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I recently purchased an after-market domain from Buy Domains for a project I’m working on.
I believe that I paid much less than I should have because of the age of the domain, which goes back as far as August 2000 according to the Way Back Machine. There are still links coming into the domain that first appeared in 2002.
Having an old history to a domain name and inbound links can drastically increase the value of a domain. Below are three benefits to buying a domain with an old history and inbound links:
- Authority - Google places a lot of authority on old web sites and old links. Domain names with no history have a hard time competing in Google with older web sites.
- Avoiding the Google Sandbox - New web sites can spend over 6 months in the Google Sandbox.
- Less inbound links needed to compete - Older domains with old inbound links will need less new inbound links to compete in the search engines.
Buying domains
When buying after-market domains you will want to find out as much information about the domains before purchasing. A few tools you can use to find out the age of a web site and what back links it has:
- Do a search for the domain name in the major search engines to see if it is indexed.
- Also do a search to see the domains back links.
To check back links in Google, search for link:http://www.yourdomain.com
To check back links in Yahoo!, search for linkdomain:yourdomain.com
Note: Google will only show you a sampling of the domains back links.
- Use the Way Back Machine to see archived versions of web pages. The logic here is that if the Way Back Machine indexed the site, then the major search engines probably did too.
Note: You might be unable to see archives of some domains because the owners have disallowed it in the robots.txt file.
- Search the WHOIS for the domain name you are interested in to see how long the current owner has owned the domain.
Note: Domain owners are able to keep this information private, if they choose.
Selling domains
If you are sitting on some domain names that you plan on selling in the future, consider putting up landing pages for each and submitting them to a few free directories so that they will get indexed by the search engines. Then when you go to sell your domains in a few years, they could be worth a lot more (to a knowledgeable buyer).
To save money on hosting buy a reseller account that allows you to host as many web sites as you want.
Purchasing domains with a long history and many back links can give you a competitive advantage over your competitors. Likewise, getting your domains indexed by the search engines today can reap greater rewards in the future.
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