Scraping Expired Web 2.0's & Domains

Tools of the trade
#1

I was asked to provide information on scraping expired 2.0’s & domains. Here it is.

PART 1, I’LL COVER SCRAPING EXPIRED WEB 2.0’S

Full Disclosure - there are plenty of articles online detailing how to do this. I did not invent any of these methods. I simply found what worked for me. I’d encourage you to do the same. Take these suggestions as starting points & then find the best method for you.

WHY SCRAPE?

If you’re doing any sort of SEO, backlinks are critical. You could spend days debating the best ways to build backlinks, but this is one method that has worked well for others over the years.

Personally, I use a mix of expired Web 2.0’s & domains to build links to my sites.

TOOLS YOU’LL NEED

If you’re serious about this you’re probably going to need:

  • Subscriptions to: moz.com / majestic.com / ahrefs.com ($$$$$)
  • Scrapebox and / or Domain Hunter Gatherer ($$$$$)
  • Plenty of good proxies! ($$$$$)

EXPIRED WEB 2.0’s

All Web 2.0’s come with builtin HIGH domain rank. Google views sites such as wordpress.com, tumblr.com, etc. as authority sites and, as such, they’ve got great metrics out of the box. When brand new, accounts on those domains - such as bobs-really-awesome-blog99.tumblr.com - would start out with these Moz metrics: Page Authority (PA): 1 / Domain Authority (DA): 99. Higher is better for both metrics.

By comparrison, if I went & registered bobs-really-awesome-blog99.com, it would start out with these Moz metrics: Page Authority (PA): 1 / Domain Authority (DA): 1.

Now, why does any of that matter? Moz is but one tool, but it’s metrics are a pretty good indicator of how strong / authoritative a web site happens to be. The more authoritative, the more likely Google is to pay attention to it. When scraping Web 2.0’s, I don’t care so much about backlink profiles, etc. I’m just looking for properties that have good metrics.

Which Web 2.0 sites can you use?


tumblr.com
typepad.com


tripod.com
posterous.com

squidoo.com

angelfire.com
rediff.com
wikidot.com
webs.com
webnode.com
soup.io
travelblog.org

The only 2.0 I’ve had a great deal of success with is Tumblr. I can find expired Tumblr’s all day long. The other ones I’ve found to be far more difficult.

THE METHOD

99% of the time, I use Scrapebox to look for expired properties. I do have an active subscription to Domain Hunter Gatherer & it’s fine. I just find Scrapebox to be more versatile. If you’re a beginner & just want to plug in a bunch of keywords, DHG is probably the better way to go.

Generally, I start by adding a couple of relevant keywords to Scrapebox (either think these up on your own, or do some KW research with Google Keyword Planner / Long Tail Pro / etc.):

Then I use the Keyword Scraper to build a larger list. Now, some guys go crazy when scraping keywords. Personally, I only scrape 1 level & I usually don’t add prefixes / suffixes to the keywords. YMMV, try what works best for you.

Now you see that I have a larger list of keywords & I’ve also added the “site:tumblr.com” footprint:

At this point I start harvesting. Make sure you have your proxies loaded!! I usually only scrape against Google.

blob.jpg802×165 44.2 KB

After harvesting from my 68 keywords, I’m presented with 2712 potential URLs:

blob.jpg732×317 115 KB

First thing to do now is to trim them to root:

then remove duplicate URLs:

I’m now left with 1059 URLs to check:

I next load all of them in to the Scrapebox Vanity Name Checker addon, which will tell me which are available. Looks like 19 potential accounts:

Now we need to see which of those 19 is worth our time (if any). To do so, I use the Scrapebox Page Authority addon. You need a Moz API key for this addon.

I’m looking for accounts that have pretty high Page Authority (PA) - 25 or better. Looks like I got pretty lucky with this batch:

Now that you have some quality accounts, go register them!

Notes

  • Just because Scrapebox or DHG shows it as available, don’t be surprised if you can’t register it. Some accounts are just banned for life & can never be registered again. Move on to the next one.
  • I personally register 1 main Tumblr & then 4 sub accounts. Some people would jump up & down about this, but I’ve found registering individual accounts to be incredibly tedious & a PITA! I don’t have time for it. The downside of my approach - The sub accounts can’t do as many actions as the main account, see here. Also, if your main account gets banned, you’ve lost the secondaries. This hasn’t been an issue for me thus far. Nonetheless, I never have more than 5 blogs per account, just in case.

How Do You Use These Blogs?

On the 4 sub accounts, I always:

  • Post 10 - 15 times manually. Just whatever - something relevant to my money site. I may or may not include a link to my money site in one of the posts I make.
  • Edit the theme (use a unique theme for each) & add a link to my money site. May use a keyword as an anchor, generic text or a naked URL.

On the main account, I:

  • Set up SNAP (social networks auto poster plugin) for Wordpress to post my latest blog posts.
  • Follow / like / reblog accounts in my niche

Moving on, I use FCS Networker (have also used RankerX) to build backlinks to these blogs. THEN - I may fire up a GSA SER project & spam the hell out of the links created by FCS.

This is a very high level overview & I’m sure I’ve missed a few things. Always happy to answer specific questions if you have any.

40 Likes
Tumblr as Tier 1 - anybody?
Using TUMBLR to drive traffic to website
#2

Thanks for this guide Trolling4dollars!
Looks like this was a lot of work to put together!

Regarding some of the expenses, you can offset them with https://groupbuyseotools.com and fiverr gigs for scrapebox.

1 Like
#3

Quite a detailed guide, thanks for that. I’m sure it will help a lot of people to get started with this. As you said this topic is huge and someone could probably write a book about how to do it on each web 2.0 site and even with domains with metrics, but this is definitely a good starting point so people understand what expired subdomains/domains are and what they’re useful for.

