So you got your hands on a powerhouse domain that you want to 301 to your money site but don’t know how?
We got you, fam. In this article we give you a step by step breakdown of how we leverage 301s for higher rankings.
Please keep in mind, that 301s are hit & miss. They don’t always work. But if they do… oh, boy. You are in for a treat.
So let’s get into the nitty gritty.
Step 1 – Hosting
First of all, you want to host your powerful expired domain on a new server with a unique IP.
We usually use a small 1GB droplet from DO or Vultlr. This will be sufficient, as it will only serve as a temporary base for our domain before 301ing. You can read more on how to host it in our PBN guide.
For the CMS we recommend to use WordPress as it’s super easy to create a small site on it and re-created inner pages.
Step 2 – Match Pages
Now we get into the more advanced nuances of this 301 method.
What you want to do is copy the exact content of your most valuable money site pages to your expired domain with the same URL structure.
Then add a rel canonical tags to the expired pages to avoid duplication issues.
Example:
moneysite.com/page-you-want-to-rank-1/
copy the content to
expireddomains.com/page-you-want-to-rank-1/
Then add a rel canonical tag on expireddomains.com/page-you-want-to-rank-1/ for moneysite.com/page-you-want-to-rank-1/
What is a rel-canonical tag?
The rel-canonical tag is a HTML tag that search engines can crawl to identify multiple versions of a page (content) around the web.
It can identify the original source of a specific page or content.
So by adding the rel canonical tag to your newly crafted expired domain pages (like expireddomains.com/page-you-want-to-rank-1/), you are basically telling Google, that the original page / content is moneysite.com/page-you-want-to-rank-1/.This will avoid any duplication issues down the road.
Do that for 2-3 of you most valuable money site pages.
But don’t overdo it!
Step 3 – Rebuild Pages
Now you want to rebuild the strongest inner pages on your expired domain and add some new relevant content. We recommend to use fresh content or AI content, as content from Wayback can lead to copyright issues.
To find your strongest inner pages, you can simply use Ahrefs.
To do that go to Ahres.com, enter your expired domain name and then go to pages -> “best by links”. Then sort by referring domains.
Here’s an example of an expired domain in the health niche.
So in this example, we would recreate the page https://www.usermeds.com/diseases/gerd-heartburn with some fresh content on Heartburn.
Make sure to add internal links to the homepage of the expired domain and one or two of the pages you created in Step2 using target keyword anchors.
If your expired domain does not have any strong internal pages, you don’t necessarily need to rebuild them.
Step 4 – Idle & Index
Now it’s time to wait.
Let the expired domain idle for 2-4 week until all the pages that you created and re-created have been indexed again.
You can confirm via GSC, if you want. But it’s not a necessity.
Once that is done, move to Step 5.
Step 5 – Create a M&A Page
Once the expired domain is fully indexed, you want to create a ‘Merger & Acquisition‘ page on your money site.
For example: moneysite.com/we-acquired-expired-domain/
Here you want to add some relevant content that you’ve acquired expireddomain.com / that you have merged.
In addition, add 500-1000 words of relevant content on what your moneysite.com does and what topics it tackles. AI content works fine.
In that content add internal links to your most valuable money pages that you want to rank.It could look similar to this:
Obviously it is up to you on how you craft the content. But this approach worked for us.
Step 6 – Redirect
Once the expired domain is fully indexed, you can 301 it via .htaccess.
We recommend to do exact matches of your 301s, to avoid any chain issues.So what you want to do is:
- Homepage (Expired domain) ===> 301 to ===> Homepage (Money Site)
- Strongest inner pages ===> 301 to ===> to the dedicate acquisition page (Money Site) OR if you don’t want to create an acquisition page 301 them to the pages you want to rank
- The pages on the expired domain you created in step 2 with the rel canonical tags ===> 301 to ===> to the corresponding pages on your money site
You can use a site like Pixelkicks for creating the htaccess code.
Make sure to do a backup of the .htaccess of your expired domain before 301ing. So you can fix any redirection issues that may occur.
If there are any other indexed pages on the expired domains that need 301’ing either 301 them to the acquisition page or the homepage.
301s can take a while to work.
We suggest at least 8-12 weeks to gauge the results.
If you don’t see any positive ranking effects in that timeframe, we’d suggest you simply build a PBN on the expired domain or 301 it to a strong tier 1 link (that you can control and are allowed to 301 to).
