Redirecting old domains for SEO ranking?

[Highland]

It's been a while since I read anything seriously out of the box on SEO but I thought I would see what others thought of the bold assertions made in this article. Most of it revolves around buying expired domains and using a 301 to point them, and their juice, to new sites. This guy makes a living doing this so he has to know a bit more than the average Joe but I'm wondering where the other shoe is and when it drops.

[KevinBudzynski]

I heard of many individuals/firms doing this. It appears to work in some situations now, but would not attempt to do it.

• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link

By buying a site and rerouting the links technically breaks this term. Will you get caught? Probably not as redirects from an one domain gets passed to another domain all the time. If Google can better identify contextual relevancy of a site, they could identify the misuse of this and take action.

The best thing to do in SEO is to stay honest!

[CleverPhD]

Agree with Kevin.  That technique is old hat for using them just for the PageRank value on the domain.   I recommended this video earlier, but I will mention again as it talks about how "tricks" are going by the wayside and #RCS is how you want to approach this.  Watch the video of Wil Reynolds about 1/4 the way down.

http://moz.com/blog/an-interview-with-wil-reynolds

Good luck!

[Dr-Pete]

The other commenters sum it up pretty well for me. It can work, in the short term, but it's also a lot more risky than it used to be. The tactic has just gotten abused way too much. The problem is that, if it fails, it tends to fail hard, and your whole investment just crashed and burned.

If you're looking to get a quick jump in ranking for the very short-term, then I'll be straight with you - it can still work, in some cases. If you're looking to boost an existing business or build something long-term, then I'd stay away from this tactic. You could burn your entire site.