With new search engine algorithms and updates (like Penguin & Panda) coming out on a regular basis, it can be pretty difficult to keep up with the SEO game these days. We all know how important backlinks are when it comes to ranking in search engines, but the importance of quality backlinks has now become more important than ever. So, what are SEO experts doing these days to help them continue rising up the ranks and getting good search engine traffic? I’ll give you a clue, it has to do with expired domain names and drop catching!

Before I get into that I should explain why SEO experts prefer to chase expired domains more these days than in the past. Backlink building used to be a task that included social bookmark and article submissions, link exchanges, blog comments, directory submissions, and just about any other method of getting a link back to your website from another website (which was preferably hosted on a different IP address than yours). The new search engine algorithms now frown upon these kinds of tactics and backlinks. They see these social media backlinks, duplicate article content backlinks, and others as being spammy. These can (and have) actually hurt allot of webmasters in the rankings. Search engine algorithms these days want to see more quality than quantity. SEO experts know the best way to keep high quality backlinks going to their website is to oversee a big portion of that task themselves.

Search engine optimization professionals can take shortcuts by registering expired domains that already have some SEO work done to them. These would be considered expired domains with good SEO metrics. What are SEO metrics? These are different scores a domain receives to rank its quality. MozRank, Domain Authority/Page Authority (DA/PA), Alexa Numbers, and PageRank are just a few of the many different SEO metrics professionals use these days to analyze a domain. Some websites like ExpiredDomains make it easy for you to filter deleting domain lists by many of the popular metrics and will help you narrow down your searches. The trick is to find deleting domains that have good metrics (scores) and are something that can be developed into a mini-website to be used for linking back over to your main website.

One thing to remember is that finding an expired domain with high scores all across the board (high PR, high backlink count, high Alexa..etc) is pretty rare. Not to mention, these types of domains will almost always have multiple backorders with large companies because they are in huge demand. That’s why it is usually best to look for domains which have good metrics in just a few of the areas you’re most interested in. Remember, you can always build up the other metrics later on! For example, finding a domain that is PR0 – but has a MozRank of 5+ somewhat evens each other out. The pagerank can always be built later on but the high MozRank gives it some juice right off the back. An SEO expert may see that domain and drop catch it. Then, he would go purchase hosting from a different company so it’s hosted on a different IP address from the main website. Finally, develop a small website on the domain and write (or buy) good quality content which would contain links back to the main website.

After doing this with several expired domains this SEO expert now has a network of websites hosted across multiple IP addresses, all filled with content he/she can manage and make sure it’s of good quality, and all on domain names that which already have some juice on them to get passed over to the main website!