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In our first 'SEO Secrets' article, we take a look at the little discussed influence on search engine rankings: the age of the domain. We take a look at how and why it affects rankings. Why domain age affects rankings?A few years ago I was checking the rankings of a client's website on Google. I couldn't fathom why it wasn't No.1. It had better content, was regularly updated and had plenty of backlinks pointing to it. The competition on the other hand, had poorly designed websites, full of keyword spam with far less quality backlinks. So why were they ranking so well? I took a look at the details of these domains and a clear pattern emerged. Our client's website was a year old, the competition's ranged from 4 to 10 years old. So why was this important? Whenever you read about Search Engine Optimisation, "trust" is a word used regularly. For example, backlinks from other websites are considered important as its like a vote of confidence for your content. When it comes to domains, a more established website will be more trustworthy too. Another theory not discussed much is that the backlinks older websites do have may have been linking to them for years, which gives an additional trust factor. It shows after all those years, websites still validate their content. Should I look for backlinks from older websites?A Microsoft patent application filed in 2006 gave a better explanation of why older domains were considered important. It was used to combat spammers who would buy many new domains and link them together in order artificially improve Page Rank (a Google term to judge website quality). Backlinks are great, but this was clear manipulation. By giving more weight to older, more trustworthy domains, the manipulation was largely negated. So, its safe to assume a backlink from an older website is better than one which is just a year old. You can check a website's age by using a Whois tool. Of course, don't ignore links from new websites just because of their age. It may not help your rankings in the short term, but as the website gets older, the weight of backlink becomes greater. This is where another word from the industry comes in: patience! Should I buy up expired domains?Once people had cottoned onto this new information, expired domains were suddenly sought after, especially with domains being so cheap these days. However, it appears that search engines effectively reset expired domains so they are no different to a freshly purchased one. If you own a few domains which are under utilised, you may want to think about how you can re-launch them to be beneficial for a new website you're now concentrating on. I have a new domain, what can I do?It seems unfair if you are a genuine person who wants to build up a new website that you will be effectively penalised because you haven't been around for a while. People have talked about the Google Sandbox effect for a while, where a a new website is stopped ranking for an undisclosed period to avoid spamming. Ultimately, you can't blame search engines for being tight on this, avoiding spam is best for the user, so don't get frustrated! Manipulation of your search engine ranking is just a way of getting into further trouble. Getting lots of low quality directory links is a clear spam flag for example, so resist building up these quickly. Yup, its that word again: patience. Instead, spread your submissions over a period of months. Focus on one or two high quality links from an established (i.e. old) website. These links could be your ticket out of the sandbox. How big a deal is domain age?The older your website gets, the less important the domain age factor becomes. The key is that search engines are sceptical about new domains. What counts as a 'new' domain is not specified anywhere, but normally it would be a website under 18 months old. If your website is approaching its 5th year, the difference in Page Rank between a website that is 9 years old will be minimal (presuming all other factors are equal).
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