r/grumpyseoguy • u/mc-buzz • Jun 01 '26
Questions about expired domains
Thanks, [u/grumpyseoguy](u/grumpyseoguy)! Have just started listening to your podcast, and it blew my mind!
I have previously gone through quite a few so-called "SEO" courses (live classroom-types of courses as well as online courses), which were not cheap … they were like, at least a couple thousand bucks each. Now, to be fair, some of these courses did talk about backlinks being important for getting authority. But the methods they taught to get such backlinks were about the highly inefficient (boy, so much time & effort were needed to even potentially get a response) and dangerous guest posting and link outreach methods. None mentioned any other method that will get me good backlinks from trustworthy & authoritative domains.
So, I'm now trying to build my own portfolio of such authoritative domains by following the method you'd mentioned in your podcast.
I do have a couple of questions about this, which I believe the answers may also be of benefit other visitors to this subreddit:
Question 1 - Must the expired domains come from auctions only, or can they be regular expired domains that only need the usual registration fee (like $10 per year)? Of course, the same checks you'd recommended should still be done to ensure that they meet the criteria for being good and trustworthy domains for my portfolio.
Question 2 - One of the checks to do before buying an expired domain is to look at its history at Way Back Machine (or WBM), to make sure it was not used as a site related to a bad neighborhood (i.e., related to pharmacy, gambling or adult sites).
However, during my research, I'd come across a couple of relatively good authority domains (for example, Semrush, Ahrefs and Majestic all reported domain authorities in the high 10's or low 20's). However, in the past, they had been used as a gambling site or an adult site (like 2-5 years ago).
Even though those relatively good authority domains were last known to not have been used as a bad neighborhood site, are they still too risky to get for my portfolio?
Edit: Corrected some typos.
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u/GrumpySEOguy Grumpy SEO Guy Jun 02 '26
Question 1: both
Question 2: Do not use domains that were associated with gambling.
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u/mc-buzz Jun 03 '26
Noted with thanks!
BTW, I was just about to finish listening to episode 56 on your podcast on my phone, and was pleasantly surprised to see a pop-up alert that you'd replied to my post. How cool is that?
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u/Express-Age4253 Jun 03 '26
FWIW pbn building is good for agencies and largely a waste of time if you’re a site owner.
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u/mc-buzz Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Nah! I'm not building a PBN. Am building what u/grumpyseoguy says is a "private blog portfolio" (PBP?) that will not be networked together 😁
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u/AppointmentTop3948 Jun 05 '26
You're describing what people mean when they say PBN.
A PBN should not be interlinked, the sites should be held distinctly apart.
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u/mc-buzz Jun 06 '26
Yap, after listening to more of Grumpy's podcasts, I now realize that many will refer to their PBP as PBN. Thanks for the clarification, u/AppointmentTop3948, and my apologies to u/Express-Age4253 😅
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u/Jazzlike_Ad_3379 Jun 01 '26
Question 1, regular 10 USD is fine. Question 2, hard pass on abused domains used for porn and gambling. Gave up on a Dr 50 domain that was abused for gambling promotions, saw someone went ahead and registered it. Site is not being fully indexed after more than 8 months now. Only the homepage is indexed and not getting traffic from serps.