Searching for and purchasing expiring domains for private blog networks | Big 2021 Guide

PBN Domains

PBN domains, also known as drops, are new or expiring domains that are used for redirecting to the main site or for creating a site on this domain for the purpose of link placement.

Every day, more than 10,000 domains expire and don’t get renewed by their owners.

This happens because the owner does not have time to renew the domain or the site is no longer needed. The majority of domains are not valuable. However, the remaining 5-10% have an excellent potential for promoting your projects.

Searching for a free PBN domain can be compared to the work of a gold digger. You have to sift through a lot of regular ore before you find a gold nugget.

Hundreds and thousands of high-quality links with excellent rankings that can contribute to the development of any of your projects. In this article, we will tell you how you can benefit from such a purchase and what tools should be used for that.

No time to deal with this? Just order domains from us.

Expired domain for PBN

First, let's look at the lifecycle of a domain name:

Active domain

The domain becomes active as soon as you register it and pay for it, the registration period can last from 1 to 10 years.

While your domain is active, you can make changes to the settings and contact information. The operation of your website and email directly depends on your domain having that active status.

Expired domain

The domain expires on the day after its expiration date. Once the domain has expired, the site and all associated email addresses stop functioning. On the main page of the site, you will see a notification about the need for renewal. Those who want to purchase a domain can already place bids at this stage, but your claim for the domain still takes precedence over the requests of other users for 30 days.

Renewal grace period

The domain enters the grace period 45 days after the expiration date. Even at this stage, you can still get it back. Registrars will charge an additional fee for the buy-back.

Delayed deletion

At the stage of delayed deletion, the domain cannot be restored. It remains in this status for 5 days. After this period, the domain is released back for a new registration. At this stage, you can buy a domain on equal terms with other internet users by paying the registration fee.

Working with expired domains

Let's take a look at the advantages of expiring and expired domains:

The domain has a history

This means that you will not end up in the search engine sandbox with a new recently registered domain. After launching, your domain will immediately start ranking by key requests placed on your pages related to your content and location.

The domain can be redirected

All you need to do is place a 301 redirect on the newly purchased domain and all external links and weight of this domain will be redirected to your site. There are several factors to consider here:

- The domain must be relevant to the subject of your content.

Essentially, you are referring from your old site to the new one. If the topic is different, search engines can reset all links from the purchased domain.

- The domain should not be under sanctions

- The link profile should not contain links in the form of hieroglyphs. If you make a redirect from that domain, it can “poison” your site and pessimize it

Make a PBN site

You can restore the old site on an expired domain from the history. This way you will have a website where you can post any number of your landing page links. The site will be completely under your control, which will help you avoid the following situations with rental links:

1. No one will delete these links
2. They will not turn from Dofollow to Nofollow
3. The page will not display another 3-10 links to third-party sites
4. The owner may forget to renew the hosting or simply stop renewing it. The link will be lost forever.

Resale of the domain

If you find a great domain and determine its value, you can resell it to a specialized company or professional. One great option is to offer it to companies that are engaged in the same field of activity in which the domain was used.

How to find a company to offer a domain to?

Selection

- Enter relevant key phrases into the search engine where the domain worked well in terms of its topic + location. Make a selection and send the offer to the companies

Contacting a specialist

Enter the company’s website on hunter.io. The system will show you the emails of the employees. All that is left for you to do is send the offer.

Investing in a domain

As research has shown, more than 90 % of newly created domains do not enter Google's TOP. The reason for this may be the lack of a natural link profile of the site.

Therefore, investing in the purchase of a niche domain is a great solution. You get a relevant content-appropriate domain with a history and existing organic links. This will allow you to generate more traffic from the funds invested in the development and promotion of the site.

For example, when selecting domains for clients, in addition to the link profile and subject matter, we select domains that have secured positions in Google’s TOP 100, which is another guarantee of the quality of domains.

Searching for PBN domains. How to find a worthwhile domain?

When searching for domains, you need to consider the following factors to find a really interesting domain without running into completely useless and spammed ones:

Search engine index

The easiest and most effective way is to check whether the pages are present in the search engine. This is done very simply:

1. Open the search engine.
2. Type in the “site:” modifier and enter the domain name you are interested in.
3. If there are pages of this site in the search results, you can be sure that the search engine did not pessimize this domain.

 

Spam links

You can use Majestic SEO to detect them. Enter the URL of your expired domain. You need a historical index, not a fresh one. Now let's look at the criteria used to identify spam:

1. The site is linked to clean domains without a link profile
2. Links irrelevant to your subject or to the site’s activity profile
3. Chinese or Indian characters in the link’s anchor text
4. Backlinks with obviously spammed anchor texts

“If the domain contains 5-10 spam links, it will not be difficult for you to remove them. If there are hundreds or thousands of them, don’t go through with the purchase.”

