How to Buy Expired Domains With Traffic (In 5 Steps)

If you’re looking to start a website quickly, you can purchase expired domains. In particular, expired domains with traffic come with pre-existing audiences that makes it easy to boost your online presence and monetize your content. However, you might not know how to buy expired domains with traffic.

Fortunately, there are several key steps that can help you identify the most valuable high-quality domains. For instance, you can make sure you select a domain with plenty of backlinks, domain authority, and high search rankings.

Should you buy expired domains for your website?

When a domain expires, the domain registrar often reclaims it and makes the domain available for resale. These domains might have amassed a loyal audience and achieved high search rankings, so there are plenty of ways to benefit from them.

First off, you can redirect the traffic from the expired domain to your own website. This way, you can drive organic traffic over to your content to increase conversions and sales.

Meanwhile, you might “park” the domain and profit off the ads. Or, you might decide to build a new website using the domain with traffic. While this will be more time-consuming than the first option, it allows you to gain valuable backlinks, search rankings, and access an existing audience.

Another great reason to buy domains with existing traffic is that you can resell them for profit. Better yet, you can improve the domain’s authority before selling it to increase the value.

How to buy expired domains with traffic

Now that you know a bit more about using expired domains for your website, here’s how to buy expired domains with traffic in five steps:

Step 1: Find expired domains 🏁

The first step to buying expired domains with traffic is finding the right domains to purchase. There are various ways to browse, evaluate, and purchase expired domains.

First off, you can access free tools like Domain Hunter Gatherer, but you’ll often need to create an account. Then, you’ll be able to search for expired domains by crawling specific websites like authority or high-traffic sites.

Alternatively, you can visit domain registrars like GoDaddy to acquire a domain with traffic. All you need to do is create an account. Then, head to GoDaddy auctions to view expired domains and their stats:

Here, you can identify the age of the domain, traffic numbers, and estimated values.

Meanwhile, you might prefer to search for high-traffic domains on sites like Spamzilla. It’s free to sign up and then you can easily filter domains with traffic. What’s more, you can analyze key data like domain age, active history, redirects, parked pages, backlink history, and more.

Step 2: Check domain age and authority 🖱️

Whichever method you choose to find domains, it’s important to check the domain age and authority. This can be challenging if you’re looking for an expired domain within certain niches. However, if you’re happy to acquire a domain from any type of website, this will be easier.

Once you’ve found a handful of possible domain names in the previous step, you can use tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to monitor traffic and other valuable stats. With Semrush, you’ll get access to a sophisticated dashboard.

Here, enter the domain in the search bar to gain a detailed list of analytics:

For instance, you can view information about traffic numbers, paid traffic, backlinks, page views, and engagement. You can also access a clear authority score.

Plus, you can compare paid vs organic over the last two years, and view traffic distribution across the world. Then, you can also use The Wayback Machine to check the domain’s Google Index over the past ten years.

Step 3: Research backlinks 🔗

If you’re wondering how to buy expired domains with traffic, one of the key steps is to research the domain’s backlinks. Although platforms like Semrush provide some information about them, it’s best to find dedicated tools that can offer more specific data.

Essentially, you want to buy an expired domain that contains valid links from other sites like authority sites and small blogs. It’s also very important to avoid spam links since this can lead Google to believe that your site is part of a private blog network (PBN).

Google Console provides an easy way to check backlinks. Or, you can use free tools like the aforementioned Ahrefs, or Moz. With Moz, navigate to Free SEO Tools in the menu and select Domain Analysis.

Then, enter the expired domain with traffic and click on Check Authority:

Instantly, you can see how many root domains are linked, and how many keywords the domain ranks for. Additionally, you’ll receive a clear spam score.

Plus, you can even view top pages by link, and top-linking domains. You can then run a separate domain check on the linked domains to verify the quality.

Step 4: Analyze SEO metrics 💡

Next up, it’s useful to consider certain SEO metrics to secure a valuable expired domain with traffic. This way, you can ensure that the domain ranks highly. Plus, if you plan to re-build the website, you can find out whether the domain retains the power to attract lots of visitors.

So far, we’ve shown you how to find domains that come with high-quality backlinks and domain authority. While these features indicate a solid search ranking, there are several other factors to take into account like page speed, meta data, and crawlability.

To get started, you’ll need to choose an SEO audit tool like Seobility. Enter the expired domain. Then, click on Analyze website.

Here, you’ll receive a full SEO report where you can view an overall SEO score alongside information about page quality, page structure, link structure, and meta data:

Additionally, you’re able to find out the domain’s response time, and the number (and size) of media files.

Plus, you’ll receive useful information about the domain’s SEO, meta tags, mobile optimization, image SEO, additional markup, and more. Meanwhile, you’ll even get a list of SEO improvements that you can make to the website if you plan on keeping the content.

Step 5: Buy the domain at auctions or marketplaces 🛒

Once all the necessary checks are complete, you’re ready to buy expired domains with traffic. As we discussed in the first step of the tutorial, there are plenty of places to find expired domains.

However, domain auctions are a popular method for purchasing available domains. In this instance, you can bid on domains that are relevant to your business and niche through auction services like GoDaddy and Namecheap:

Alternatively, you can buy expired domains with traffic from domain marketplaces like ODYS Global or Flippa. Better yet, many of these marketplaces have filters and keywords to help you find the exact domain you’re looking for.

While these are the most common methods to buy expired domains, you can also purchase the domain directly from the registrar. This can be cheaper than buying them at auctions, but it can also be competitive.

Conclusion 🧐

👉 To recap, here’s how to buy expired domains with traffic:

Do you have any questions about how to buy expired domains with traffic? Let us know in the comments below!