SEO can be a complicated topic for beginners because there are so many factors involved. Getting your web pages to rank higher in the search engine results is not easy, and it involves focusing on a number of specific activities to boost your site’s authority.
You may already know that high-quality content, backlinks, and keywords are big factors to consider. But did you know that website domain age is also a factor?
Here’s a guide to what you need to know about domain age as a ranking factor for SEO.
What Is the Domain Age?
First of all, it’s important to know what the domain age is, and this is simply the time for which the domain has been registered.
However, beyond how long it has been registered, it’s important to consider how long a domain has been active. If someone just registers a domain but does not launch a website, this is not considered an active domain.
Still, for the purposes of SEO, the length of time the domain has been registered is the first important thing to find out.
Why Is Domain Age Important?
Search engines like Google rank websites higher when they have proved to be authoritative resources. That’s why backlinks are important. A website that has a large number of backlinks from authority websites is likely to be an authority resource itself in the eyes of Google.
In the same way, a domain that has been registered for a long time, especially one that has been active for that time, suggests that the website is more of an authority than a domain that was registered a few months ago.
People register new domains all the time, and many of these domains are forgotten about, while some of them are just spam sites. By remaining registered for many years, and remaining active, this suggests that the site has something of value to offer.
How Important Is Domain Age?
The exact importance of domain age for SEO is impossible to know. Google does not come out with figures about how old a domain should be before it gets a boost in the rankings. The only thing we know is that it is important for your overall SEO strategy.
And it’s not just important for the age of your own domain: It is also important for domains that are linking to you.
But now that you know why domain age is important, what should you do about it? You can’t very well change the age of your own domain unless you buy an old domain from another company.
But there are a few things you can do that can help you with your overall SEO strategy.
Research Your Competitors’ Domains
One thing that it will be useful to do is check your competitors’ domains to find out how old they are. This will put you in a good position to know where they stand, and you can then use the information you discover to influence the rest of your SEO strategy.
So how should you go about doing this?
There are various ways to find out, but some of them can be quite time-consuming. The best way is to use a dedicated domain age checker tool, and this will allow you to search for the ages of various domains at the same time so you can find out how old they are in a matter of seconds.
Find Websites for Backlinks
Using the same tool, you can search for websites that will be good to get backlinks from. If you find some good potential sites for links, you can simply type in their domain names into the tool and find out how old they are.
The domains that have been around for a long time could become good options for building your backlinks from.
However, one thing that you want to do is avoid getting links from spam sites. Spammers can sometimes use older domains to give them more legitimacy, and you don’t want anything to do with them. So always check the site carefully first and make sure it really is an authority site.
Pay Attention to Domain Age
Having an old domain alone is not going to do a huge amount for your SEO, but it’s certainly not going to hurt. Because domain age is a factor, it’s important to know your competitors’ domain ages and to find out how old the domains are of other websites when you are building links from them.
So make sure you take domain age into account when you start working on your SEO strategy seriously and ensure you’re doing everything you can to boost your search engine rankings.
