Ultimate Guide to Dropped Domains

The job of an arbitrage specialist is to attract traffic to the promoted site and all kinds of optimization of the latter. At the same time, the domain or site name may not be as short and convenient as that of world famous brands. Initially, the affiliate buys the cheapest and decent looking domain and only then can decide to change it. We will tell you how to do this using drop domains in our article.

Why do you need to look for drop domains

Drop domains are domains with an expired registration period. The domain name is released and may be of interest to other webmasters. At the same time, he may not have any special reasons for the end of registration – the owner could leave the business or simply forget to pay for the renewal of registration.

Searching for drop domains makes sense for several reasons:

• The domain has a convenient or sonorous name that suits your offer. For example, the audience is not very fond of long or complex domains with dashes and multiple dots. If the drop domain fits the theme and is not so long, it makes sense to buy it.
• The domain has a long registration history. This will allow your site to be indexed faster.
• A domain with a large link mass is also a reason to buy it. Thus, search engines will put the site higher in the search results.

A drop domain can be easily resold. For example, LASVEGAS.COM costs as much as $90,000,000. If ever a domain of this level is abandoned, it will become a very valuable asset. Regular abandoned domains are much cheaper, but you can also make money on their resale.

However, abandoned domains also have their downsides. For example, a drop could be abandoned due to Google sanctions. Then, it will not be promoted with all the will.

Alternatively, a site with a drop domain could host dubious or completely prohibited content. This story remains in the memory of the search engine and the drop will be reduced or completely ignored in the search results.

Finally, the domain could sell something that does not correlate with your offer. Then the search engine will notice the discrepancy and will not give enough traffic to it.

How to find drop domains

For the most part, abandoned domains are tracked through special services. For example, expireddomains.net keeps track of all drops and domains that are about to expire.

The service has a whole bunch of settings that will help you choose the right domain for any region and for any requirements.

It is important to note that after the expiration of the registration period, there is still a period of 30 days during which the domain owner can renew it. You can re-buy a domain only at the time of release. You should track exactly the released exchanges, for which this period of 30 days ends.

You can also search for drops using parsers. This method is all the more preferable because it can show domains that special services do not see. Then you need to select trust resources and look for the domains to which they refer. Not all of them will be abandoned, and such a search will take a lot of time – this also needs to be taken into account. But links to the BBC or the Guardian are worth a lot.

How to check abandoned domains

To validate a domain, you need to examine several indicators. Situation Flow and Trust Flow can be checked using the Majestic service. The ratio of CF and TF should ideally be 1 to 1. If TF is high and CF is low, then the links are good, but they are few. If the situation is reversed the owner spammed links, they are of poor quality, although in large quantities.

It’s also worth checking out Domain Rating by Ahrefs. Given that we are talking about abandoned domains here, the DR will be quite low. The number of referring domains should be approximately the same as the volume of backlinks. In the same Ahrefs, you can see the big picture by links – their number should grow, but not sharply. Bursts of activity may be more likely to cause abandonment of the purchase.

The anchor list should be organic, the quality of the backlinks should be high, and the organic traffic on the domain should be constantly growing.

Finally, with the help of web.archive, it is worth checking what was on the site pages in general. If suspicious content was posted there, it is better to bypass such a domain.

Tips after buying a drop domain

You should not use the purchased drop domain right away. You should first restore it using the Web.archive data and see if there are any restrictions from search engines.

Then the domain should just stand for some time, about a month. This time will help you understand how pages are indexed and whether organic traffic is generated.

The best thing to do is to buy several domains on a topic at once and choose which one does the job best. So you can get the highest quality drop for your tasks.

The main points

• Drop domains are domains whose owners did not renew their registration for one reason or another.
• It makes sense to buy abandoned domains because of the link mass and a more convenient domain name.
• You can search for drops using specialized services or by parsing.
• The found drop should be checked by a number of indicators – Situation Flow, Trust Flow, Domain Rating.
• Even an abandoned domain that is suitable in all respects may ultimately fail to cope with its tasks. Therefore, it is worth buying several at once and choosing the best empirically.