Suzannah Porter's Library tagged Domains →  View Popular

Generally, webmasters agree that domain age is hardly a powerful ranking factor but opinions vary:





1. it can be no factor at all;
2. it can play only a single minor factor in the millions of other factors (but it still is);
3. it matters a lot (as most participants of this discussion seem to agree, for example).

Google’s patent “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data” of 03/31/2005 reviewed by WebmasterWorld forum hugely accounted for these rumors implying that Google does look into domain registration (1) and renewal (2) dates:

(1) … the date that a domain with which a document is registered may be used as an indication of the inception date of the document.

(2) Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. … Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

While the patent does sound rather straightforward (by the way its official version is no longer available online, so it might have been deleted), domain age factor is both overestimated and misinterpreted. My point is simple: domain registration date cannot speak for either quality or trustworthiness of a website as:



• domains can be registered but never used for a long time (parked);
• new domains can be used for highly established companies (with the old domain 301-redirecting to the new one);
• a domain name can be used for illegitimate purposes for years and then sold to a “good” person/ company without any change of the initial registration date.

Thus my verdict to the whole dispute is as follows:





1. Website age (and its backlink profile age) is what really matters;
2. Domain age can play a minor part only as damping factor - i.e. one of the factors signaling the search engine that this might be a spammy / illegitimate site;
3. Old domains may carry more weight due to their past records (i.e. old backlinks pointing to them) - this can be a good point to consider but then again if you are serious about your brand, keep in mind that an established domain already has associations and history before you own it and they might be hard to conquer.

Goals and Objectives - I constantly come back to this point in most of my tips posts on a variety of aspects of blogging - but it’s so important to be thinking of the long term vision that you have for a blog when you’re making decisions like those about domain names.




• What is the topic of the blog? - an obvious starting point - most blog names reflect their topic
• What do you hope to achieve with your blog? - is it about having a hobby, is it about building your profile/expertise, is it about earning an income via ads, is it to support an existing business
• What style will it be? - is it a blog with one or many authors? What length of posts will it have?
• What tone and voice will it be written in? - Will it be conversational, newsy, rant-ish, humorous?
• Who is the intended audience? - Are you wanting to appeal to professionals, young people, cool people, geeks?

Source of Traffic - I’ve seen many articles on how to choose a domain name written but in very few of them (if any) have I see a discussion on the type of traffic that you will be wanting to build your website/blog around. To me this is a crucial question (that emerges out of your overall strategy) and one that will help you answer some of the important questions that we’ll discuss below. Let me flesh this out a little:






Traffic to a blog generally comes from three main sources:




• Loyal Readers
• Search Engines
• Referral Traffic (from other sites)




I’ve talked a little about each of these types of traffic in this previous post - they each have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages and can be the result of different strategies. One of the many things that can impact the source of your traffic is your domain name. I’ll explain this more below but think it’s worth naming what type of blog and traffic you’re after up front. If you want a blog that is high on SE traffic you might well end up selecting a name that is different to a blog with traffic based upon repeat readers. As I say - I’ll expand on this below.

Keywords and Branding - Many discussions on domain name decisions talk about a choice between choosing a domain name with keywords in them to domain names that are more brandable or generic. It’s worth stating up front that it is possible to achieve both (I guess anything is brandable to some extent) - but that this type of choice often comes into play. In my opinion comes at least partly back to the type of traffic you’re hoping to attract to your blog. Let’s look at each in turn:






1. Keyword Based Domains - these domains, as the name suggests, incorporate keywords that your blog is about in them. This is good for a number of reasons. Firstly it communicates something to your readers very quickly with regards to what your blog is about. The other positive is that Search Engines take a good look at the words in your domain name when deciding what your blog is about and how to rank it. As a result if you’re after SE traffic then these types of names can be worth looking at. Examples of blogs with keyword based domains are Cellphone9, the Movie Blog, Sims Gamer and Digital Photography School.
2. Brandable Domains - these domains might often have some relation to their topic in terms of their feel or sound but are much more about creating something memorable that can become an identity in and of itself. In terms of traffic strategy - these blogs would be suited ideally to developing a blog that is aiming to build a community of loyal readers. Of course these blogs can also do very well in search engines but this is usually for other reasons (keywords in URLs are just one of many factors). Blogs that have these types of domains include Boing Boing, Gizmodo and Dooce. In fact if you look at Technorati’s Top 100 blogs - you’ll see that most of them have brandable names and not Keyword based ones.

