How to preserve an expired domain’s existing indexed pages
Here’s a simple easy trick to preserve those existing indexed pages from an expired domain name that you register.
First off, if your not using wordpress, you’re missing the boat. Not only can you launch a pretty nice looking site within an hour or so, there’s a ton of plugins available to automate and tweak your site. In the past, the most popular thing to do with an expired domain that had existing link popularity, was to just park it and hopefully capitalize on the traffic via PPC with sedo or any one of the other paid parking programs out there. However, I’ve found it to be somewhat self-defeating because eventually all inbound links will disappear and all indexed pages will vanish even quicker… and, therefore all traffic will cease.
What I recommend, is to quickly throw a wordpress site up and try to closely match the old content and page structures. If you register the domain fast enough, within 1-3 days after it becomes available again, you can salvage the existing indexed pages.
The first thing to do is investigate which pages are indexed… try Googling the domain name in quotes first: “domain.com” to see if its indexed at all. If so, query Google like this:
site:domain.com
This will give you a list of all pages still indexed. Copy each and every one of those page structures… then download simple 301 redirect plugin for wordpress here:
http://www.scottnelle.com/simple-301-redirects-plugin-for-wordpress/
Once you set up your new site simply go into the plugin settings and enter each of the old pages, you can now forward them wherever you want. This tells Google the page is permanently moved to a new location. This is exactly how Google prefers you to do this, and avoid 404 errors as best as possible.
Alternatively, you can build the new site with the exact same structure as the 0ld site, without 301 redirects.
Partners
