The Internet and search engines have reached a new level of maturity and sophistication. Search engines are putting more and more weight on the age of the domain in their algorithms.

If you purchase a domain that ranks reasonably well, but where the owner has failed to monetize the site or convert visitors into buyers, and the domain name matches the keywords you want to promote, you can shave many months off the standard ranking process. You should be able to buy an instant page rank cheaply because of the previous owner’s lack of marketing savvy.

According to the Google’s Sandbox theory, all new domains will take six to twelve months to rank well. If your business is solely Internet based buying a seasoned domain with a pagerank can literally mean the difference between a brilliant success and bankruptcy.

Whether or not you believe in the Google Sandbox theory, in most search engines, the age of the domain does play a role in site ranking. There are web pages in the index that have been there for a decade that have less than twenty back links, on extremely competitive terms, that rank in the top five positions.

An existing domain name that is already in the index is a valuable commodity. If you’re looking for a shortcut to search engine rankings, traffic and online profits, consider purchasing a mature domain.

A note of caution is in order. If you aren’t careful and purchase a domain that has been banned for either search engine black hat techniques or for click fraud then you can pretty much write off that domain for ever getting into the indexes again.

Cole Wiebe
Vancouver SEO

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