A lot of webmasters today are using the domain age checker tool for SEO reasons, believing that the age of the domain matters a lot in search engine ranking. While this is very true in the past, the question that hounds many SEO experts is if the domain age still matters in today’s SEO. This issue formed two groups of believers; one that still believes that the age of the domain still matters, the other group believes that age does not matter at all, and newly registered domains can squarely compete with aged domains when getting to the top pages of the search engine results. Which group of people

Reasons Why Domain Age Matters

Bigger link profile

One of the main reasons why aged domains are doing good in the search engine ranking and they are also easier to rank is the backlink profile. Some of them were optimized in the past, and their previous owners have built numerous backlinks from related and highly respected sources. Unless taken out, previously built links will remain connected to the domain, and if there are still many of them linked to the homepage then you can save a lot from SEO costs building backlinks by just purchasing an aged domain with many links. More importantly, you can quickly and easily outrank competitor sites due to the SEO works done in the past.

Established Reputation

Some domains have already established a good reputation in certain communities, while others are popular among varied segments of the market. Building and managing a name is not an easy task. This will take time, as well. As a matter of fact, some companies are spending heavily on reputation building and management in order to achieve certain level of respect and trust among their target audiences. But by purchasing a domain that is already aged over time and its reputation established and well managed, you are like getting a short-cut ride to reputation management.

Traffic

One of the major reasons why many entrepreneurs are buying aged domains is due to traffic. Some of them are already enjoying massive traffic as a result of the efforts done by previous owners. This can significantly save them a lot of time and money, but such domains also come at higher price. But what most domain hunters are really up to the established traffic, which is one thing that is very challenging and hard to do for many webmasters. This gives them instant traffic to their business websites, and quick returns on their investment.

SEO Ranking

Another reason why domain age is important is SEO. Some aged domains are already enjoying high ranking position in the SERPs, while others are sitting in the top pages of the search results. Take note that SEO is expensive, and success is not instant but earned over time. So getting an already optimized domain is a short cut to SEO, and this can also give immediate income and profits.

Major Flaws of Aged Domains

Not all aged domain is good. There are a couple of flaws, as well. So it helps to know the disadvantages for a balanced view on the importance of domain age in SEO today. Here are some of them.

Possible Past Negative SEO

It’s hard to know if the SEO techniques used by the previous owners are legitimate or black hat. There are always some possibilities that the previous owner did a couple of illegitimate means of search engine optimization. If remain not corrected, this can affect your future SEO.

Tarnished Reputation

Another possibility is damaged reputation. Without your knowledge, the aged domain could be blocked by some users, or tagged as spam. This will not only affect your brand name but this will damage the reputation of your business, as well.

Key Notes

So back to the issue on the importance of domain age, it is now clear that both opposing views on this matter have some convictions and valid reasons for their opinion. Domain age could matter if the past history is good. But if the background is not so good at all, then age doesn’t matter anymore that even new domains could compete with the aged domain. In any case, there are domain age checker tools that you can now use to determine the age of the domain in case you want to know the domain age for SEO reasons.