Internet Business Marketing

When competing for top search results for a particular keyword phrase search engines such as Google® needs to know that your web site has authority over others in the same niche topic. It is of popular belief by most Web Architects that this authority factor is based on both the number of quality incoming links and the age of the site.

A common misconception is that the age of the site is solely based on the date the domain was registered. However, what seems to be much more the case is that both the registration date and how long the web site has been online and indexable by search engines. In other words, a domain that has been consistantly used and has not been dropped by domain registrars will generally rank higher than a brand new domain that has never been used before.

So, if your domain is relatively new as compared to your competitors depending on where you are with your web site there are a couple moves you can consider:

Brand New Site – if you are starting a brand new site you might consider purchasing a domain that has some history and has not been dropped from Google’s index and using that domain as opposed to a brand new one.

Existing Site – if you have a site and want to continue to use the same domain because you like it and/or already have frequent visitors to that domain then you can still purchase a used domain and point (301 redirect) it to your exisintg site. According to Google’s own Andy Lasnik a 301 redirect passes PR (page rank) and related signals appropriately.

So what the heck is a 301 redirect? Basically once you contral a domain you can setup a  URL Forward from your registrar setting the forward as a 301 or permanent redirect to any other web page on the internet. Very easy but you can ask the registar (e.g. GoDaddy.com, etc.) how to do this within their control panel.

IMPORTANT NOTE…

When you purchase a used domain setup an account with the same registrar to which the domain currently resides. This is so that you don’t lose the domain age. For example, a good place to look for domains is at GoDaddy Domain Auctions as where goDaddy is the registrar of course. When you buy a domain from there the domain is automatically “pushed” to your GoDaddy account leaving the domain age in tact.

Also, checkout freshdrop.net which monitors domains that are soon to expire. There is a paid subscription to this but there is a free side to lookup domains.