Importance of Age vs Branding

jessecooper

jessecooper

battletoads
Dec 13, 2006
189
2
0
Tennessee
As I reclaim my rightful place in the internet marketing realm I've been bombarded with the plight of those struck down by Google's updates.

As i'm researching a new niche with high demand / desperation factor and medium to low competition I'm running into this dilemma:

  1. Do I start a new domain with focus on branding like Think{NICHE}.com
  2. Sacrifice better naming for a domain that has higher age and is at auction (like life{niche}.com). this domain has been around since 2001 and will auction for about $300
  3. Go with a more keyword centric domain that is expired {Niche}support forums.com that is about 4 years old.

None have very strong back link profiles but i know age is something that you can only get from others.... Plans are to do in house and contracted writing to build authority and traffic and eventually figure out how to monetize... Not as easy to monetize up from but given the traffic available it would be worth pursuing.

Anyways, thoughts?
 


The more research I'm doing, the more I have no F'ing clue.

For any of the wizards out there: which would you go with - Hard KW domain, Better brandability, very old age domain?
 
Over the long-term, brand is more important. Going with an aged domain can help you shortcut to higher rankings faster. The question you need to ask yourself is how long until your exit event (flipping the site, achieving ongoing profitability, etc.)? If you need short-term return and are willing to potentially lower long-term value, go with the best available aged domain you can find. If you can stick with it for a long time (possibly a few years), go with the best brand name you can dream up.
 
Scutter said:
Over the long-term, brand is more important. Going with an aged domain can help you shortcut to higher rankings faster. The question you need to ask yourself is how long until your exit event (flipping the site, achieving ongoing profitability, etc.)? If you need short-term return and are willing to potentially lower long-term value, go with the best available aged domain you can find. If you can stick with it for a long time (possibly a few years), go with the best brand name you can dream up.
Click to expand...

Good point on the profitability area. It would be nice to know the weight of a domain's age to rank for specific term :D
 
Google should publish their exact algo. :)

What they really should do is leak a completely fake one -- that would send the SEO community into a tailspin.
 
Scutter said:
Google should publish their exact algo. :)

What they really should do is leak a completely fake one -- that would send the SEO community into a tailspin.
Click to expand...

here it is: (Title Tag) * # of links with that anchor^3 + PageRank*1.3 - # of Facebook Like * Google+ likes / years of membership with wickedfire.
 
jessecooper said:
The more research I'm doing, the more I have no F'ing clue.

For any of the wizards out there: which would you go with - Hard KW domain, Better brandability, very old age domain?
Click to expand...
Depends what you want to do with the site, is it churn and burn or are you trying to make something legitimate that you're going to work on for a long time like it's your own child?

If you're going to be putting a ton of sweat and tears into the thing, go with brandability. It will help you feel more connected to it in the long run, and your audience as well. Those small benefits you may get from having an exact match domain, or an old domain, aren't very important if you will be putting a lot of effort into the thing for a long time, you know? Those small benefits are most useful when you're building many sites in mass where every little bit helps for the least amount of effort.
 
CPR_dummy said:
Depends what you want to do with the site, is it churn and burn or are you trying to make something legitimate that you're going to work on for a long time like it's your own child?

If you're going to be putting a ton of sweat and tears into the thing, go with brandability. It will help you feel more connected to it in the long run, and your audience as well. Those small benefits you may get from having an exact match domain, or an old domain, aren't very important if you will be putting a lot of effort into the thing for a long time, you know? Those small benefits are most useful when you're building many sites in mass where every little bit helps for the least amount of effort.
Click to expand...

thanks for the thoughts. it's a mix of both: I want to build value in the site for a medium term investment but it's also a subject I care a lot about so i'm in the middle... I suppose age of a domain will only take you so far, it may be worth spending the $250 i was looking at for the 12 year old domain on some premium content and writing.
 
A domain name should carry more weight with Google as it's already established. You will still need to add very good quality content to your site and make sure that any sites linking to yours are best quality.
 
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