Domain history

Check the history of the domain’s usage by other webmasters via the Wayback Machine. If the domain has not been used correctly, there is a chance that it will not be useful.

Here is what to look for in the history:

1. Pornographic content
2. Different versions of languages at different times
3. Spammed and duplicate content
4. Hacked content

“By taking a little time to check these important indicators, you can ensure that all the future work with the domain will not be pointless.”

Now that you know what you should pay attention to in the process of searching, let's look at the tools that you can use to search for vacant domains.

PBN domain name crawlers. Which ones to use?

 

Take a look at our selection of services and choose the one that best covers your needs.

ExpiredDomains

Free tool available upon registration. It will allow you to find expired domains, as well as those that are soon to be released. You can study analytics and purchase them. Good built-in filtering and drop catching system.

Freshdrop

An Expired domain market that I recommend. User-friendly and intuitive interface. Allows you to work with expired and deleted domains.

DomCop

A market for cheap expired domains. Unfortunately, not available for free. Starts at $56

NameJet

NameJet is a great site for auctions, expiry, and the secondary domain market.

Best crawlers for expiring domains

Out of the above listed, the most promising and best for working with PBN, in our opinion, are the following:

ExpiredDomains DomCop Freshdrop Domainhuntergatherer.com

How to buy a domain for PBN

There are several ways to purchase PBN domains. The tools for purchasing differ depending on whether the domain is currently free or occupied.

Vacant domains can be purchased from domain registrars on the open market.

Domains that are currently occupied can be purchased through a number of services

How and where to buy occupied domains for PBN

1. Domain brokers
2. Domain auctions
3. Intercepting deleted domains manually
4. Archive lists
5. Expired domain crawler

Buying PBN domains from GoDaddy

Domains with the best backlinks are available at auctions. GoDaddy Auctions is currently the best out of all the great tools for finding trusted domains.

However, there are currently quite a few other auction sites like NameJet, SnapNames, Dynadot, Flippa, etc. that are worth checking out.

Buying PBN domains from Domcomp

This service has the following advantages:

1. Domcomp collects fairly detailed information about most top-level domains from the most popular registrars.
2. You only need to enter the desired URL in the search bar to determine its availability.
3. Domcomp will list the current prices for domains from different registrars.
4. You can make a comparative analysis between them.
5. Next to the prices there are icons that indicate discounts from domain registrars.
6. There are universal coupon codes that are automatically applied if you click on the price to make a purchase.

Why buy expired domains for PBN?

Google prefers older trusted domains to the just recently registered ones. Domains that have been online for a long time are considered more reliable, since they have a positive history and, essentially, a certain authority in the opinion of search engines

Old domains bought out within 30 to 45 days will retain their rating when purchased and reused.

It is important to understand that some old domains are worth the investment and attention, while others are not.

“When these domains are used correctly, the private blog networks built on them will bring you traffic that can be converted into profit”

Using an expired domain for PBN

You can use the expired domain to build your own PBN

Pros:

1. Cheap domains can be used
2. New domains can be added to the group
3. You have full control over the anchor text.
4. You can create any number of articles and links to redirect traffic, as well as link weight

Cons:

1. You will have to spend money on hosting, site configuration and content. If you really want to, you can do it all by yourself

Nothing beats a private blog network. You have full control over the content and links to your money site. This is the only truly scalable strategy, and you can get thousands of links over time by adding new domains to your network.

Frequently asked questions about PBN

How to buy pre-owned domains for PBN?

The easiest way to buy expired domains for PBN is to pick them at auctions

ExpiredDomains

DomCop

Freshdrop

Domainhuntergatherer.com

Can I buy an expired domain previously used for PBN?

You can buy an expired domain previously used for PBN. Just consider to the following recommendations:

Сheck of the domain's DA / PA indicators before purchasing

PA (Page authority) and DA (domain authority) are factors for determining the quality of any PBN domain.

If you are going to buy a domain, look for one with DA indicators of 25+.

 

Always check if the domain is banned via Google banned checker

If the domain is prohibited from indexing by Google, it is better not to buy it. Check the domain and make sure it is not banned. You can also submit a request to Google and ask for the ban to be lifted. But this is not guaranteed.

Check for the Google AdSense ban

The domain may be banned in Google Adsense. Check for that. We buy a domain to make money on it, and if it is already banned, then there is no point in doing so. You can check whether it is banned via Adsense Sandbox Checker

View the site archive

You can view screenshots of the site in different years and find out what content was posted on it

Chinese links

Most expired domains are spammed with hieroglyphs. You can check for that using aHrefs Ahrefs Site explorer

We hope that in this post we were able to explain how important it is to carefully approach the issue of purchasing of expiring or expired domains and answered all of your questions as thoroughly as possible. Read more posts on our blog. There's a lot of interesting information there :)