2 Likes
#4

Cool method with the tumblr blogs, I read many people do this for seo nowadays.

#5

Oh you use ScapeBox…

#6

Yes, some people do that. Wasn’t aware of group buy seo tools, but I do know of people who’ve used fiverr to access moz / majestic / ahrefs accounts.

#7

Note: Tumblr lowest PA is 27(1),if its for seo purposes at least for me i won’t go with tumblrs of 35 PA or lower (if you don’t have access to majestic subsciption) , but most of the time i ignore PA and just look at RD(referencing domains),TF(trust flow) and CF(Citation flow). These metrics give a lot more insight on the quality of the web 2.0 than PA.

1 Like
#9

From my own experience this method is a bit done… most of the expired web 2.0 can’t be reregistered (like Wordpress, have tried many times to get my old wordpress.com sub domain back, its not happening) Tumblr links have a redirect on their links and i am pretty sure from testing that the link juice has been taken out through the redirect, as i could not even rank for the lowest of the lowhanging fruits. You still can use them for ranking them and redirecting the traffic by linking to your site, but as far as linkjuice my testing is pretty clear on that. There is none.

The problem with this method is that it has been all over the place, --forums blogs-- for about a good two, two an a have years now? Everybody and their dogs with their $10- PHP scraper is hunting for them, so the pool you’re fishing in is getting smaller and smaller and web 2.0 sites are taking measures to prevent spammers from registering old properties, like tumblr and wordpress.

Maybe you could find a view, but it isn’t worth the time you spend hunting down these web 2.0 anymore, you can buy them on fiverr or seoclerks for a view bucks, i would not waste any resources on this method of backlinking, you’re better of searching for expired domains, the ones you find are the ones you can keep.

Good luck :slight_smile:

1 Like
#10

I don’t necessarily disagree with you because yes, everyone under the sun has been doing this for a long time. There’s open debate as to whether Tumblr still passes link juice since introducing the redirect (https://www.onlinedimes.com/tumblr-redirect-backlinks/). My experience has been in line with that “report”.

As I mentioned originally, I’ve never had any luck scraping anything other than Tumblr. The others are a lost cause, IMO. One of them - Livejournal, perhaps? - will let you sign up to get a notification when the domain is released, but I’ve never been notified.

What I have been doing of late, which seems to be working well -

  • Grab a few expired HA Tumblrs
  • Create new web 2.0 properties on Wordpress.com, Blogger, etc. (I highly recommend Flipboard & Medium, BTW)
  • Create relevant Twitter, Facebook & Instagram accounts
  • Use Social Networks Autoposter to post links & excerpts from my site to these properties.
  • Use my sock / throwaway accounts in Massplanner to share, retweet, like - building social signals. I try to do this as randomly as possible to avoid footprints.
  • Use either RankerX or FCS Networker to build backlinks to the web 2.0 properties (and my PBN domains in some cases).
  • Eventually use GSA SER to spam the RankerX / FCS sites

Point being, scraping anything is simply part of a much larger process.

2 Likes
#11

Best to use new tumblrs with few keyword anchors and blast with good sape links…
Works for me :slight_smile:

#12

If someone wants scrap Tumblr and has tight budget there’s a free bot: Expired Tumblr Hunter. It’s very simple, maybe slow but do the job :slight_smile: I have used it in past and work fine and no need proxy to work.

#13

Excellent post. There are many website for expired domains . Not sure if scrapebox is better. For other tools fiverr and site like one mentioned.

ADMIN EDIT: stop self promoting with url to sites that have nothing to do with the topic, this is the one and only warning.

1 Like
#14

There are many sites for scraping expired domains. I have tried serpdrive.com and domcop.com. They are not group buy tools. Scrapebox is good too. I have jumped over 2 group buys for Majestic. One of them is mentioned by you. I don’t like third party downloads whether browsers or anything else. thats y plugin based group buys are more popular - seogroupbuys.com. another one is seogroupbuy.net.

#15

I find the process time consuming. I prefer to buy them. There is a guy ‘mindmaster’ on blackhatworld.com that sells them with PA,TF and already registered.

1 Like
#16

Can you send the link?

#17

Thanks For your suggestions, it will take many time and much hard work.
Regarding some of the expenses, you can offset them with https://seogroupbuy.org 54 and fiverr gigs for scrape box.

#18

I am one of the first sellers for expired tumblrs for SEO use.

Ever since 2013 there are people thinking that tumblr is not working for seo or that there are no more good expired tumblrs to be found.

As long as seo results you can always check the latest case studies. :wink:

About the limited blogs available, you don’t know how to check what blogs are deleted and what blogs are banned by tumblr. Banned blogs will never be made available for re-registration. :wink:

There are plenty of guides out there on how to do it. On all you have to adapt and test. It takes time, but most of the work can be automated. Sure the softwares will cost and so the servers and proxies.

On the other hand if the investment in time and money is not justified you can always buy expired tumblr blogs with trust flow. They won’t be as cheap as fiverr shitty tumblrs only with PA. PA is only a reflection of how many links are pointing to a page. PA does not quantify quality and value of the page. Trust Flow is a more accurate metric (for now). I aim for tumblrs with TF+5 and +5 domain backlinks.

1 Like
#19

Hey, a great and detailed article which helped my find some good tumblrs!
To cur the costs on SEO Tools, I personally use SEOToolsGroupBuy.com
They provide with Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz and all other SEO Tools group Buy I need for scraping and link building.
For Scraping for long time, I use VPSDominator.com for all the scraping tools.

#20

Just read it, high quality guide thanks!

#21

I have a copy of scrape box and never tried to find expired tumblrs. must try soon and might be able to sell on fiverr…