Aged Domain: A Digital Asset That Can Put You Ahead of the Pack

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A domain’s age, history, and authority have the potential to create success that would otherwise take years to establish.

Instead of fresh domains, you should go for aged domains that provide a huge competitive advantage that you can leverage. 

Unfortunately, many business owners don’t take advantage of this. 

Consider how much weight people place on the authority of long-term and well-known entrepreneurs. People read their books, follow them on social media, and rely on their recommendations to help direct their businesses.

Their influence is unmistakable, resulting from years of investing in their enterprises and establishing their presence.

To many, a domain is simply a website name plus an extension, and as a result, new startup founders frequently choose to purchase a new domain. Unfortunately, a new domain takes years to rank on the search results.

An aged domain can propel your business.

To gain momentum in the search results, you need to invest resources. Consistent ranking necessitates ongoing investment in everything from capital to employee hours, advertisements, and research.

When properly vetted and studied, purchasing an old domain can result in search engine authority and visits from potential clients.

Although older domains are more expensive than new domains, they are cheaper in the long run.

The expense of acquiring links that come with a premium-aged domain far outweighs the cost of the domain itself, not to mention the years of effort required to get them.

If you are just getting started in SEO, you might have the impression that purchasing links over time will result in better results. 

The reality is that your competition may have long outpaced you by the time you are committing to many years or a decade in a domain.

Remember that in the realm of SEO, it all boils down to ranking higher and faster than the competitors.

And the good thing is that the links from high authority old domains will move your business further toward success than years of link building and outreach can.

Investing in an aged domain. What should you look out for?

If you are looking for aged domain names for sale, you should note that not all of them will give you the results you are looking for. You need to take your time and find the right ones.

Some of the things you should look out for include:

Internal and external linking

The links used in the domain in question are vital. As a rule of thumb, you need to ensure that these links are high quality and relevant to your business.

Link manipulation is one telltale sign of domain abuse. A hijacked domain may have extremely specific anchor text terms to direct visitors to other spammy websites.

In other cases, when hackers desire to remain undetected, the anchor language is left untouched, making tampering even more difficult to detect.

Fortunately, you can use tools like Screaming Frog and AHREFS to find these links and anchor texts.

When looking at external linking, a program like Majestic can provide a glimpse of the backlink profile. You can then investigate other off-page indicators, such as the referring domains that send the most backlinks to the domain.

To be safe and cover all grounds, get as specific as seeing which TLDs (top-level domains) are originating your backlinks. 

For example, if the domain you are interested in belongs to a website in the United States, and you see that 90 percent of the backlinks originate from Taiwan, you should be concerned.

Similarly, a disproportionate number of backlinks from one or more domains may indicate that the domain used a pay-to-play tactic to obtain those links or that the domain was the unfortunate recipient of negative SEO.

In such a case, you should avoid the domain and find another.

Domain authority

Domain Authority (DA), a proprietary statistic coined by Moz, seeks to estimate a website’s ranking potential.

As a rule of thumb, the greater the Domain Authority of a domain, the more probable it is that you will appear in the search results.

While no one knows the formula for calculating Domain Authority, it’s known that backlinks are the most critical factor in increasing the DA score.

If you buy a domain with a lower DA, you should know that increasing this score will take time.

 While this is the case, you should note that a lower DA shouldn’t stop you from buying the domain. You only need to remember that you need an ongoing SEO strategy that will move the needle.

Google console health

You need to access the Google Search Console account to assess the domain’s health you want to buy.

If you don’t have access to this account, you should contact the current admin and request access. Similarly, if this property hasn’t been set up yet, you can ask that it be done.

Once logged into the Search Console account, navigate to Search Traffic > Manual Actions and look for any account notes.

You should also click on Security Issues to get notified if Google believes your website has been compromised.

As a rule of thumb, you should only consider buying a domain if it checks out.

Blacklist status

If your domain has a history of sending spam emails, it may be blacklisted, which may result in the IP address of your email server being blocked.

Using Site Securi, you can check the Blacklist status of the domain you want to buy.

Of course, you should stay away from a blacklisted domain.

Parting shot

It’s a fact that an old domain gives you a head start as you start ranking almost immediately. 

As mentioned, you shouldn’t buy just any domain. Take your time and find a reputable one. You will even be better off if the domain is related to your industry.

For example, if you are in the real estate industry, get an old domain in the same industry.

You can take the initiative to find the old domain by yourself, but you should expect the process to be long and tedious. There is also the risk of some things slipping from you as you are inexperienced.

For an easier time, let an experienced professional handle the work. This way, you buy an already certified domain that you are sure will give you the boost you are looking for.

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