Does Domain Age Have An Effect On Website Rankings?

A website's ranking on search results in influenced by a lot of factors, such as on-page and off-page SEO, backlink profile, social activity, and so on. There are actually over 200 signals Google uses to rank a website (or so we're lead to believe). People often wonder whether a website's age is one of them. Webmasters with newer domains are always complaining about how they're supposed to go head-to-head with the veterans who have been around for years. Even the vets sometimes complain that newer sites are overtaking them much too easily. So does a site's age really count?

To bust this myth right out, Google's search algorithms - or no search algorithms for that matter - do not take a website's age into account when ranking it search results. If that were the case, startups would have a pretty rough time getting any traffic at all from search engines. And old, 'mature' domain names would be very highly priced, irrespective of domain name value.

But don't throw it out the window just yet. Age isn't totally useless. It is sometimes used to evaluate a site's trust rating. New domains are created and sold all the time. It is the old domains that retain value, gain people's trust, and accumulate added value. If two social networks suddenly surfaced, with a similar user-base and set of features, I'd go for the one that's been around for more time. Similarly, if two websites seem to have the same content duplicated, I'd expect the older site to be more of an authority as compared to the other site that opened up just last week.

So a website gradually matures with age. And it can indirectly effect search ranking factors positively if the website owner has made use of the time, and has kept a good track record.

What to do with old websites not ranking well

What I just described is, of course, not a law. It's just a unanimously accepted reality. There exist websites that are old, but have been overtaken by newer websites. Such websites can take the following steps to make sure they get back on track.

Don't take things for granted!

Back in our childhood times, the eldest sibling used to get everything first; new toys, video games, etc. So whenever a new gadget, it was understood that the eldest would get to use it first, because they were just older than the rest of us! Times have changed though. And if you're a website owner that's been in business for many years, don't automatically assume that you're the big brother who deserved to have it all just because he is elder! If you create a new market niche, that may mean you dominate that niche for sometime, but doesn't mean you'll own it forever. New, better players are bound to come along, and don't be surprised if they take away your business. Not unless you adapt.

Update your design

Old websites often have old and obsolete themes and templates. They might have made modifications along the way to keep up with the modern interfaces, but the back-end remains pretty much the same. These templates might not be SEO-optimized, since they were built in another era. Maybe some of the plugins you're using are obsolete? Maybe your markup gets the job done, but not in the most efficient manner, or is not standards-compliant. Maybe it's not using structured data as well as Google would like? You had an old design to begin with, and you kept dragging it along, trying to keep pace. Sometimes it's best to let go, and start afresh.

Adapt and evolve

Hope these tips helped. If you have any question, please feel free to ask in the comments section below. Peace and blessings, pals :)

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Unknown 2/04/2014