Note that this is part of the expired domain series which has been compiled in order of importance here.
<Disclaimer> A lot of people are having difficulty finding domains. There is a real learning curve, so please be prepared for this. As an option for those that are just starting out, I recommend you prove the model by first purchasing a few domains, or try out our latest service, RankHero.
RankHero allows you to test the viability of this method without having to invest the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars it takes to find, build, host and maintain your own Private Content Network. </disclaimer>
I was just doing a video for Lee (a London-based intern that is focusing purely on developing expired domains for immediate sale on Flippa) on how to check for IMMEDIATE pagerank, and thought hey this is valid for everyone so I uploaded the video to the blog:
Just a note, it’s generally a good idea to check Ahrefs and Majestic (or OSE) as they will have different data sources. So far, Majestic has the largest, most recent, and quickest dataset of them all.
As usual just leave a comment if you have any questions. But please, don’t ask until you’ve seen the first two videos on expired domain hunting. EO paslaugos, svetainių kūrimas, pardavimų skatinimas ir kita reklama internete seopaslaugos.com/reklama-internete-3/
Hayden
P.S. – My vacation is over so expect a lot more posts again!
Lee says:
Cheers for the video Hayden ;-)
Jonathan says:
Thanks for the video,
if I understand correctly, this method requires two paid products, a subscription to Majestic SEO and also a registered version of Scrapebox , right?
also when you said no-follow links can be useful, can you clarify this a bit more?
Rolf says:
You can als use SEO spyglass for control of backlink PR. That’s free.
Hayden says:
Great tool, love the presentation. But it is SOOO SLOOOW. Also it seems to have about half the index size of MajesticSEO. I would advise you to invest in Majestic and SB, unless your time is not worth much to you.
Dan says:
well its slow if you let it run and analyze all the other data, like IP, Alexa, titles, meta and so on. If you check only to check for PR, its quite fast. I like to do that, I let it scan and grab all backlinks, then I check only the PR of the backlinks and only then I check the PR backlinks for dofollow/nofollow and backlink still being active.
amp says:
Great tut. It’s what I have been doing for *.blogspot.com/ sub domains. Though of course it is not easy to mass check, but individually through the site. I use OSE free, MajesticSEO free and Ahrefs 15 requests per day free too. They’re excellent and I bet it only get better once subscribed. Quick question, how *exactly* do you see metrics for a site? PA, LRD, Trust Flow? How can one combining these free version Metrics prove the value of the site? Thanks, welcome back Hayden.
Hayden says:
This is all covered in my expired domain videos. As for free metrics, everything you need is actually shown on OSE if you’re not logged in and you goto Compare Metrics. Seems like a bug to me lol, one intern actually made a scraper based on this and I considered moving my domain checker to use this scraper, but it’s only a matter of time before that loophole is closed. Enjoy!
Lynn says:
Hi Hayden,
I have a site with a pr6 link to it but the immediate page rank only came back as a 2. Any idea why this would happen? The PR6 is not spammy so I would think the immediate PR would be at least a 3. What other factors influence immediate page rank?
Lynn
Hayden says:
It should be a PR4 – my guess is the page is devalued. You’re sure the link is dofollow, the link still exists, the page is actually PR6 (not a redirect or frame), and the page doesn’t have tons of outgoing links? Can’t say without looking at the domain in question.
Lynn says:
The page has too many links. What do you use as a cutoff? Matt Cutts says 100 but what is your experience?
Hayden says:
I’d say 100 is a good number, but I also take the link to text ratio into consideration. If it’s just a listing of 100+ links I’d say that’s no good. But if it’s 100 links over a huge amount of text (blog comments, reviews, etc.) I don’t see that as an issue.
John says:
What happened to using SEOMoz for valuating domains? Have you switched to Majestic?
Hayden says:
I am testing Majestic. I prefer it for backlink analysis (bigger, fresher dataset, easy exports, better metrics than ahrefs), but am still running on SEOMoz metrics.
Pierre says:
Hey Hayden,
I registered an interesting expired domain back in December 2011 (some .edu links, high DA). At that time, it was still indexed by Google.
Unfortunately, it has been staying on the registrar default page for the past 8 months, due to my inaction. If I add content now, do you think it would recover some of its value when it gets reindexed?
