Hey!

Here’s another email full of stuff like an SEO experiment and domains that are expiring that you can buy, and what you might possibly do with them.

A big fat reminder to do your due diligence before pulling the trigger on these—as I have not spent an hour deep-diving into each name to make sure it’s spotless, so make sure you do before spending a bunch of money. I’m not responsible for any bad decisions you make!

RE: SEO News Section From Last Week’s Email: I didn’t really like writing about SEO news here so formally, so I’m not going to. I actually do that at another site… a weekly column kind of thing. I’ll put the link here for next week’s(ish) newsletter so you can read about SEO if you’re interested.

In this week’s edition:

• some meta thoughts about this newsletter

• a really interesting SEO/branding/domain experiment I’m doing

• domains at auction

Meta Thoughts About Future Offerings in this Newsletter

I have recently been thinking about offering some extremely limited consulting spots for helping someone/some company find domains that will help grow traffic/authority, help consult on how to actually USE these domains to build the brand, and maybe possibly a done-for-you service.

I dunno. Nothing formal. I’m not start a consulting company or anything (for now). But if you’re potentially interested in paying for this kind of help that I am very clearly knowledgeable about, please shoot me an email—I’d love to chat about possibilities.

Another thing I’ll be trying is posting some domains/sites I’ve acquired or built out here to see if anyone is interested in purchasing. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe I’ll have something in March for this.

Also, if you end up buying a valuable domain here or getting some good tips (or even just being entertained), throw me some money @ PayPal like a finder’s fee. If you want.

Experiment I’m Doing

Is it possible to buy a real live site with lots of ranking and traffic, then 301 it to a newly acquired domain that’s 10,000 times a better brand but has a history of the dirtiest garbage-water-tasting spammy exact match forum links so that all that traffic and all those rankings go to zero, and then UNDO that 301 and recover some or all of your original rankings on the live site you bought?

I dunno, but I’m gonna find out.

Here’s the graveyard of some page one rankings (with Featured Snippet for a bit!) the site had AFTER the redirect, when Google murdered it:

death emoji

knife emoji

That second one was a very very valuable buying keyword with lots of monthly searches.

There was really nothing fishy with this one, I legitimately bought a live site whose domain I hated, and tried to move it over to an AMAZING industry-relevant one word domain that unfortunately had a history of really shitty link building (before it expired and I bought it).

After everything went to zero I tried disavowing some obviously trash referring domains, but after a month or two of nothing happening, I pronounced the site truly dead for good.

But then I though F-it, I’ll just try and undo the acquisition and redirect. The Algorithm loved the site once, maybe I can resurrect this corpse help it and Google find Zombie-on-Algorithm love.

The Results:

It’s still early, but some interest stuff is happening:

This is the rank-graph for the site falling from #3-ish in early September because I redirected the site to the second site, and the site starting to come back after the redirect was removed. This is for the lucrative buying keyword.

This one came almost all the way back—a long tail review keyword.

And here’s a section of the keywords I’m tracking, and their rankings (which last week were all non-existent because of the redirect/acquisition).

Mostly I’m amazed at how quickly the keywords started ranking again.

Not anywhere close to where they were before, obviously, but a promising start!

I’ll update you on how things go in the future (probably). If you have specific questions aside from what URL is this and if it makes sense I’ll answer them in next week’s(ish) newsletter.

Domains With Authority

Buy these sites to start a new content/affiliate/ecommerce whatever site. Let someone else’s poorly executed good idea be your new well-executed website. You’ll need a GoDaddy auction account or a NameJet account to play.

Do your own due diligence. I’m not a lawyer and not your SEO consultant, so not responsible for your purchases and I don’t guarantee your success. /legal disclaimer

TeaLeafNation.com - ends 2/3
DR 51 | 1.35k RD, Links from: NYTimes, The Atlantic, Forbes, TheGuardian, WAPO, WSJ

Okay, a few things you should know before going after this.

Yes, it is a DR 51 and that’s a sexy number! But the last time this site had significant traffic/rankings (according to Ahrefs, at least) was at the end of 2015.

The site, when it was live, was focused on China.

But do you have to build a Chinese-focused site on this to make it work for you, if acquiring? No.

Here’s an interesting thing: the site currently ranks in the top 100 (just took a big dip because the site was offline when expiring) for “tea leaf.”

“Shepherd” is just Sheep Herd smashed together! No. I mean, TEA AUTHORITY SITE.

There it is. The link profile is mostly from ginormous news sites linking to news pieces about China. It has over 2,000 links from NYTimes and over 700 from TheAtlantic.

Do your due diligence and blah blah etc., but wow, what a killer link profile and brand for a tea-focused site.

If you end up buying this to build a tea site, shoot me an email I’ll share a few thoughts with you on a Skype call (but don’t buy it JUST for that call, you’ll be super disappointed).

Expect to pay a few thousand for this one…

LotusFlow3r.com - ends 2/4
DR 33 | 545 RD, Links from: NYTimes, BBC, WAPO, Wired, NewYorker, RollingStone, PasteMagazine, NME, Grammy.com

If you’re a bit of a domain collector, you might be interested in this one. It was a website set up for Prince’s triple album released in 2009:

From Wikipedia: an announcement of a new interactive website (lotusflow3r.com), proclaiming it would allow fans to "listen, watch and buy" music and videos featuring Prince and guest artists.

