When you’re trying to get your website to rank higher in the search engines you’ll try anything – you write hundreds of articles, leave comments on blogs all over the Web, exchange links with other webmasters and guest post wherever you can. Those are all great methods for improving your ranking but your results are limited because Google still bases some of your site’s authority on its age. The solution? Improve your search engine ranking by buying an aged domain.
Google uses two main factors to determine your site’s authority – the number and quality of backlinks you’ve generated and the age of your domain. But it’s not the date you purchased your domain name that counts. Google looks at how long you’ve had indexed content on your domain. Anybody can buy a domain name. Google wants to see that you’ve put forth some effort to build a quality site.
The quality content you place on your site will help improve your ranking because it attracts traffic and links, and it’s something you can control. Generating backlinks adds authority to your site and also helps improve your ranking. And that’s also something you can control.
The one thing you can’t control, though, is the age of your domain. You can be doing everything right with your website but you can’t change the age. So how do you compete with sites that are older than yours? Unless you want to be patient for a few years, you buy an aged domain.
Now don’t panic. You’re not going to buy an aged domain, move everything over, and shut down your existing site. You’re buying an aged domain so you can get the benefit of the authority and ranking that site already has. All you need to do to accomplish that is set up a 301 re-direct and point the higher ranking site at the site you’re trying to improve. So let’s take a look at how all of this works…
First, you need to find an aged domain to buy. You can find domains for sale at Ebay, Flippa, and dozens of other sites, and you can usually even find them wherever you normally purchase your new domain names.
Do the research before you buy. Look for domain names that are relevant to your site, that have some PR and link authority, and check them out to make sure they’re not porn or spam sites or sites that would have a negative influence on your rankings if you linked to them. If Google has de-indexed that domain for some reason, then move one. You’ll never be able to get it back on the index and you’ll just damage your own site if you link to it.
It’s also important to remember one thing when buying aged domains: When you transfer it to your name, you need to leave it with the same registrar. The domain only maintains it’s ranking as long as you don’t move it. That aged domain name will immediately lose it’s value if you transfer it out. It’s also important to note that you won’t see an overnight boost in rankings. It may take up to 2 or 3 months for the dust to settle before you see the benefits.
Once you’ve purchased your aged domain, set up a 301 re-direct to permanently point it at your existing site. You must use a 301 in order to transfer all of the aged site’s PR, links and other attributes. Any other type of re-direct won’t work. It needs to be permanent.
Can you scale this? Can you buy more than one aged domain so you can give your site a bigger boost? Absolutely. Buy one and link it to your main website and buy another to link to your money page. Be careful though. Too many re-directs coming into your site looks suspicious. Limit it to only two or three to avoid a slap.
It’s hard enough trying to rank in the search engines with all the competition out there. And it doesn’t seem quite fair that just because a site’s older it should get more Google love. Especially when you look at some of the content out there. You’re working your tail off trying to provide quality and value and that guy’s using PLR that he ran through a spinner but he still gets a better rank because his site is older. Use this search engine ranking secret, buy an aged domain, and thumb your nose at him when you pass him on the way up the index.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!