How much does domain age play a part today?
-
My specific reason for asking this is due to the need to consolidate two of my client's websites into one main umbrella. The two websites now are duplicating content between each other. They are essentially the same business with two locations. The goal is to have one website to build authority on, reduce management/maintenance time and eliminate the duplicate content issues.
In doing so, we will need to use a completely different domain name for branding reasons. I'm concerned that this may hurt us due to it being a brand new domain name. With the current websites, one domain is 8 years old and the other 2 years old.
-
Thank you so much for your response. It may be limiting to them in some ways for marketing, but its also a beneficial change as well. I think if domain age isn't going to play too much of a part, then all the other factors still justify the change.
Thanks again!
-
How difficult would it be to rewrite the content? There are definite benefits to having two standalone sites, especially since they are different locations it's all on the up and up.
a) Having two sites means possibly ranking on the first page twice
b) In a world where Google keeps changing the rules and keeps penalizing it's good to not have all your eggs in one basket
c) Throwing away a established aged domain with PR seems like a waste, especially if it's ranking
d) Two sites gives you the ability to market differently, if one massage doesn't speak well to a particular audience perhaps the other site will and vice versa
-
Matt Cutts somewhere said that the difference between a domain that's six month old verses one year old is really not that big at all. So we can guess that they use domain age as a ranking factor, but it is not so important.
There is a great infographic about Google ranking factors: http://www.entrepreneur.com/dbimages/article/ranking_factors_infographic_2.jpg
-
With all things being equal, an older domain is typically better for SEO reasons. However, if you are doing your redirects correctly to the new domain, should be no issue.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Linking from high ranking sub domain pages to less ranking main domain pages to benefit latter
Hi all, We have our product guide pages on sub domain which are years old, so have some backlinks and high ranking for the beand related queries. Now we created new guide pages on our main website and we want these new pages to rank top beating the old pages from sub domain. Again we can't deindex or rel canonical to solve the issue as there are some part of users still using the old pages. We are planning to give a link from every old page of sub domain to same new page on main domain. Will this linking increases the authority of new pages technically and helps in ranking better? Like we give a link to "Moz guide 1" page to "Moz guide 2" page to rank latter better. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking impact: Traffic in website pages vs sub directory vs sub domain
Hi all, I need clarification on this. Not every time website main pages rank, some times even pages from sub directories or sub domains like blogs or guides; especially for branded keywords. I just wonder what happens when so much traffic is generating in sub directories and sub domains just because of limited landing pages in main website. Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
New Website Old Domain - Still Poor Rankings after 1 Year - Tagging & Content the culprit?
I've run a live wedding band in Boston for almost 30 years, that used to rank very well in organic search. I was hit by the Panda Updates August of 2014, and rankings literally vanished. I hired an SEO company to rectify the situation and create a new WordPress website -which launched January 15, 2015. Kept my old domain: www.shineband.com Rankings remained pretty much non-existent. I was then told that 10% of my links were bad. After lots of grunt work, I sent in a disavow request in early June via Google Wemaster Tools. It's now mid October, rankings have remained pretty much non-existent. Without much experience, I got Moz Pro to help take control of my own SEO and help identify some problems (over 60 pages of medium priority issues: title tag character length and meta description). Also some helpful reports by www.siteliner.com and www.feinternational.com both mentioned a Duplicate Content issue. I had old blog posts from a different domain (now 301 redirecting to the main site) migrated to my new website's internal blog, http://www.shineband.com/best-boston-wedding-band-blog/ as suggested by the SEO company I hired. It appears that by doing that -the the older blog posts show as pages in the back end of WordPress with the poor meta and tile issues AS WELL AS probably creating a primary reason for duplicate content issues (with links back to the site). Could this most likely be viewed as spamming or (unofficial) SEO penalty? As SEO companies far and wide daily try to persuade me to hire them to fix my ranking -can't say I trust much. My plan: put most of the old blog posts into the Trash, via WordPress -rather than try and optimize each page (over 60) adjusting tagging, titles and duplicate content. Nobody really reads a quick post from 2009... I believe this could be beneficial and that those pages are more hurtful than helpful. Is that a bad idea, not knowing if those pages carry much juice? Realize my domain authority not great. No grand expectations, but is this a good move? What would be my next step afterwards, some kind of resubmitting of the site, then? This has been painful, business has fallen, can't through more dough at this. THANK YOU!
Algorithm Updates | | Shineband1 -
Our root domain is no longer appearing in search results
Hi all The root domain for our site, roadtrippers.com, has been disappearing from Google's search results. Subfolders and subdomains still appear, but our root domain isn't found at all. I believe I've verified this by searching "-inurl:trips -inurl:byways -inurl:support -inurl:blog -inurl:places -inurl:guides -inurl:destinations site:https://roadtrippers.com/" in Google and our root domain is nowhere to be found. This may or may not be related to another issue we've had, where the root domain is appearing with a seemingly rotating set of parameters. Sometimes it'll be ?mod=, sometimes it'll be ?tag=translation. Originally they appeared to simply displace our ranking root domain, but now they and our root domain are completely disappearing. Our dev team believes they fixed the problem with recent 301 tags to any unapproved parameter being added to the root domain, but this hasn't fixed the original problem. Any insight into this is greatly appreciated! Brandon
Algorithm Updates | | brandonRT0 -
Domains dominating SERPs w/multiple listings
I know Cutts addressed this as a potential future update to the Google algo but it's driving me bonkers.. My primary targeted keyword has one of our competitors listed 4 times in a row on the top of page 2. Some of the pages have duplicate page titles and the content is relatively thin. The site has a PR of 2 and a DA of 35. Why on earth are they able to suck up a whole half of a results page?!?!?! I don't know that there's anything anyone can tell me that will help, but if there's something I missed about this update please let me know. 'snot fair. 😞
Algorithm Updates | | jesse-landry0 -
Choosing domain name - ccTLD vs Vanity URL
I have to choose between a country specific domain name that is long and difficult to remember, vs or a .me domain which is short and contains the exact keywords I'm optimising for. The challenge is that I'm only targeting local search traffic for the service I am advertising. Does a country specific domain name have any benefits in terms of weighting when I'm only interested in traffic from that country?
Algorithm Updates | | flashie0 -
Is purchasing domain names still relevant?
Our MD is requesting that we continue to renew a long list of domains that we purchased many years ago. Is this practice still relevant or is there more to be gained from SEO and keyword strategy on our own site? All of the domains are redirected to our main site, but the main reason for purchasing was to stop others using them. Can someone please advise? Don't want to be spending money on this if it is of no benefit to us at all.
Algorithm Updates | | DonaldRussell0 -
How does an exact match domain.me rate for SEO
Anyone have any idea how an exactly matching keyword (using the "domain.me" register) will compare against an almost matching keyword in the Google .ie search engine. (assuming that on and off page SEO will be the same). eg, www.wigets.me against www.mywigets.ie Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | peterds2