Choosing a Domain Name
Selecting a domain name for your website will be one of the most challenging decisions that you have to make. It is imperative that the domain is clearly relevant to your genre. Aside from ensuring that the domain matches your intended audience’s niche, choosing a domain with existing metrics can help with obtaining free back links and domain authority.
If you select an expired domain that has prior high authority ranking, it is essentially free SEO. This can sometimes be time consuming because it will require manually verifying multiple data sources to confirm the domain ranking & standing.
The best place to locate expired domains is the deleted domain section of expireddomains.net, found here:
https://www.expireddomains.net/deleted-domains/
For this test, lets use PC video game reviews as our genre. On Expired Domains, I am searching for domains that include the term “gamereviews”. Expired Domains will allow you to sort the results by back links, # of back links from different domains, birth year of domain, Alexa ranking (if any), Dmoz status and the amount of times it has been archived by the waybackmachine. There is also a drop down filter that allows you to only show results with a minimum amount of backlinks.
On the list in this example, lets try to verify some domain metrics for ComputerGameReviews.co.uk
This domain is memorable, simple and specifically targeted for PC game reviews. The first verification we will use is the Google ban check. We want to ensure that this domain hasn’t been blacklisted or banned by Google. To verify this, you will need check the domain on http://www.bannedcheck.com/
Luckily this domain appears to be in clear standing. The next item to verify is Ahrefs, to ensure that it has a healthy amount of preexisting backlinks. The link to inspect backlinks is https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
As you can see there are many do-follow backlinks. The domain rating is 0.3, which isn’t ideal but it sure beats starting at 0.0 with a new domain. The next task is to enter the domain into the Majestic Site Explorer at majestic.com. The two main stats are Trust Flow and Citation Flow, both of these metrics are based upon a 0-100 scale, and the higher the number the more trustworthy your domain is. New sites will have 0 for both metrics. In this example domain, the ratings are fairly low and not ideal (2 for Trust Flow and 1 for Citation Flow). It is better than starting at 0%, since this domain is available and can be purchased for around $10 it is acceptable; however if this domain were on Flippa for $500, these metrics wouldn’t justify a high price (in my estimation).
