Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
-
Hi,
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation.Which one would you use and why?
Thanks for your help!
-
Are the pages that are linking to that old domain "indexed". I guess they are, that's how you found them in the 1st place. How much of a compromise is it to use the old-domain ? Is it a compromise ? Personally I have seen varying successes with old and new domains, same topic. There are just too many factors that influence the rankings. I would look at the top 20 websites that are ranking for atleast 5 variations of your primary keyword and check their domain age. That should lay it out for you. Feel free to post the new domain, old domain or PM me the URL in private and I can check it for you.
-
The age of a domain means nothing. So seeing it has no useable links, get the domain you want, not because of age.
-
Thanks for the quick reply. Please see my responses below:
1. There is currently a 1 page site on the original domain.
2. Yes, it will be related to the domain name. It will be a website for a small business.
3. There are only 5 backlinks to the site, All of which are nofollow links that come from two business directory websites.
4. A Google search does show that the site is indexed.
-
It depends on the status of the old domain. A few questions I would have are
- What was on the original domain?
- Is what I'm going to do with it related to that?
- Will any backlinks to that domain link still want to link to my new site?
- Was the original site still indexed with the various search engines or was it involved in questionable activity that got it devalued?
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
-
Hreflang and canonical tag for new country specific website - different base domain
I have a little different situation compared to most other questions which asks for hreflang and canonical tags for country specific version of websites. This is an SEO related question and I was hoping to get some insight on your recommendations. We have an existing Australian website - say - ausnight.com.au now we want to launch a UK version of this website - the domain is - uknight.co.uk please note, we are not only changing from .com.au to .co.uk.... but the base domain name as well changed - from ausnight to uknight as you can understand, the audience for both websites is different. Both websites has most pages same with same contents.... the questions I have is - Should we put canonical tag on the new website pages? If we don't put canon tag on new website pages, what is the impact on the SEO ranking of current website? I believe we need to put hreflang tag on both websites to tell google that we have another language version (en-au vs en-gb) of the same page. Is this correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TinoSharp0 -
How Much Domain Age Matter In Ranking?
I am very confused about domain age. I read many articles about domain age, some experts say domain age does matter in ranking and some experts say it doesn't matter in the ranking. Kindly guide me about domain age.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MuhammadQasimAttari0 -
What IP Address does Googlebot use to read your site when coming from an external backlink?
Hi All, I'm trying to find more information on what IP address Googlebot would use when arriving to crawl your site from an external backlink. I'm under the impression Googlebot uses international signals to determine the best IP address to use when crawling (US / non-US) and then carries on with that IP when it arrives to your website? E.g. - Googlebot finds www.example.co.uk. Due to the ccTLD, it decides to crawl the site with a UK IP address rather than a US one. As it crawls this UK site, it finds a subdirectory backlink to your website and continues to crawl your website with the aforementioned UK IP address. Is this a correct assumption, or does Googlebot look at altering the IP address as it enters a backlink / new domain? Also, are ccTLDs the main signals to determine the possibility of Google switching to an international IP address to crawl, rather than the standard US one? Am I right in saying that hreflang tags don't apply here at all, as their purpose is to be used in SERPS and helping Google to determine which page to serve to users based on their IP etc. If anyone has any insight this would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattBassos0 -
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
How to avoid Google penalties being inherited when moving on with a new domain?
Looking for SEOs who have experience with resetting projects by migrating on to a new domain to shed either a manual or algorithmic penalty. My questions are: For algorithmic penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? For manual penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? Any other input on these kind of reset projects is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spanish_socapro0 -
NEw domain extensions, are they worth it seo wise?
Hello I am curious if all of these new extensions for domains are worth it? So say you are a home builder and you bought homebuilder.construction - where as construction is a new extension, does this help seo? Or is it all just a big sales gimmick? Thank you for your thoughts
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Berner1 -
Buying a domain banned by google
Hi , I came across a super domain for my business but found out that it was a great domain with 100s of link backs but is now banned by Google search engine meaning Google does not index content from that domain. Since the domains linkbacks are from my domin does it make sense to but that domain and redirect those link backs to another (301) and hope that the new domain gets some juice ... I know it is sounding crazy and may not be the best thing to do ethically but still wanted to check if its possible to get some juice.. Rgds Avinash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Avinashmb0 -
Is it worth switching from .net to .com if you own both domain names
For over 20 years the company I work for has used www.company.net as their TLD, because we could not register www.company.com at that time. However, currently we also own www.company.com www.company.com has a 301 re-direct to www.company.net We are a global company, and market leader in our industry. Our company name is associated with the product we make, and our competitors use our company name as their targeted keywords to attract visitors to their sites because our company name is synonym with the product we and they make. As we are a global company we also have lots of TLDcc's. The email address of all our employees worldwide have a .net email address extension. Would you advice switching from www.company.net to www.company.com??? And if so, what would be the reasons for this switch. Would it only be for branding purposes? Looking forward to some insights before taking on such an invasive switch (because of the switch of all email addresses of employees worldwide). Best regards, Astrid Groeneveld
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cordstrap0