to the new site, and the base URL to my base URL. I'd get free content and the traffic. It would probably be pretty time intensive, but I don't care.
But maybe that isn't the best idea? Would it still be better to re-create the old site on its own domain and link to mine? I don't know a ton about SEO, but would there be issues interlinking my own sites?

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Oh, and if it is best to re-create the site itself, I've looked at some of those Archive.org site re-creators, but there isn't a snapshot of the site that has every page. Once you get a few pages into the blog, you've got to change the date months-year back to see the older content. Any easier way to do this / workaround?

 

[przamunda]

There are some tools that allow you to download the whole domain. Google archive.org downloader and youlll find some solutions.

 

[Nat]

There are some tools that allow you to download the whole domain. Google archive.org downloader and youlll find some solutions.

Yeah, I've google'd it. Looks like there is a free Ruby script but the time I would waste figuring that out wouldn't be worth it.

Anyways, my main question isn't how to download from archive, but the best thing to do with the domain and content.

 

[Ryuzaki]

What about recreating each page of the old website on my site and 301'ing the old URL to the new URL?

I do this to great effect. The articles end up ranking even better on my domain. I've done it with a few domains now and plan to add tons more over time. Acquisition is a legit business plan. Just make sure they aren't hanging on to a trademark on the domain and logo or copyright over the content.

 

[Nat]

I do this to great effect. The articles end up ranking even better on my domain. I've done it with a few domains now and plan to add tons more over time. Acquisition is a legit business plan. Just make sure they aren't hanging on to a trademark on the domain and logo or copyright over the content.

This was the little bit of affirmation I needed Looks like I got a full 24 hours of copy&paste grinding coming up in 2 days.

 

[coopreme]

I'm doing this right now. I found a 14 year old site and I've recovered lots of the content. Good luck man, it seems we are on similar paths.

 

[Nat]

24 hours in.... FML kill me now, I'm so freaking bored... so monotonous and most of the content isn't very long, just zillions of small posts .. why isn't there an emoji that's crying

 

[Prentzz]

24 hours in.... FML kill me now, I'm so freaking bored... so monotonous and most of the content isn't very long, just zillions of small posts .. why isn't there an emoji that's crying

Automate it or get a VA. Why on earth would you do this yourself? Unless your struggling to eat at the end of the week, this isn't a good use of your time.

 

[Nat]

Automate it or get a VA. Why on earth would you do this yourself? Unless your struggling to eat at the end of the week, this isn't a good use of your time.

1) I thought I could get it done by pulling an all-nighter
2) Could have automated a scrape, but I wanted to integrate it into my site. And some categories needed to be changed, etc.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Consider combining related posts into longer ones if that's what you want. Combine the 301's too.