Thanks for the blog! Really interesting…
Pierre
Hayden says:
Yes Pierre it would regain its value
Brad says:
So, just to be clear you wouldn’t consider registering that domain because none of the links have PR?
I look forward to more info about majestic. I found you from nichepursuits and finding expired domains is very interesting to me.
Hayden says:
Actually I think I checked ahrefs after and it found some PR links (a good reason to always check more than 1 tool). I registered this domain because it is in a fantastic niche and PR is the last metric I look at. I just won’t be selling text links of flipping this site based on PR.
Osiris says:
Hi Hayden, what do you think about the posts on Search Engine Land and SEOmoz saying that expired domains don’t pass link juice?
I know you are speaking from experience so I would really appreciate hearing your opinion on this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/buying-expired-domains-whats-the-best-strategy
(See the link to Danny Sullivan’s post in Search Engine Land)
Thanks a lot Hayden!
Osiris
Hayden says:
Hi Osiris,
Firstly, Danny is basing this on what Matt Cutt’s said. DO NOT TRUST WHAT MATT CUTTS SAYS. He represents Google and wants you to believe that Google can and will punish everything. He is exceptional at what he does because he promotes mass hysteria while still being liked by the industry.
Also Danny says that credit is not likely based on 301 redirecting expired domains. I agree with this as this is the lowest hanging fruit for spammers (not SEOs). So no I don’t 301 redirect my expired domains and I never have so I may be wrong here.
I can tell you 100% though, that recreating an expired domain and passing relevant links to other sites within the content area passes tons of link juice.
Osiris says:
Okay cool. That’s interesting about Matt Cutts though. How he is liked yet keeps so many SEOs in check, especially through an authority like Danny Sullivan.
The idea that previously expired domains don’t pass link juice sounded a bit odd. “Google knows when one legitimate company acquires another and when credit should be passed,” says Matt Cutts…
Thanks Hayden.
Stephen says:
Hey Hayden,
You said you are using Majestic now and checking trust flow + citation flow. What are good guidelines when going by these two values?
steve a says:
Hey Hayden,
I don’t think you explicitly said it in the video, but you implied that as long as the PR back links are pointing to the root domain and not inner pages then the site will regain its PR shortly after we register it.
Did I get that right?
Just that most of the expired domains I’ve registered do have PR back links to the home page but less than 10% of the time they regain it before the next TBPR update (they do eventually regain it, just not straight away).
Is there something else I need to be looking at for the instant PR?
Thanks man,
Nick says:
Hey hayden,
What is that wordpress plugin that 301 redirects all pages to new home page?
JW says:
Hayden – thanks so much for sharing all you have. I bought a bunch of niche domains prior to stumbling across your site. I picked up some expired domains using similar concept, but not nearly as robust in terms of the underlying logic; what I stumbled on to you have systematically implemented which is appealing to a guy like me :-).
One thing I haven’t been able to find is your view on NoFollow PR links. I’m sure it’s here but I’m missing it – if I have a domain with a bunch of NoFollow 5 and 6 links, does any of that get considered by Google?
Hayden says:
nofollow pass value and help you rank, but do not pass PR
max1234 says:
Usually 3-4 months in some cases 6 months (for good Alexa Rank domains)
Sarah says:
I can’t get this video to load….is it still valid? Thanks!
matt says:
Hayden please re-upload this video! thanks!
Link says:
I’d love to see this video. Using scrapebox and a lot of time playing (I purchased scrapebox April 4th, so almost a month now) I have gotten a LOT better at finding links. I’ve currently got a spreadsheet running with over 150 domains that I estimate will have a PR2 or higher… in the last week I’ve gotten much better. Anyway, I’m interested to see what metrics you use to judge the potential PR. I have compared about 50 domains, PR 0 – 6, and noted their Citation / Trust in relation to the PR.
matt says:
Hayden, PLEASE re-upload the video!
Bablu says:
I am very interested your site MOZ. MOz is very powerful site all the world. Then I look at PA to see where I should launch the homepage of the site (www vs nonwww vs subdomain vs subpage), and how I should setup my redirects (A standard launch note would be “Redirect non-www to www, install 404 redirect and verify the /blog/index.html is redirected”). I used to sell links based on PA but because the link gets recycled into archive eventually, I’ve found DA is actually the better long-term metric.
thanks