Aged Domains – The Hazards of Buying Old Domains

Buying an aged domain, that is, one that has been around for a few years is an easy way to get better page rank from Google and also get some instant traffic, if other websites still have active links to it. Buying an aged domain can save a lot of time with SEO and link building.

I’ll give you some facts about websites I build using new domain names. It can take up to 60 days (sometimes longer) before I start seeing rewards for my efforts of building that website. I have more than one website that, for Google reasons unknown, simply started to kick in after a year – this after traffic was a trickle after doing everything I could to get visitors. I would simply let it sit and then all of a sudden I would notice that it started appearing near the top of the SERPs. I can only guess that because it aged, Google finally thought it worthy.

So, age of a domain name does appear to carry weight – and a good deal of it in Google’s eyes. If Google uses filters to determine worth of a website, age seems to get a website through many of them.

Buying aged domains saves me 60 days of backlinking, creating unique content, link bait and general website building. It’s a significant savings in time, especially when I may be working on a half dozen other websites at the same time.

Ask yourself if you had to wait a year or more to start seeing more money from your new website because you used a new domain name, or only a week to get the same results using an aged domain, which would you want?

Aged Domains Of Course

As stated aged domains have an inherent advantage over new domains, but there are hazards when buying them. I’ll get into that shortly, but for now let’s talk about new domains which may be more advantageous to you because of their relative inexpensive cost and the fact that you may find a domain name that more closely matches your niche, or website theme.

When using a newly created domain name there are two basic rules to overcome Google filters and get your page rank higher, faster.

1. Try to get links from websites that are relevant to your own. This should be done slowly. Don’t blast Google bots with 20 links in one day. Google may interpret this as some type of linking scheme, as it won’t appear natural.
2. Write at least 20 articles of no less than 150 – 250 words. These should be unique articles – NOT copy and paste jobs of articles already existing on the Internet. If you spin articles that is fine, but make sure the finished article is at least 50% unique from anything else on the net.

Now, I realize that for many newbies, the thought of getting almost instant traffic to your website using an aged domain is appealing. I mean, why wait for your website to rank when instant ranking is there from day 1? You may be willing to pay a premium price for a domain name and get traffic, figuring to offset the cost with the added sales. That sounds great, but there are hazards in buying aged domains if you don’t understand those pitfalls and traps in buying an aged domain.

There are many less than honest people that sell domains they claim are “aged,” but aren’t. Still others will sell a domain that has been delisted by Google or affiliate programs, such as ePN (eBay). In essence, blackballed. Applying to ePN with a blackballed domain name will get you removed from their affiliate program – permanently. They won’t care you bought it from somebody else.

So what do you look for when buying an aged domain?

Age: The older the domain, the better. Pre-2000 is preferred, but the older it is the more expensive it may be.

Not Banned: Check the domain hasn’t been banned or de-listed.

Backlinks: Check Yahoo Site Explorer to see how many backlinks the domain has.

Indexed: Has the domain been indexed before? Search engines calculate a domain’s age from when it was first indexed. If a domain has a good Search History then you’re onto a winner. To check this out fire the url into Way Back Machine.

Price: What’s the pricing of the domain? Decent aged domains can be had from around $20-$200, if you find something you’re interested in.

Pagerank: Some sellers often try to sell domains based on Pagerank. Don’t jump on a domain just because the seller boasts about page rank. It can be faked. You can verify claimed page rank by clicking here -> check to see it’s not fake.