₦airaland Forum

Credit: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/230-does-domain-age-and-registration-period-affect-seo


Search Engines are never so generous about all the factors that come to play in determining and ranking websites. There had been a lot of research that give us a clue on what the ranking factors are but we have never gotten a comprehensive guide from Google on the specifics.

But this a very critical factor for every website owner who is serious about ranking well on serach engne result pages. There had been some agreement on the importance of certain factors like domain and link popularity but there still exist much debate over factors like age of domain name and registration perion. That will be the focus of this post: does age of domain name and the registration period affect website ranking?

What is meant by Age of Domain Name

By age of domain name, we are referring to how old is the domain name. A domain name that was registered in 2010 would be 6 years old in 2016. So the age of domain name represents the duration or period the domain has been in existence.

What is Registration Period?

This means the period, in years, it will take for the domain to expire. So, if in October 2016, you register a domain for 3 years, it means the domain will expire in October 2019 and the registration period will be 3 years.

The focus of this post is to determine how these two factors affect the ranking of websites.

The opinion of SEO experts on the effect of these two factors differ. Many SEO's advice support the position that both domain age and length of registration effect search engine rankings. While others do not. This debate has been going on for years.

Does Domain Age Affect Ranking?

Google's Matt Cutts says SEO practitioners should not worry about domain age and its effects on SEO. Matt Cutts is Google Engineer and spokesman. He dispels some myths and sets the record straight on the importance of domain age for good search engine rankings.

The popular belief has been that older domains do better in search results and are given extra favor due to their age. The idea is that an older domain that has been established has earned a greater level of trust with Google than a younger domain that is not as established. Matt admits that this is true to a point, but domain age is an insignificant factor that really carries very little weight in the Google algorithm.

Matt then goes on to list the ranking factors that are more important for a site to rank well in Google:

Unique, high quality content
The quantity of content
External back-links to your content

Important:Matt Cutts does not out rightly say domain age is irrelevant, he only said you need not worry about that and goes on to list factors that are more important for ranking purposes.

Matt Cutt's position clearly indicates that domain age is a minor signal and we completely agree with that. But we wouldn't agree that it does not matter at all. Infact, each time Matt Cutt says You need not worry about that; it is an indication that you may have touched on a ranking signal. Google appears to have a policy of keeping the ranking signals as confidential as possible.

It is also important to note that if you have a new domain for which you are building relevant links and you do that quite often, often you can outrank an older domain with more links that hasn't added any links or content recently. Google sees your site as being fresher which relates to being more relevant.

Consider for example a domain that is 2 months old and that is referenced by 10 back links. This domain may be scored higher by search engines the one that is as old as 10 years that is referenced by 100 back links because the rate of link growth for the former is relatively higher than the latter. The ration of backlinks for the new domain is definitely more impressive than the ratio of backlinks for the older domain.

However, if you have an older domain age and add frequent and relevant content along with gaining frequent but natural backlinks then it will be very hard the newer domain to overtake the older in rankings.

Domain Registration Length of Time.

This video by Matt Cutts admits that Google uses historical data in ranking. Historical data actually include the registration information.

One thing I have noticed with Matt Cutts is whenever he is asked about a potential ranking factor and his response is I wouldn't worry about that; then you can almost bet that you have nailed a ranking factor.

Danny Sullivan asked if the length of time a domain is registered for matters in search rankings to Matt Cutts directly and this is his response:

To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length-of-registration as a factor in scoring. If a company is asserting that as a fact, that would be troubling.

All Matt Cutts is saying is that they have never confirmed this to the best of his knowledge. Here is an excerpt from their patent involving the use of historical data in regards to this claim.

These clearly state that Google could use domain data if they wanted to. And in Matt Cutt's video, Google admits to the relevance of historical data.

How do you respond to that, you may ask. The sure thing to do is not to take things forgranted. We will recommend that domains should be registered for at least two years. That is not to say that if you register your domain for 10 years, you will enjoy greater preference. That's not the point made here but if you can do a ten year registration, there is no harm in doing that. A multiple year registration will just be sufficient.

One thing that is clear about Google's position is they will use all data points about your website (or as they say in their patent - document) to build a profile for your site. They will use Chrome browser data, Google Toolbar data, Analytics data, Adsense data, Adwords data and any other data points they can find about how people interact with your website.

What is your idea or experience on this issue? Do you think we have missed anything? Let's have your feedback in the comment box.

Nice info

Even though I didn't read till the end

Didn't go through everything but Domain age matters....

In fact more recently aside from making sure all the websites I work on is SSL secured be it a selling site or not, I also advice my clients to registered their domain at least for 24months or more.....

But having said this, nothing can take away quality content, content that serves its niche well and increases dwell time on site by users....

And of cause backlinks from your niche and sites with good domain authority....

Wonderful piece.

Thanks for this information.

Domain name and registration don't affect SEO. Good backlinks and good contents are the bone and flesh of SEO. Get good backlinks and write good posts and see traffic hit your website. And of course, keyword research is important.

TopYouGo:
Domain name and registration don't affect SEO. Good backlinks and good contents are the bone and flesh of SEO. Get good backlinks and write good posts and see traffic hit your website. And of course, keyword research is important.

Seems you don't know about Google Sandbox

Search about it and thank me later.

Surely, domain ages matters in SEO, though backlinks has more prominence in rating.

TopYouGo:
Domain name and registration don't affect SEO. Good backlinks and good contents are the bone and flesh of SEO. Get good backlinks and write good posts and see traffic hit your website. And of course, keyword research is important.

Domain name and age matters......we got your point...quality backlinks and content outwits that though

Dmayor7:
Seems you don't know about Google Sandbox

Search about it and thank me later.

Surely, domain ages matters in SEO, though backlinks has more prominence in rating.

We actually know about Google Sandbox, which makes newly registered domain unable to compete for its intended keywords. But from experience, a few quality backlinks, from websites with Domain Authority 70 and above, have made a newly registered domain a strong, competitive website within 2 months of its registration.

And also from experience, a 3-year-old domain without any backlink remains in Sandbox and only rank about 12 Million on Alexa.

TopYouGo:
We actually know about Google Sandbox, which makes newly registered domain unable to compete for its intended keywords. But from experience, a few quality backlinks, from websites with Domain Authority 70 and above, have made a newly registered domain a strong, competitive website within 2 months of its registration.

And also from experience, a 3-year-old domain without any backlink remains in Sandbox and only rank about 12 Million on Alexa.

Sure, you have a strong point there.

Kudos