Securing a backlink from TechCrunch yields editorial credibility, referral traffic, and measurable authority benefits for tech and startup sites. We compare common publisher-driven routes and their approximate costs, then present a lower-cost tactic using expired domains and server-side 301 redirects. The article is practical, metric-focused, and written from the perspective of practitioners who run link-acquisition experiments.
Standard Paths and Approximate Cost
Three realistic paths typically lead to links on TechCrunch:
- Earned editorial coverage. Pitch reporters, provide exclusive data or product news, or secure interviews. Cost is mainly staff time or agency fees to craft and pitch stories. See TechCrunch contact and advertising pages: https://techcrunch.com/contact-us/ and https://techcrunch.com/advertise/.
- Sponsored / native content. Publishers sell sponsored articles, native placements, and newsletter integrations. Media-kit summaries and third-party listings indicate minimums for TechCrunch-style packages; example entry points can be around several thousand dollars for certain formats.
- PR agency outreach. Retainers for agencies that target national tech press commonly start in the low thousands per month and scale with seniority and scope. Expect multi-month engagements when the objective is repeated coverage.
Representative planning figures: a single sponsored/native campaign on a top-tier tech publisher often runs into the multiple-thousand-dollar range; PR retainers to pursue consistent national coverage typically start at approximately $2,000/month and can rise substantially. These are planning benchmarks, not formal quotes.
Why Those Prices Exist
Publishers monetize curated audience attention, distribution channels (homepage and newsletters), and editorial workflow. Native content involves production, legal/FTC disclosures, and campaign reporting; those line items drive the price. Agencies charge for relationship-building, media training, and sustained outreach capacity.
Expired Domains + 301 Redirects: The Tactical Alternative
We use expired-domain acquisition and controlled 301 redirects when the goal is to capture legacy referral equity rather than buy a fresh editorial mention.
Concept and three-step process
- Identify candidate domains. Use backlink tools (Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz) to shortlist expired domains with authoritative inbound links and topical relevance. Ahrefs defines Domain Rating (DR) as “Domain Rating (DR) shows the strength of a website’s backlink profile compared to the others in our database on a 100-point scale.” See Ahrefs DR: https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/1409408-what-is-domain-rating-dr.
- Vet for quality and risk. Inspect Wayback snapshots to confirm historical content and the presence of the outbound link you want to capture. Review anchor-text distribution and look for spam signals or manual-action history. Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/.
- Acquire and implement server-side 301s. Configure permanent 301 redirects from the expired domain (or specific pages) to the destination URL and monitor Search Console and analytics for referral and index behavior. Google recommends server-side permanent redirects: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/301-redirects.
Why It Can Help
If a legacy domain previously attracted editorial links—ideally from outlets or pages similar to TechCrunch—a well-matched 301 can route referral traffic and some portion of legacy link authority to your target page. The key variables are topical match, the linking page’s persistence, and one-to-one relevance between old and new URLs.
Known Limits and Safeguards
Search engines apply nuance to redirect signals. Redirects to irrelevant pages or blanket redirects to a homepage can be treated as soft-404s and yield limited SEO benefit; relevance and a clear page-to-page mapping matter. On redirect credit John Mueller said: “I wouldn’t see it as ‘full credit or not’, but rather – as mentioned in our docs – it’s a good practice for any move to update the important old links to point at the right new pages.” See reporting: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-301-redirects-full-credit-33576.html.
There is policy risk when many unrelated domains are purchased purely to manufacture signals; avoid patterns that look manipulative. Conservative, focused buys with thorough vetting reduce exposure.
Actionable Workflow (exact steps we run)
- Export referring-domain lists in Ahrefs/Majestic and filter by DR/Trust Flow; shortlist domains that show editorial links within the tech/startup vertical.
- Verify original content and the outbound link with the Wayback Machine; record archived URL and snapshot date.
- Run spam-anchor and manual-action checks; reject domains with heavy paid-link patterns.
- Purchase the domain, implement server-level 301s (no meta-refresh), avoid redirect chains, and monitor referral traffic, index status, and organic clicks for 4–12 weeks.
Measure success via referral sessions, Google Search Console index and coverage reports, and changes in organic clicks for the target pages.
Cost Comparison: Practical Perspective
Sponsored / native or PR routes: plan on several thousand dollars for single campaigns, and retainers in the low thousands per month for sustained outreach.
Expired-domain + 301 experiments: domain prices vary widely; our flat service fee for research, vetting, acquisition coordination, and server-level 301 setup is $150 per domain (domain acquisition cost is billed separately). For many teams, a $150 experiment per domain provides a cost-efficient way to test whether legacy editorial links can be captured before committing to expensive sponsored placements or long-term PR retainers.
Final Considerations
A direct TechCrunch placement is publisher-sanctioned and predictable when purchased or earned, but often carries multi-thousand-dollar cost. The expired-domain plus 301 tactic is a targeted, testable approach to attempt capture of legacy referral signals when the expired domain previously hosted editorial links that remain live.
This is where we come in: we research, vet, acquire, and configure server-level 301 redirects for $150 per domain (our fee covers domain research, vetting, acquisition coordination, and 301 setup; domain purchase/registration is separate). We apply Ahrefs-driven filtering, Wayback validation, anchor-profile screening, and conservative redirect configuration to reduce risk and maximize the chance that legacy editorial links contribute measurable referral and authority signals. For teams weighing a multi-thousand-dollar sponsored placement against a targeted expired-domain test, our service offers a low-cost experiment to assess link-equity transfer before larger budget commitments.
