All you need to know about stuff related to domain names and web hosting

CAT | Old Domain Name

When you set out to establish a brand new UK website for yourself, one of the first steps you’ll need to pursue is acquiring a domain name. After all, what’s the point of building a website if you don’t know what domain name it will be associated with? You want the two to correspond, so selecting a domain first is always a good idea.

When you start pursuing domain name search, you’ll have a variety of different factors to choose from. Both .com and .co.uk names will be available to you (as well as many others, including .org, .net, .mobi, .biz, and the list goes on and on). You’ll be able to choose from all sorts of different names and titles that are yet unclaimed.

But one choice you may not even be aware of when you’re doing standard domain name search is actually a choice that has a great impact on how search engine-friendly your website ends up being: the age of your domain name.

You might think that domain names don’t really ‘age’—after all, this isn’t a fine wine or cheese. It’s a combination of letters that people use to locate your website. But in reality, domain names don’t really exist until someone registers them for the first time. You could come up with a very unique name that has never been registered before, so when you register it, it then is created.

Or, you could look into buying the rights to domain name registration for an existing domain name. This means that someone already brought it into being, possibly months or (even better) years ago.

What’s The Advantage of Registering Old Domain Names?

Domain name age brings with it one key advantage: search engine weight. Search engines, and Google in particular, calculate many different factors when evaluating the strength and relevance of various UK websites and deciding which are most appropriate to provide to searchers.

Factors for search engine relevance include the content on the site, links directed to the site from external locations, the relevance of the domain name, and the age and reputation of the website itself.

When purchasing domain names, ask your web hosting UK provider to help you find some older domain names to consider. Your webmaster may even own some domain names that will be useful to you, or may have contacts with other webmasters with old domain names they are willing to sell.

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