How to restore the backlinks on an expired domain
Recently I've been on a buying binge, picking up some valuable expired domains with a strong backlink profile. Here's where things get weird: there are some QUALITY authoritative sites pointing and linking back, but not to the main domain url. Instead they are pointing to articles that no longer exist. The easy thing would be to 301 redirect them to the homepage, but I'm hoping to let Google know quickly that I'm making the "same type of site" with similar content.
So, here's what I'm currently doing (whether or not it's a good idea, I'll let you be the judge:)
#1. Restore the exact links on my site
Basically, if Forbes is linking to an old article called domain.com/most-interesting-article I need to recreate that exact link in my new Wordpress blog. But that can be tricky when it's something like domain.com/09/07/2008/most-interesting-article...
or whatever.
There's a handy Wordpress plugin called custom permalinks that let's me make it an exact match (the original site was http, and my new one is https, so I also needed to add some code into the htaccess file.
I used this guide for the code.
After testing, it works! The old link opens up the newly created post.
#2. Add relevant content
You can use the WayBack machine (web.archive.org) to get a sense of what was there originally, or just guess based on the URL content if you can. I'm using Jarvis to quickly write some basic content. There's also the very tempting option to just restore the original content... which you can't really do because it doesn't belong to you. I usually try and stalk the original creator and see if he seems active or approachable (are the social media links dead or updated? LinkedIn profile? Facebook?)
I may even reach out to ask if I could restore some of the original content, either for some money, or for some backlinks - or even just so this great content isn't going to waste (I hate making new crappy content when the original was very good).
I actually think a goldmine business idea, would be a service restoring the millions of pages of dead content from expired domains and selling them in a marketplace. But anyway, the idea is you want some similar content that matches the original. If I'm feeling risky, I may even use some of the original content with a disclaimer about how we wanted to restore it for posterity (but that's probably dumb and could get you in trouble).
#3. Link back to your linking sites
Google wants the internet to be a web of information, so I suspect that it won't hurt - and might help - to show Google that your content is still relevant and aware of its history. So for example, if Forbes linked to my post, after I recreate that post I might link back to the original Forbes article where my link appears. This should give everything the appearance of being kosher, and might speed up the ranking process, like a *ping* that the right content is back up where it should be and those old links are still valid.
Smart idea? Terrible idea?
I don't know yet. But mostly, I think Google is always looking out for tricks or subterfuge, where you're misrepresenting your content or misleading your website traffic visitors. Ideally I want to be as *open* as possible with what I'm doing (even though these sites are semi-anonymous); as long as you're doing your best to provide great content that's actually valuable, I don't think you need to *hide* what you're doing and it's OK to make mistakes.
This may not be super smart SEO, but it's definitely better (I hope) that spamming your link into a thousand directory listings.
