If you know much about the expired domain market, you probably know that it is highly competitive, fast-moving, and expensive.

The best expired domains can sell for tens of thousands of dollars apiece in auctions.

If you aren't willing to drop this kind of money on a domain, you may decide to stay away from the expired domain market altogether.

However, some domain registrars offer free expired domain names along with their paid and auction domain options.

Free domains tend to be in lower demand than paid ones, typically because they are less than five years old or have poor domain authority. Even so, utilizing these domains strategically could improve your SEO and web traffic and even earn you money.

Read ahead to learn more about how to use free expired domains to your advantage.

What Types of Domains Are on Free Expired Domain Lists?

If you have looked at an expired domain list before, you know the wide range of domain names and TLDs that can exist in the public domain registry.

Registrars add thousands of domains to their lists each day that vary in price, quality, and availability.

Before you begin your free domains search, you should be aware of what types of domains you are likely to find for free.

As we mentioned before, free expired domains tend to be in lower demand than paid ones, meaning they are often less valuable to domain owners.

When you search through a free expired domain name list, you will probably see domains that meet one or more of the following criteria:

  • Domains with a variety of TLDs (.net, .co, .uk, .io)
  • Domains that did not sell in auction or closeout sales
  • Domains that are very young or very old
  • Domains containing random strings of characters
  • Domains containing random keywords
  • Domains with spam links

If you spend enough time searching through expired domain lists, you may eventually strike gold and find a free domain with high SEO, keywords that are relevant to your business, and authoritative backlinks.

However, you should keep in mind that a free domain is probably free for a reason. If you're interested in registering a free domain, you should attempt to determine that reason before proceeding.

And if you're looking for a high-quality, valuable domain, you'll probably be better off purchasing one outright or through auctions.

Ways to Use Free Expired Domain Names

People register expired domains for a number of reasons. Some people purchase expired domains to use when creating a new website.

Others resell these domains for profit. And some utilize expired domains to create backlinks for their existing website.

While free domains are often not the most desirable, you can still use them to improve your web traffic or create high-ranking websites. Here are a few ways someone may use expired domains to their advantage:

  1. "Flip" the domain and sell it to a relevant party: Domain flipping is the practice of purchasing a domain, increasing its search engine rankings, then selling it for profit. SEO experts and domain investors often register keyword-dense domain names and flip them for a specific business or industry.
  2. Create a sister site for your existing website: If you're looking to create traffic for your current web page, you can create a sister site using a free domain to ramp up your visibility.
  3. Create an international domain to redirect to your site: If you happen to find a free domain name that is relevant to your current website but uses a different TLD, you can redirect the free domain to your website to make it more visible for international users.

Determining how you want to use expired domains before you begin your search process will allow you to narrow down your lists to those that suit your specific needs.

What to Look for in Free Expired Domains

You may feel tempted to register the first free expired domain you find. After all, what do you have to lose?

What to Look for in Free Expired Domains

However, you should still use discernment when choosing a free expired domain. While the domain registration itself may be free, you will still need to pay a monthly fee to host the domain.

Registering a low-quality, ineffective domain will be a waste of money, even if you secured the domain name for free.

As you search through free domain lists, you should be sure to examine expired domains with backlinks and with the following qualities for each domain:

  • Domain popularity (DP): Domain popularity is the number of backlinks that refer back to a specific domain. You can view backlink data through our SEO toolset.
  • Expiration date and availability status: Some domain lists include free domains that will expire soon. You can always check your domain expiration date through Whois.
  • Domain registrar: The registrar is the company that is offering the web address to the public. A few popular registrars are GoDaddy and SnapNames.
  • Domain age: Domain age refers to the amount of time the domain name has existed. While age can establish authority, the older a domain is, the less relevant it will be in search engine results. You should look for expired domains that are anywhere between five and ten years old to maximize age-related authority.
  • Keywords: If you are searching for a free domain to use for a specific purpose, you should look for choices that include keywords relevant to that purpose.
  • Backlink profile: High-ranking domains typically have a decent number of backlinks. However, some expired domains may link back to spammy, foreign websites, decreasing their search engine rankings.

    You should make sure to check a domain's backlinks through our backlink data checker before registering it.
  • Anchor texts: Along with checking for backlinks, you should also examine the anchor text that coincides with a domain's links. If a website has relevant web content and each link utilizes an appropriate anchor text, your SEO value will increase.
  • Historical data: You can use our Wayback exporter to view and download a domain's Wayback Machine content, which will allow you to see the types of content the previous website owner implemented on the site.
  • Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is the practice of improving a website's rankings on search engines like Google and Bing. Our SERP tools can help you understand a domain's Google rankings, page rankings, and average web traffic.

Free Expired Domain Name Uses to Avoid: Private Blog Networks (PBNs)

Domain hunters often use expired domains to create private blog networks. A private blog network is a network of websites that link back to a primary website to increase the site's search engine rankings and authority.

While creating a private blog network may sound like a smart move at first, these networks may hurt your search engine rankings instead of helping them.

Google penalizes PBNs and other unnatural links, considering them a "black hat" tactic. And if a visitor figures out that you are using PBNs to improve your page rankings, they may decide not to visit again.

How to Get Expired Domains for Free on SpamZilla

SpamZilla makes it easy to find high-quality, free expired domains. Our daily expired domain list contains hundreds of free options from websites like GoDaddy, NameJet, and SnapNames. Our advanced filters allow you to find the perfect choice for your needs.

You can follow this method to find expired domains on SpamZilla:

  1. Create an account.
  2. Enter relevant keywords into the database search bar.
  3. Use our advanced filters to narrow down your domains list. You may want to sort by free domains or today's expired domains, for example.
  4. Once you find a few domains that meet your criteria, utilize our advanced tools, such as our Wayback exporter and Backlinks Miner, to narrow down your list further.

We process over 350,000 marketplace domains for our domains list daily, so checking back each day will broaden your options.