Thinking of the Future - another factor to consider that is related to my first point of goals and objectives is to consider what your blog might look like in the future. I’ve seen a number of bloggers start up blogs with domains that fit with the topic of the blog initially but which outgrow the domain down the track. In one instance the problem was that the blog started on a fairly narrow topic (a sub-niche) and on a domain that reflected this but that in time it expanded it’s topic as the industry changed. In the end the topic and name just didn’t fit.

Another ‘future factor’ to consider is how many blogs you’re thinking of starting on your domain. Take a look at About.com for an example of how it’s possible to have one domain with many blogs running off it. They blog (yes they are blogs - run by MovableType) ‘about’ hundreds of topics and have a domain name that suits this perfectly. I myself have fallen into the trap of not thinking ahead in this way with my livingroom.org.au domain where I currently have a blog on Digital Cameras. I guess this is an example of how ultimately it doesn’t matter what domain you start blogs on as it’s a blog that does pretty well - however I often wonder how much better if could have done if I’d just thought ahead a little more!

Lastly on the ‘future front’ - don’t pick a name that you suspect might date quickly. Picking a name that is time specific in any way might find you searching for a new domain when it is no longer relevant at some future time.

Name Length - there are a range of opinions on what the ideal length of a domain name is. Technically you can have one with up to 67 characters in it but it is generally accepted that short ones are better for a number of reasons including that they are easier to remember, that they leave less room for making mistakes when typing them in, they are good for word of mouth (online or offline) marketing, that they are more visually pleasing (eg on your business card) etc.

The other argument is that if you are looking for SE traffic that you might like to consider a longer domain name with a number of the keywords that you’re looking for traffic on.

My personal preference these days is for shorter domains if possible, but not just for the sake of being short. Plus short names are very popular and hard to find these days so you might be forced to consider something a little longer anyway.

Dot What? - Along with the debates over domain name length comes many different opinions over what is the best to have at the end of your domain after the ‘dot’. These letters (ie .com, .net, .org etc) are technically called the Top Level Domain (TLD) and are divided into two types. Firstly there are country code TLD’s and secondly there are ‘generic’ TLDs which signify different types of organizations (in theory at least).






As I say there are a variety of approaches to selecting which TLD to go for:




• Legalities - The first consideration is the legalities of your choice as different countries and generic TLDs have different requirements but the
• SEO - This is where many of the arguements over TLD’s come in. I’m not going to get into it in much depth except to say that most people believe .com to be most powerful and that .net and .org are also good. Also if you are starting a blog with a localized focus it is well worth considering a country code on your TLD as it will help you get indexed in local search engines (I get a lot of traffic on my .au domains from Google Australia). If you’re going for a more global audience try for .com or .net.
• Memorability - One of the frustrations I have with ProBlogger.net is simply that people assume that it can be found at ProBlogger.com. Of course when I came to register this domain I tried to get the .com but it was unavailable so I decided that .net would serve my purposes (which it has). The only cost is that .com is so ‘normal’ that many people make the assumption that yourblog’sname.com will always be your address.

Hyphens? - Another eternal debate with domain names is over the value of hyphenated names. For example a hyphenated version of this blog might be Pro-Blogger.net. There are a two main reasons that some people prefer hyphenated names:




• Availability - one of the main reasons for going with hyphens is that ‘all the good names are taken’ (or at least it can seem this way). Adding hyphens to names definitely gives more options.
• SEO - hyphens are said to identify keywords to search engines more clearly (once again there is some debate over this).

Of course for every positive there is a negative and the arguments against keywords include:




• Memorability - adding hyphens can make it tricky for readers to remember your name
• Difficult to Communicate - have you ever tried to tell someone a domain name with a hyphen between each word? It can be quite an annoying process
• Increased Margin for Error - the more characters in your domain the more chance of a mistaken keystroke
• Cheap and Nasty Factor - there is a perception among many web-masters that domains with lots of keywords and hyphens are spammy. I personally don’t mind a domain with one (maybe two) hyphens in them but domains-that-have-lots-of-them-frustrate-me-and-turn-me-off.

Some tools you might like to use in selecting a domain name include:

NameBoy

DomainsBot

Whois Source