[michaelbuckbee]

Yes. This is now a common white hat tactic. That instead of paying someone to try and build links for you (blindly email a bunch of sites and ask for links). You purchase a site and then direct all of that traffic to a subdomain of your site / 301 the entire domain over / 301 specific URLs over to the new resources (which one of these that makes sense is case specific).

[dhruvkar]

or you just use that domain for your site, as it (supposedly) already has built Domain Authority and Trust Flow. Redirects pass on some linkjuice to the redirected domain. But not as much as using the domain that HAS it built up already.

A grey/black hat SEO tactic is to use that domain as part of a PBN (private blog network). Basically manufacturing backlinks to boost your money site.

[elorant]

Nice. So how much should I pay for an expired domain in case it's already taken? Up to say a couple hundred bucks or more?

[michaelbuckbee]

Like everything -> it depends.

This is part of why people buy sites on Flippa or Borderline.biz or whatever. There's a lot of factors that go into it: is it still getting traffic? Is it reputable? Is it listed as a malware site? How closely related to your own site it is, etc.

If you're starting out on a new project and would like to get almost _any_ organic SEO traffic in the first year of your existence, you should probably buy a domain (domain age is that strong of a ranking factor).

[slrz]

This is considered "white hat" behaviour? Both approaches look like straight out of internet scum 101.