There seems to be a little debate brewing in the internet marketing community about expired domains. Some internet marketers believe that expired domains are an awesome way to get a leg up on the competition whereas others think that expired domains are not worth it. So, what is my take on this matter? Well, I believe that they can work if you “know how to work them”. The secret when purchasing an expired domain is to make sure that the previous domain owner didn’t spam the domain (when they had it), that it has some PR and/or some existing back links on them. In contrast, do not purchase expired domains that have no PR and ones that were dropped or blocked by Google at one time or another. If you do, you are most likely wasting your time.
One great site for checking out whether a site has been dropped is www.domaintools.com. This site basically allows you to easily see if the domain has been dropped and if so, how many times it has been dropped. In addition, you should also make sure that the PR is real and not fake as some unscrupulous sellers will simply redirect a higher PR to another one so that you think you’re getting a higher PR domain when in actuality, it has lower PR. One great tool for checking this is www.prchecker.info.
Instead, find a good one with backlinks and go for it. Then, you can build a site or put a WordPress blog on the expired domain. If you do it right, you may be able to avoid the dreaded Google sandbox and can start getting traffic to your new site. After all, Google trusts legitimate aged domains that pass the above tests. Now, how cool is that?
Did you realize that there are two types of backlinking? Well, I honestly didn’t realize that this was true until recently. Duhhhh. I’ve been dibbling and dabbling in internet marketing for 3 years now and I am just now realizing that. So, for those of you that aren’t aware of this important fact – let me fill you in.
The first type of backlinking is linking specifically for human readers who will visit your website and hopefully click on your website or blog via anchor text or a resource box. With this type of backlink you specifically target readers and try and push their “hot buttons” so that they will feel compelled to click on your site and take some sort of action, like purchasing an affiliate product or simply making you revenue through contextual advertising. In contrast, there is another type of backlinking that is meant to impress the search engines and get them to give you higher search engine rankings. Now, this isn’t to say that one type of backlink is better than the other or that you should create crappy content specifically to impress the search engines. It is just that each type of backlink has a specific purpose and you must use both of them if you want to succeed.
In the past, I only used backlinking with articles and then wondered why I got some traffic through article directories (like Ezines) but not through the SERPS. Keep in mind that I’m referring to my blogger blogs that were not SEOd by anyone but me here. As for my other sites, they were able to get higher search engine placement because my previous designer knew how to optimize them and did some linking too.
Well, when analyzing both types of sites, I realized that I had to use BOTH types of backlinking if I wanted my niche sites to really make me money. In essence, I had to mix it up so that I could help propel my niche sites higher and higher and higher in the search engines. That is why I have been backlinking like crazy. What I mean is that I have been writing blurbs and posting them on other sites, answering questions on Yahoo answers and also doing a bit of forum marketing. It is a bit too early to see if my strategy is working but from all that I have read and learned, I truly believe that this is the strategy that will work. Not only to help me get higher rankings but also a higher PR too and that has to be a good thing! I’ll keep you posted!
So, today is Monday and it is the beginning of the week for this internet marketing writer and there are so many things that I want to accomplish this month but I just realized that I don’t have much time. Now, typically I would go into panic mode and start doing a bunch of stuff to increase my revenues but this week, I’ve decided to stay focused on my goals. That is, although I would love to write a bunch of DS articles to make some extra cash or bid on a bunch of Elance projects to make some more money, I am gong to resist the temptation. Instead, I am going to focus on increasing my residual income. As you know, I have quite a bit of blogger blogs that haven’t made any money and my new goal is to make each one make at least $10+ a month. Now, mind you that $10 each is NOT a lot of money and I’m totally open to them making more but when you have 31 of these blogs and each one earns you $10.00 a month then you have $380.00 extra a month to add to the pot and that, my friend, starts looking much better, right? Well, it most certainly does to me!
Now, how am I going to increase the revenue of each blog to $10 a month? I am going to market those blogs like crazy. I am going to build quality links on higher PR sites and blogs, use Yahoo Answers to drive traffic, and write and submit articles to article directories. By doing this, I should skyrocket my search engine rankings and move up the ranks so that more people see my blogs and purchase my products or generate ad revenue for me. Well, gotta get to work so that I can put my plan into action.
