Wondering how you can find expired domains that don’t cost a fortune?
Aside from working with reputable domain sellers, affiliate marketers and bloggers can often be quite limited in their approach to finding quality expired domains.
I’m emphasising quality here because anyone can find an expired domain in a matter of minutes, and what we as digital marketers need to be focused on is processes that narrow down the domain spam, and ultimately don’t take forever as a daily or weekly task. It also all completely depends on what you’re looking for, for example with this approach I find Domain Lore are great for local SEO expired domains, something like https://northweststoragesolutions.co.uk/ is a good example (saving you the time to actually get links in to your target site).
This process I’m going to show you only takes a couple of minutes, and it’s something I do on a daily basis.
As mentioned, you can also go directly to expired domain sellers, of which there are few and far between who are actually offering premium domains for a fair price. I tend to stick to the sellers who have either made a name for their selves in the sector, and also who are Nominet members so they at least have some history in dealing with domain selling. To avoid them being spammed with offers, please message me if you’re interested in speaking to a private domain sellers and I’ll message you their contact details.
Okay, on with this guide. In the context of finding an expired domain for free, I mean free in the sense that you’re not using a tool like Spamzilla to find them (and whilst this is a great tool, I’m doing this guide more for people who don’t want to sign up to a monthly service). All you will need is a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to check domain metrics in bulk, otherwise it’s going to take you forever to get through a list of hundreds of expired domains per day.
You can also watch this video I recently made on the topic of finding expired domains for free if you don’t have time to read the guide:
Why look for expired domains manually instead of using a tool?
Honestly, it just comes down to price. I’m a fan of tools like Spazmilla and DomCop as well as this strategy, however when I didn’t have the budget for tools I wish I’d known this approach!
Finding Expired Domains – Step-by-Step Manual Process
- Head on over to Domain Lore and choose the ‘Hidden Gems’ auctions tab
- Click on the RSS feed to get the URL, and then paste it into an RSS to CSV converter. This makes it much easier to format your domain when pasting into the bulk checker, rather than trying to highlight everything on a web page and dealing with horrendous formatting.
- Once the CSV has downloaded, you’ll be given a list of domain in a spreadsheet. Select all of these.
- Head to either SEMrush (extended free trial here) or Ahrefs and use their bulk domain checking tools. Then, filter by a core metric such as domain rating to then list domain by highest to lowest domain rating. You can then manually analyse based on the metrics you’re looking for e.g. a minimum DR of 30.
- Go back over to Domain Lore, find the domain in question and submit a bid!
There are lots of ways to approach finding expired domains, but this is just one of the quicker ways that I use for expired .co.uk domains in particular.
What’s the benefit of using an expired domain?
Essentially, you’re getting a site that already has one of arguably the hardest parts of SEO done for you… links! If you don’t have a budget for link building or a digital PR strategy in place then, especially for affiliate marketers. you may struggle when it comes to landing links that move the needle.
Getting an expired domain that is relevant to the niche you want to target will usually mean that you may already have the links from the sites you would target using a fresh domain… except they’re already there!
This is what is important with expired domains too… You have to ensure that the niche you’re targeting is at least somewhat related to the domain in question. For example, check out the referring domains and anchor text prior to purchasing the domain, and look at the types of sites that the links are coming from. If they’re mostly from interior design websites, then you’re certainly better off sticking to that niche (even broadly speaking) rather than starting something completely out of left field.
The context of the links should also weigh heavily in your decision for buying an expired domain, and not just because it has something like a high DR (which can be very easily manipulated to begin with).
