Expired domain names and ranking high in Google

New blogger Michael Lauher of Junk Drawer has been investigating the phenomenon of buying expired domain names.



A domain name, of course is something like www.yoursite.com, or www.yourbusiness.com, or similar type of .com name. In effect, it's an internet address.



Some internet addresses are extremely valuable, as they contain very high Google PageRank, and literally thousands of high quality incoming links.



A domain name is only registered for a certain period of time. After that time expires, and the registration is not renewed with the fees paid up to date, the domain "expires" for the owner.



When the domain becomes freely available, often the vast majority of its links come along with it, for the benefit of the new owner.



The reason the links remain is many webmasters do not bother to remove old links. Long life on the internet is part of a link's value.



There is also, as Michael discovered, a high dollar value on certain important expired domain names.



Michael has an intriguing series of posts, about how an allegedly expired domain was acquired, and moved to the first page of Google's search results. All the more interesting was the search term was "directory" and one of the Page One returns was a real estate firm.



Michael suspects that the domain name had not expired at all but represents a flaw in Google's link popularity system and the domain name was actually purchased prior to expiration.



In effect, alleges Michael, the real estate company ownership approached the doamin owners, the well known search engine "Ask Jeeves", and bought the domain.



Michael expresses a concern many people have with some search engine results. He says that high rankings can possibly be bought with cold hard cash.



For those of us who attempt to gain high search engine placements, with natural organic listings, that can be disconcerting.



That's why bloggers need to seriously consider optimizing their blogs, using the accepted above board search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.



The best practices SEO methods revolve mainly around writing frequent keyword rich posts as content, and adding good quality incoming links.



Those are part and parcel with blogging anyway.



Once again, being bloggers, we can hold our own against most of the big money heavy hitters.



That is simply one more reason for a business, to add a blog component, to their overall business strategy.