It’s true that some expired domain names give you the added advantage of a good page rank, and “link popularity”. However, you will need to do some serious research to ensure you buy a domain name without a history of problems. After all, the chosen domain name should not pose a risk to your online business’ future. A carefully chosen domain can help you capitalize on what the previous site has accomplished, save your business the trouble of clawing all the way up from the bottom of the search results page, and give it the much-needed jumpstart for your online success.

There are several key indicators with which you can check an expired domain name:

Check Google cache

Google blocks domain names that break their stringent regulations. Check if an expired domain name has breached any of Google’s guidelines by associating itself with serial spamming or reciprocal linking infraction.  If it has, then getting a Google ranking would be difficult. Type “cache:domainname.com” in the Google search box for a snapshot of the version of the site that was last used for indexing. If no cached version exists, it signals a problem.

The date the domain name was originally created

Search the WHOIS database to find out the date of creation and expiry of the domain name. If the domain has been in existence for long, there is better chance of Google ranking it higher because of the “stability” associated with it. Check also how frequently the site has changed its hosting provider, which speaks a lot in terms of “stability”.

Nature of content

It is important for your site to have content relevant to your business in order to attract traffic to it. Domain names can be checked in the Internet Archive (in the Archive’s Wayback Machine), which stores copies of previous site versions way back to 1996.

Thoroughly explore the site’s backlinks

The quality (rather than quantity) of backlinks is key to link popularity. Thoroughly check backlinks, watching out for web addresses associated with spamming, same anchor text abuse, excessive blogroll links (participating in reciprocal link schemes) and other.  You can check domain backlinks by typing “Link:domainname.com” in Google’s search box.

However, if you do wish to register a domain name that has been banned by search engines, you can appeal for the new site to be included in the index, although this is a process which could take up your time and money.

Tags: choosing expired domain names, domain's background, search WHOIS, site's backlinks

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 8:13 pm and is filed under Domain Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.