Experiment: Does an Expired Domain Name’s Trust Flow (TF) Matter?

I have been buying domain names and slowly building my Private Blog Network (PBN). At the moment, I have about 15 PBNs and would like to scale them to about 50 by the end of the year.

In the world of PBNs, there is a lot of information on what makes a good expired domain name. Here are the common one’s I’ve come across.

i) Look at the PA/DA

ii) Look at the CF/TF

iii) Look at the number of links

iv) Look at the quality of links (i.e links from high authority sites like Mashable, HuffingtonPost, CNN, etc.)

For my PBN domains, I’ve majorly been looking at the second and third points. When I’m buying an expired domain, I usually look for one that has a minimum of Trust Flow (TF) 10. Apart from this, I look for one with a minimum of 10 Referring Domains (RD).

Some people swear by PA/DA metrics, while others call them BS and say only links to the domain matter. My biggest question is always, if it’s just about links, what’s stopping me from buying any domain name and blasting it with a bunch of links?

And if it’s about the quality of links, which one between the two scenarios below makes sense:

i) A domain name with 2 links from CNN, and 8 links from average sites

ii) A domain with 50 links from different average sites, that may not necessarily be as strong as CNN?

In any day, I will choose the second domain name. You can’t convince me that a single link from an inner page in CNN that does not even have any worthwhile metrics is more powerful than 10 links from average sites that have some average metrics.

Domain Trust Flow

When I’m purchasing expired domains, I usually consider the Trust Flow and No. of Referring Domains. However, in this experiment, I want to see whether it makes sense to buy a high TF domains for $50 bucks when I can create the TF on my own.

Yes, you heard it. I’m going to try to increase the TF of an expired domain.

One thing that I have noticed over time is that the TF of a domain usually falls down when the site is not online. So, maybe I may have picked a domain that already has a high TF, which may have reduced over the course of it being expired.

However, like I usually do, I took a domain name that has more than 10 referring domains. The goal of this experiment will be:

i) See if I can increase the TF of the domain

ii) See whether with an increase in TF, the domain name will have an impact on the sites that I will link to.

Time Lines

17th Sept. Bought the domain name from Namesilo. Here are the current metrics of the domain.

Today, I have also installed WordPress on the domain name. I’ve just checked and the domain name is not indexed in Google.

I will make an update when there’s something significant going on.