Because this is not an obvious slam dunk acquisition, it’s flying extremely low under the radar with zero bids, and just over a day left. Not sure how valuable it’d be as a business play—the site isn’t indexed in Google or anything, but it’s a neat little acquisition if you’re a collector and/or Prince fan.

CompetitiveEaters.com - ends 2/4
DR 26 | 300 RD, Links from: WAPO, TheAtlantic, BuzzFeed, FoxNews, Today.com, Boston.com, Cosmo

If you like your niches super specialized and hot-dog flavored, you’re gonna love this one.

Looks like it used to be THE authority site on competitive eating, and has some really amazing links.

Pick this one up if you want to revive it and own the competitive eating niche, or if you want to cannibalize all that link authority and build some kind of food-related affiliate site (but honestly, I think this one is wasted if you DON’T recreate and build the competitive eating authority this was and can be again.

poetry in motion…

Resonance-AI.com - ends 2/9
DR 43 | 493 RD, Links from: (read below)

Don’t see a lot of AI-themed sites coming through, so putting this in the mix incase you’re desperate but CAUTION! Many of the links coming to this site are being redirected from Atooma.com, which is no longer forwarding to this site (doesn’t resolve at all), so many of the juicy links you might find will eventually go away.

However, in my experience, the site will still benefit from those links for a while yet to come—maybe long enough to get your whatever AI site up and getting some traction.

MicrobiologyBytes.com - ends 2/9
DR 40 | 1k RD, Links from: NYTimes, Springer.com, Wired, All Wikipedias, PLOS.org, Cambridge.org

Kind of a timely site since the world is starting to fall apart re: Corona.

Tons of links from big news sites, wikipedia in all languages, health/science sites, and universities. Use this one to lend some E-A-T authority (if you follow this particular Spiritual SEO path) to a YMYL site.

Way under the radar with one bid, but many days left for people to discover it.

WikiVisual.com - ends 2/7
DR 33 | 1.41k RD, Links from: TheGuardian, Fandom.com, Ycombinator, Slashdot, MacRumors, BleacherReport, TreeHugger

Won’t come with a lot of specific authority. I guess this was a site similar to Wikimedia, which just hosted a bunch of public domain or CC licensed images. Pick this site up if you’re gonna do some SEO testing with expired domains (recommended!) or if you’re looking to build something very general or image/media focused. Should go fairly inexpensively (currently no bids).

MindControlForums.com - ends 2/5
DR 35 | 1.68k RD, Links from: Boingboing, Snopes, Slashdot, SMH.com.au

Meh. Not the best looking link profile and some cuckoo content about government mind control (from what I can tell from some of the anchor text), but is seeing some action @ GoDaddy (+10 bids so far), but I’m not sure what’d you do with this thing.

Maybe a build out that pushed all kinds of conspiracies to just vacuum up links from big media sites and then 301 to one of your sites that you don’t care much about?

Maybe I’m missing something with this one… when I Googled “mind control” a bunch of marketing articles came up, so, maybe that’s your angle?

IslandLife808.com - ends 2/5
DR 35 | 2.17k RD, Links from: NYTimes, MentalFloss, ScienceBlogs, GoVisitHawaii.com, HawaiiWebLog.com

Has a few bids. Not an amazing link profile, but some nice niche-specific relevancy if you own a good Hawaii-related domain and are interested in doing a build out.

Again, if you end up buying this and want to flip it over to a high quality domain you own, shoot me an email I’ll share some thoughts with you on how I’d pull it off.

Domains to Build a Brand On

Revise.com - ends 2/8

Over $10k already. Gonna go for WAY more. A fantastic one-word brand.

Racquetball.org - ends 2/7

Good use of .org, just begging to be a racquetball affiliate site or, if you can pull it off, a racquetball official association website (or as close to that as you can build). But probably best use here is a high quality authority site. Really like this one for a build out. (Domain has a little bit of authority, but nothing amazing).

No bids @ NameJet, reserve between $500 and $1000.

Revisitors.com - ends 2/5

Great name for a marketing/PPC agency (esp. one that specializes in retargeting).

SugarLab.com - ends 2/5

Cool name for a general brand. Amazing name for a bakery or candy shop.

Unsubscribe.com - ends 2/6

Mmm, Unsubscribe.com

I really like this one as a marketing brand/email newsletter company or service provider—yes, even though it has a slightly negative connotation. I think there’s room to build something really valuable here and kind of change that association (at least insofar as this brand is particularly concerned). I know many others will disagree with me and that’s fine. How’s it feel to be WRONG? I mean, to each their own.

A big name with a big price tag (currently just under $14k with a few days left).

BeeHoney.com - ends 2/8

On the one hand, duh. Honey from bees. But on the other, a really solid and easy to remember brand. Good brand for selling honey (start a site that sells honey, contract with some honey producers, drop(ship) it like it’s hot) or just as a brand that is Honey Bee but reversed. Not a home run, that last one, but a viable brand option. I really like this one as a honey ecommerce store that sells honey, wax/honey-based skin products, etc.

$500 with a few days left, probably goes for a few thousand.

WaynesWorld.com - ends 2/4

Speaking of collecting domains, here’s a fun one with a lot of history.

Not sure what’d you actually do with it because trademarks/copyright/whatever, but you know…

~

That’s all for this time!

If you have any feedback etc., shoot me an email.

Until next week… party on, Wayne!