Hello,
I am looking to buy one or two domains but want to know which one is better in SEO.
- 2 years old domain with PR1.
- 7 months old domain with PR3.
Both offer the same price.
Which one is better?
Thanks.
jennypretty, 2 years old domain cannot be considered as really old. However, even 2 yo domain age is a plus for Google, unless you change the content completely after you buy the domain.
If you remove the old content, you might get into ‘sandbox’ even with 2 yo domain, try not to.
PS. PageRank does not say much nowadays
You need to look at more than just the PR and age.
- which site ranks better for the phrases you want to target?
- which site has better links for ranking?
- etc
I think 3-4 years and lots of links and good content gets you into an established spot in the serps.
As far as I know domain age is a medium important factor in the eyes of Google. I think you make more importantly, the analysis of competition at each site and to see how long it will take effort and money invested.
If both domains are from the same niche I’d definitely buy an older because the PR is currently quite weak factor in the eyes of the big “G”,
Good luck!
You say that you’re buying a domain name which leads to believe that you’re not purchasing the website on the domain. That being the case, PageRank has absolutely no bearing on this discussion. PageRank is associated with each page of the website and not the domain itself.
The age of the domain name has very little relevance in terms of SEO. What’s more important is the number of years until the domain expires. Google prefers that there’s at least 1+ years before expiration.
The only way in which the age of a domain matters as far as the search engines are concerned is with regard to how long it has been used to display the current web site for. When a domain changes ownership without the site it points to going with it the age of the domain is effectively set back to zero.
The only benefit tou might get from buying an existing domain is any links that already exist to it but those will soon disappear unless you create pages on the same subject that led to those links being created in the first place.
Whilst you are technically correct, if all the inbound links are to the homepage, the PR the OP reports is possibly a consideration. Similarly, if all inbound links to internal pages are redirected to the homepage/internal pages, or internal pages reconstructed, then the prior PR could be retained (if nothing else changes LOL).
If the OP could say what these domains are and what “Which one is better?” actually means, we could probably give a better answer.
How do you know this felgall? I’m not saying you’re wrong, just interested in knowing the source. I buy a lot of old domains, so it’s probably worth me reading what you’ve read.
I can’t remember where I read it but there have been a number of references to it in the forums here.
Google pays the necessary fees to be a domain registrar for the main international domains such as .com even though they don’t actually sell domains. Their only purpose in doing so therefore would be so that they can include domain ownership in their algorithms.
Anyway the domain plays a very small part since it is web pages that are being ranked in the search results and not domains. A particular domain name would only retain its value while it points to the same page. Separate it from the content and it no longer relates to any particular keywords. The only value it would have then is all the links that point to it and the only way to retain them is to attach the domain to a page containing similar information to the page it was attached to before
I think the age matters but if you are good in providing the relevent and updated content to your users, then possibility that search engine will take its as the plus point over less age
The domain age can be a matter in SEO but the 2 years is also cant consider as too old… moreover the ranking based on SE friendlyness of the content and relevancy of backlinks… !!!
Either of those are better than a brand new domain. Google looks at a sites history and if there is nothing “bad” then it has more trust than in a new domain.
Apart from the page rank and the domain age, you need to concentrate on a lot of factors. Why don’t you look at the traffic and SERPS and decide the better one.
Neither age nor PR have such a huge effect on seo, unless the domain is known for some scams etc.
It does have a certain weight, however in your case the difference is not big at all so what I would consider (over age) is:
- Amount of backlinks each domain has
- Quality of those backlinks
- Keywords in domain the domain has
Just my 2 cents…
The backlinks and the keywords associated with the pages residing on that domain are related to the content. As hooperman pointed out, if you redirect the links you can preserve them for a short while, but ultimately it’s not worth very much.
Unless you’re purchasing the website content with the domain then it’s not worth getting your underwear in a bundle about the links, PageRank or the age of the domain.
Just remember that the PR belongs to the web page and NOT the domain.
Domains do not have PR.
The OP never specified what her intend was with the newly bought domain so I presume the plans are to build a website over that (indeed that’s why I mentioned keywords in domain).
However you are right, if the purpose of the newly bought domain is just redirect the domain to your site then your benefits from it are close to 0. Not necessarily those links will expire, unless they do get removed manually. With a proper 301 redirect you can have that link juice forwarded to your site (or to inner pages of your site that might have content related to keywords you target) but that is just not worth the hassle (unless you hit a gold mine domain).
Au contraire! You can easily replicate the missing pages yourself and redirect to those. I’ve got plenty of sites built on domains with past lives. 404s were fixed and PR/rankings reinstated. 