Why Buy Aged Domains & How to Rank Using a Domain That has Age

There are several circumstances in which I might buy an aged domain but two stand out from the crowd. This short post will give a quick overview of these two uses and what you should look out for when purchasing an aged domain name.

Buying an Aged Domain name to rank for a target keyword or search phrase

As I’m sure most readers will already be aware, having a domain name that matches the search phrase exactly that you would like to rank well for is a big winner. Google trusts the domain enough to give it a boost for rankings when the exact search phrase being searched for is an exact match for the domain name. For example, if I bought ‘specialwidget.com’ and hosted the domain, all things being equal or let’s say ‘unspoiled’, it would be relatively easy to get that new domain to rank for the search phrase ‘special widget’. More details on what I mean when I say ‘unspoiled’ further into this post.

Buying an Aged Domain to rank a different web page on another domain

Once again, as most of you will be aware, quality, relevant links will boost the position of your website’s pages for the search phrases that the link-building exercise has been targeted toward. In other words if you link to your ‘special blue widgets’ URI on your domain, from a website all about (special) widgets, with the anchor text ‘special blue widgets’ then your target URI will be more likely to appear higher in the SERPs.

Since we can buy and own domains that are keyword rich, we can also host them and link to our ‘money site(s)’ from those domains (with any anchor text we choose). The big difference between buying a regular domain name and an aged domain is that the aged domain will probably have links already pointing into it, thus having greater visibility by default and more trust from Google. There are many tools that can be used to check back-link volumes. Check SEOMoz’s Site Exploter and MajesticSEO.com.

Things to consider when buying an aged domain name:

  1. How many back-links does the aged domain have and what quality/traits do they hold?
  2. What used to be hosted on the site? Pills? Let’s hope not, because this kind of ‘neighbourhood’ is considered ‘spoiled’ and untrusted. Use WayBack Machine to check.
  3. Is there a market for the keyword/search phrase you are considering buying? If not, the domain name may be less valuable then you thought. Use Google’s keyword Tool to check.

How do I buy an aged domain?

There are several places that offer the search and an ‘auto-bidding’ service. The problem is that often, the domains will be available for ‘back-order’ from only a couple of the businesses offering this service and therefore requires a lot of time to go to each of them in order to run the searches, consolidate the options and then go back having made your decision. Just imagine how time consuming this would be if you had to also look at the history of the domain (as you now know you should) and what if you also had to do back-link research for them all?!

Then there was DomainFace!

DomainFace.com offers a service that does it all for you. No longer do you need to spend hours doing all the research manually because DomainFace offers the following:

  • Fine grained control to restrict the words and other characters that appear in the domain name
  • Search by PageRank, Alexa rank, backlink counts, directory inclusion and more
  • Continuing development to offer more and more search options over time
  • Restrict which sources and types of domain names to include in searches
  • Search by price using your own preferred currency – DomainFace will do the conversion for you
  • Restrict results to domains that are of a minimum age specified by you
  • Metrics are linked so you can click through to the source of the data for further analysis
  • Support for NameJet, SnapNames and other domain auction websites
Buying Aged Domains

I really can’t express how valuable I have found  DomainFace to be, as it has literally saved me many, many hours.

So there you have it. A quick overview of why and how aged domains can be leveraged to gain market share directly, or indirectly.

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3 Comments. Leave new

  • Walter Bayliss
    November 26, 2013 9:45 pm

    have you used PR Powershot? prpowershot.com If so – how did you find it?

  • I have not; nor does the landing page inspire confidence, I must admit. Good luck with it though and I’d love to hear your experience with it! nP.S. sorry for the radio silence, the last 8 months have been a roller coaster ride!

  • Nice post, do you have any experience buying a website over a domain.

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