Using Similar Expired URLs to Send Traffic to My Site

[alanjosephs]

Thanks in advance for any help!  I have an existing website with content on a particular topic.  I have discovered a few similar expired URLs that might still get some traffic.  One in particular still has a number of valid links from other sites.  Would it make sense for me to buy those URLs (which are really cheap) and just use them to send that traffic to my site?  If so, am I better using a 301 redirect or having a home page on the new site that just mentions that the old site is expired, and that they might want to instead link over to my site?

[Chris.Menke]

Hey Alan

It sounds like you are  saying that you have some old pages/urls from a website that you own and they have some external links pointing to them and you would like your site to be able to make use of any link juice coming from them.  (Makes me think of old websites/domains I bought back in the day.)

The way this is usually done is via a 301 redirect from the old page (that the external links are pointing to) to the current live page on your site that you would like to be the recipient of said link juice. Most hosts have an easy way to do this on their dashboard. Just wondering--why can't you see in your analytics if your site already is getting traffic from those pages/links?

Caveats: If the content of the pages that contain those external links is not relevant to the pages on your site that the links will be 301'd to, the link juice will be of little or no value to your page's organic ranking.  Also, Google, being a domain registrar itself, will be able to see if you are the owner of a site or network of  sites with a bunch of links going between them.  I'd definitely recommend spending some time with  Moz's beginners guide to SEO so to get a good lay of the land SEO-wise-speaking.