Buying dropped domains

shane7

Hi.
I've bought a couple of recently dropped domains and I was wondering what's the best way to utilise them. I mainly buy for potential for example I bought a fly fishing .ie domain that just dropped. It only has a pagerank of 2 but as I have an interest in fishing I will use that for a blog and try to increase the page rank and throw on some affiliate links.

But I'm more thinking the domains I buy that I just take a punt on. I bought a .co.uk domain. It has high page rank, low spam score, and some really nice backlinks including some gov links. It also has the lacoste clothing brand in the domain name so for €5 its not much of a risk so I snapped it up.

I was initially thinking I would build a fashion blog with lacoste clothing and use it as an affiliate site but if I'm going to build a website for every domain I buy I won't be building any sites for my clients. I already have a fashion blog online so is it a good option to take those fashion domains I buy and use a 301 redirect to pass the domain authority to my current fashion site?

I'm pretty careful about the domains I buy I just buy them as they drop and I do as much homework as I can before I purchase them. Is it a good strategy in general to buy relevant domains to your own niche and pass on the domain authority or would you try flipping them? Or is it more hassle than its worth

Thanks

Atlantic Dawn

Unless your name is Lacoste you will have problems ever using it, it's basically worthless as the brand owners will sue.

My opinion is it's more hassle than it's worth.

mneylon

As a general rule avoid domain names that contain or use well known brands. If the brand holder were to lodge a dispute they'll probably win it.

For more "generic" domains ..

It depends on how much patience you have. Flipping domains is doable, but it's not *that* easy, or everyone would be doing it.

Building out content on previously used domains *might* work, but the search engines constantly update their algorithms to mitigate against low quality sites that are trying to piggyback off the historic reputation of a domain.

vatvatie

If you 301 redirect it, it won't be a problem with the brand holder. But, you would still have to test it before you redirect it... by test it, I mean.. putting some content on it to see how it ranks. I would never redirect it without making sure there is nothing wrong with it, even if GSC is clean. So.. yeah... unless the domain has pages in Google, and it still gets traffic, it is too risky in my opinion.

Scotty #

Many years ago Google put a lot of weight on keywords in domain names. Now, they don't put any. flyfishing.ie will not rank any higher for 'fly fishing' than a site, with the same content, as any other name. It's all about content (and backlinks). Up until a couple of years ago the IEDR were very strict about who could register which .ie name. You would not have been allowed register flyfishing.ie unless you could show you had a connection to the name. Now... it seems to be a free for all!

"Cyber squatting" as it's known, the practice of registering a brand or name you don't own, was popular a few years ago too but some high profile law suits have put a stop to it.