Julianna
Last updated September 2009
It certainly won’t land you on the first page of Google if your website has poor content and is not well optimized for search engines, but registering and/or renewing your domain name for a longer term might help your SEO.
How? Credible websites have certain things in common, for example their domain names tend to be registered for longer terms – 2, 5, 10 years – indicating a commitment to their online identity and business.
In an effort to weed out spammers from legitimate websites, it’s suspected that Google and other search engines look for indicators of legitimacy gleaned from analyzing common traits of so-called ‘good’ websites, ie. websites that bring value to the Internet.
Domain registration information is readily accessible – therefore it is easy for a search engine such as Google to find out how long you have registered your domain.
According to a 2005 patent filed by Google,
“Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.”
Click here to see the original patent application
The quote places a greater value on domains registered for longer terms, viewing them as more legitimate than those set to expire after one year.
With spammers registering one year disposable domains at low cost registrars, it makes sense that search engines would consider the length/age of a domain registration. Anyone who has submitted a website to Google knows it takes time to build up respectable page rank on relevant keywords and terms. Spam websites tend to be short lived, resultantly a website’s age and domain registration could be considered as indicators of credibility.
To be fair, there has been quite a lot of debate among SEO experts as to whether or not a longer registration term is worthwhile, however most seem to agree it can’t hurt and might even help. John Glick, a former member of the Yahoo search team, is on the record as saying “there is a minor benefit to domains with longer registrations. It shows that the site is planning on being around a while.”
More recently, SearchEngineLand.com editor Mark McGee put it very reasonably – “My gut feeling, based on what the Googlers have said, is that if you build a great web site that attracts lots of people, lots of links, lots of attention, etc., it won’t matter if your domain is only registered for one year. But if you build an iffy web site with iffy content and questionable links … a one-year registration just might matter.”
While it’s not going to make or break your SEO game, our take is this: if you plan on being around for a while, why wouldn’t you secure your name for longer? It will save you money, save you from renewing yearly (or worse yet, forgetting to renew) and might even boost your SEO ever so slightly.
Further Reading on the Topic:
SEO & Length of Domain Registration – Does It Matter? – VerticalLeap SEO Services
Does Registering A Domain Name for 10 Years Help Search Ranking? – Search Engine Roundtable
Search Ranking Factors Study 2009, Site-Wide (non-link based) Ranking Factors – SEOmoz.org
Google Says Domain Registrations Don’t Affect SEO, Or Do They? – SearchEngineLand.com