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A HighRanking Forum thread has a site owner asking about expired domain names. Not any expired domain name, an expired domain name of a competitor that went out of business.
He asked if it would be safe to pick the domain name up and 301 redirect it to his site.
He asked:
Whilst they were in business they built up some links to their website and I wondered if it would be worth registering the domain and doing a 301 to our site. Given the minimal cost it seems worth doing, however are there likely to be any negative affects?
(1) Typically, Google may reset the value of a domain name when it expires. But not always.
(2) So you may or may not adopt the benefits and the negatives from that domain name if you 301 it.
(3) You can pick up some of his old customers by redirecting it to your site.
I'd definitely buy it and hold it. I personally would set up a page either 301ed to my site or as a landing page on that site, redirecting humans to do business with my site.
I'd be a bit caution about the domain passing value, I'd analyze the domain name before doing it.
What would you do?
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
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