Webmasters everywhere use expired domains to help with their search engine optimization techniques. As a matter of fact, expired domains are one of the cheapest and most effective ways to increase traffic, revenue and backlinks. Webmasters aren’t just buying expired pagerank domains for SEO purposes; They’re also hunting for great keyword domains in particular niches that can then be developed into money making machines. By now you are probably wondering how all of these webmasters use expired domains to their benefit? To be honest, there isn’t just one answer to that question. As a matter of fact, webmasters will use different kinds of expired domains for different purposes when it comes to search engine optimization. I’ll highlight some of these below.

Expired Pagerank Domains – This post is not about the definition of pagerank. Instead, I’m going to talk about how you can use an expired pagerank domain to your benefit. Webmasters will often register valid expired page rank domains for backlink building purposes. Let’s look at an example; Say I run a web hosting company and decide to register an expired PR3 domain related to web hosting. Next, I host and develop a small blog or mini-website on that domain and then link back over to my main web hosting company from the newly developed website. Along with that, I now go out and look for other websites related to web hosting and offer them a link from newly developed expired PR3 website. In return, I have them link directly back to my main web hosting companies website. I have just taken one expired PR3 domain and picked up two PR3 backlinks directly back to my main web hosting company from it. If I perform 10 other link exchanges with that same developed PR3 then I would now have 10 other PR3 one-way backlinks going directly to my main web hosting website. By just this one example you can see how purchasing one expired pagerank domain can bring in multiple one-way backlinks to another bigger project of yours. You can read more about the value of pagerank domains in a separate post I wrote Here.

Expired Alexa Domains – People who hunt for expired Alexa domains are usually after just one thing, traffic. The main purpose for Alexa scores is to judge how much traffic a domain may be receiving (based on a global ranking system). Although traffic doesn’t do much for SEO, you can often develop these expired Alexa domains and turn them into small websites which already receive traffic and can help with SEO. My advice is to be careful when hunting expired Alexa domains. Just because a domain is ranked in Alexa doesn’t necessarily mean it has allot of traffic coming into it!

Expired Backlink Domains – Backlink domains can be great for SEO purposes because they’re similar to PR (pagerank) domains. Just because a domain has lots of backlinks doesn’t necessarily mean it will have any pagerank. If the backlinks are of lower quality then the domain probably won’t be getting any PR juice from those backlinks. However, these are the kinds of domains that could already have some traffic coming into them and may be easier to develop and build PR on. Webmasters will use expired backlink domains for the purpose of building websites and getting them ranked quicker and easier with the help of current backlinks already coming in. For the cost of registration fee, a semi-high backlink domain is worth the cost to develop a website around any day of the week. But, always be sure to check the backlinks and make sure they aren’t spammy!

Exact Match Domains – People say that “exact match domains” died a while back when Google said it wasn’t going to give these types of domains extra SEO credit anymore, but I disagree. Yahoo/Bing does still give some extra credit to these types of domains and there is still a market for these types of domains too! Many business owners love exact match domains because they’re easy to remember. Webmasters who are chasing exact match domains usually do so for the purpose of developing or flipping them. The obvious SEO benefit here is the exact match portion. It helps in some SERPs and they’re usually easier to remember.

High Pay-Per Click Domains – High PPC domains are great for development because of the obvious, you’re earning more money on every click you generate. If you plan on drop catching high pay per click domains it’s best to have some development ideas in mind. The best case scenario would be to find a high paying domain that has both an Alexa ranking and a Pagerank above 2. Drop catching and developing a domain like this might already have traffic coming in which means it could be making revenue the minute you write some content and stick it up there. Lots of webmasters chase and develop expired domains with high PPC!

Expired Quantcast Domains – Quantcast is website similar to Alexa. They are a company which provides detailed information about the visitors coming into a specific domain or website. This would include the average age and sex of a websites visitors. Knowing this kind of information is useful to any webmaster because they can take it and then target better ads to their audience. People who chase expired Quantcast domains are usually doing so for traffic purposes. Similar to Alexa giving a rank depending on traffic, Quantcast gives you an estimated number of visitors a website has coming into it each month.

Going for expired domains like the ones listed above can definitely help with SEO if used properly. Not only did I provide you with the types of expired domains you should be looking for, but I’ve also given you the proper methods for using these domains so they can help you SEO wise. The final step comes down to finding and registering these types of domain names! Since there is demand for these types of domains you can’t usually register them by hand. Instead, you need a piece of software that’s fast and can automatically register the domains for you the second they become available for new registration. That’s where DesktopCatcher comes in. Our software will help you find these types of domains and then use multiple registrars to catch and register them the second they “drop” and become available for new registration!