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
-
Multiple links from same domain (different pages) considered in credibility of backlinks?
Hi, Let's say there are multiple backlinks from different pages of same domain to different pages of other domain like below: Website A: Page 1 -----------> Website B: Page 1 Website A: Page 2 -----------> Website B: Page 2 Do the pages of Website B pages will get backlinks authority equally or they don't get much backlinks impact as they have multiple backlinks from same domain? There were old school stories that Google ignores second link from same domain.....etc... So, please suggest on this. Thank you. Note: The question is NOT about content relevancy or domain authority score of the backlinks.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Do the referring domains matter a lot in back-links? Google's stand?
Hi, It's a known fact about quality of back-links than quantity. Still domains are heavily different from links. Multiple domains are huge comparing to multiple links. Taking an average, how much does 'number of referring domains" boost website authority? I am not speaking about low quality domains, just number of domains including which are irrelevant to the topic or industry. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Why is my domain authority (and page authority) plummeting?
In June our domain authority was at a 41. In July we were 38 and ever since then our domain authority is gradually getting worse and worse. We went from a 33 to a 29 in one week! Possible explanations include: Maybe the SEO we hired (for a few months in late 2011) added our domain to some less-than-awesome directories The 301 redirects on our home page are hurting us somehow Duplicate content for URL's with different capitalization (IE: /pages/aboutus and /Pages/AboutUs) Can someone please point me in the right direction? Which of the above possibilities would likely impact domain/page authority? Any other ideas as to why this might be happening? Any suggestions for improving our domain or page authority? Thanks for the help!
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelBrown550 -
Since authorship markup requires a domain email, how can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile?
It seems that Google now requires authors to have a valid email on the domain. This is easy for the traditional web publication. But what about community websites like SEOmoz? How can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile? Will community websites like SEOmoz be required to 1. Give all users a domain email 2. Ask users to validate the email address with Google? Seems overly complicated.
Algorithm Updates | | designquotes0 -
301 from multiple domains to one single webshop
First of all i want to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer and i am a webshop owner from the Netherlands (we sell plants/herbs products) I have a very important question (and i can`t find a clear answer on the internet). So i hope someone can help me, At this moment me and 4 other friends own each a seperate webshop. We all started the webshops 5 -7 years ago and work all in the same business. (plants/herbs). We talked last week, and we want to make one big company and combine all 5 company`s. All 5 webshops have a huge pagerank, lots of organic traffic and very good incomming links. We registered new domainnames and want to redirect the 5 "old" domains to one new domain to pass over the Google juice. Our new company is a multilanguage webshop and each language has its own domain. (for example) (www. plantsandherbs example .nl)
Algorithm Updates | | snorkel
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .es)
(www. plantsandherbs example .fr)
(www. plantsandherbs example .com) Does it harm us if we 301 redirect all the 5 "old" websites to the new webshop? And what is the best way to redirect the "old" webshops to the new one? I am afraid of a Google penalty because it maybe looks like we bought some domains to pass the juice to the new project.0 -
How is important domain age now?
Just as topic states, how important do you think domain age is? Do you think getting old domain for the new website will do any difference? Lets say website A used to sell apples... went out of business after 5 years of business. If I would get that domain and will star selling apples again can I expect some extra boost because of the age? Cheers
Algorithm Updates | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Best Way to Determine Age of Site
What's the best way to determine the age of a site? Where by it's beginning I mean when it went through the Google Sandbox and has been a functioning site every since. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
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