How to Find SEO Domains: A Complete Marketplace Guide

Learn how to search and select quality SEO expired domains. Save time and resources by using all that SEO.Domains Marketplace has to offer.

What to look for in an expired domain?

Start by defining the needs of your current SEO project.

Language / Top-Level Domain

It’s best if the language of the original website’s content matches the country you’re optimizing for. This is most easily selected by our TLD and Language filters.

If possible, try not to limit yourself to a single TLD. Experience shows that along with TLDs, Google also puts importance on geotargeting, historical referring domains, and content when distributing SEO power.

SEO requirements

Your SEO strategy should outline what the competitors in your SERP results are doing differently. Your website might require more Domain Authority, more niche backlinks, a higher number of referring domains, etc. All of these are easily achievable using the proper expired domains as private blogs or 301 redirects.

Use filters for Domain Authority (DA), Referring Domains (RD), Domain Rating (DR), Trust Flow (TF), backlinks, etc, to find exactly what you need.

Budget

The prices of expired domains vary greatly depending on:

• number of referring domains;
• quality of backlinks;
• amount of current traffic;
• TLD;
• niche;
• name.

Select a budget you’re ready to invest in by using the “Price” tab.

Tip: Add 10-15% more than you’d originally plan to spend – you wouldn’t want to miss out on dozens of great search results, just to save $100.

Niche / Domain Topic (optional)

Depending on your SEO strategy, you may need to focus your search on a particular niche.  We categorize all domains at 3 levels:

• Main category (General topic)
• Subcategory (Niche)
• Description (Website history)

SEO.Domains shows the exact history of the domain. Descriptions and topics are individually assigned by experienced domain reviewers and present you with detailed information about the domain’s history. Click on the information icon next to each domain to view a full description.

Use our “Search by keyword” tab in its default setting, to search for any topic in our entire database.

You can find a list of our main categories in the drop-down list “By Category” but it’s best not to limit your search to one category.

Tip: Some categories, such as Media, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Education, could provide suitable domains if there aren’t any available in your particular niche. General domains with broad backlink profiles can add authority to domains in various topics.

How to Find Expired Domains More Easily

Search for country links from rare countries

These include Canada, Japan, India, Scandinavian countries, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, and more.

Finding expired domains for countries with ccTLD owner restrictions or high market demand can be a challenge. Some country domain registries, such as the .CA authority, require a local address or have other strict conditions for registrants (domain owners).

In these cases, we recommend that you can also use a name with another TLD, usually an internationally-used TLD, that has a history in the country of interest. In fact, Google’s own John Mueller has confirmed Google doesn’t look only to ccTLDs for geotargeting.

This can also prove useful when good expired domains in certain ccTLDs are simply hard to come by, whether due to popularity or scarcity. This is the case with Malaysia, Thailand, Norway, Sweden, etc.

We keep track of domains linked to rare countries and many more. You can look up names with country links in the “Search by keyword” tab:

Domains with a backlink profile in your ccTLD can solve ownership restrictions and limited domain supplies. Find easy to manage domains for:

• Japan
• Canada
• Australia
• Spain
• Germany
• France
• India
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Indonesia

Tip: If you want to make sure Google recognizes which country your new website is targeting, make sure to set the correct geographic targeting settings in your Search Console.

Don’t exclude other TLDs

US domains come in more TLDs than just .com/.net/.org. Don’t miss out on amazing finds in other globally-used extensions, such as .io, .co, .to, .me, .fm, and more.

Use the US market setting in our search bar for enhanced results when looking for a US or global domain. While some country-specific results might still appear occasionally, the filter allows you to review 40% more domain suggestions in English, than a single “.com” search.

Find expired domains for the US market

Search for strong backlinks

You can use the “Search by keyword” tab to search for names with backlinks from large media or authority websites, such as:

• Expired domains with links from Wikipedia
• Expired domains with links from BBC
• Expired domains with links from The Guardian
• Expired domains with links from The New York Times

Tip: Backlinks from local media sites are key for international SEO (targeting a specific country). Try searching for aged domains with backlinks from top websites in your country of interest (BBC UK for the United Kingdom, Vancouver Sun for Canada, Le Monde for France, El Pais for Spain, Spiegel for Germany, etc).

Search for Educational and Governmental referring domains

.EDU and .GOV referring domains are some of the strongest signals for SEO domain authority.

To find names with .EDU backlinks in our marketplace, search for “EDU” in the description box. Using “GOV”, you can also see a list of domains with .GOV backlinks.

Search for synonyms and don’t exclude related topics

Domains from related categories are often relevant enough to provide SEO value if there aren’t any good names available in your particular niche.

For example, if your niche is “supplements”, make sure to also review search results for “nutrition”, “beauty”, “health” and other related topics. Alternatively, a high-quality “Running” domain can be more useful to you than a less powerful “Fitness” domain. A domain about “Marketing” can be quite relevant to the SEO niche, and etc.

In many cases, a clean, powerful aged domain in a related topic can be used well to provide more authority to your website than a weaker, spammy domain with a history in your exact niche. If you’re not sure which synonyms to try for your search, browse through our list of main categories to broaden the results.