DOES THE AGE OF MY DOMAIN MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

AM I BETTER OFF USING AN OLDER DOMAIN NAME?

Age

The Age of a Domain and it's Longevity can make a real difference in Google

So as long as the domain name you have chosen, is black hat SEO free and it has not been penalised by google and has actually been used as a website, there are some real benefits here.

But be careful as a lot of people are selling their old domain names because they or their SEOs have basically ruined the domain name through the use of black hat techniques, such as link building.

There is no benefit in using a domain name that you have owned for many years and not actually used . Generally if I purchase a domain name I put a simple 6 page website on it and leave it for a rainy day.

I know people who buy domain names like golf clubs, and have dozens, but never actually use them!

So if you are going to purchase a domain name from someone, there are a few tools you can use to check that the domain name is safe to use.

PageRank Checker - This is an excellent tool as it will actually show you a lot of information quickly and concisely.

First up it will tell you a score out of 10, with 10 being the best. Simply put the higher the pagerank number the easier it is optimise.
Google PageRank : 5/10
This is really a quality and trust indicator and a high pagerank can only be achieved through the long and good use of a domain name.

This tool will also tell you the number of backlinks and puts them into these catergories
External Backlinks / Referring Domains / GOV Backlinks /EDU Backlinks
PR Quality:Very Strong
Alexa Rank: 2116 this is based on number of visitors and number of page views
DMOZ.org listed? No This is one of the oldest website directories going
Google Directory listed? Yes
Yahoo! Directory listed? Yes Yahoo costs about $200 and unfortunately does not guarantee a listing
Domain age? 0 years 0 months 0 days (According to Whois )
Domain History? check... this will show you actual archives of the website
So simply the domains pagerank is made up of all these factors.

I would go a little further and actually go through and check the inbound/external links

You can use any number of online tools such as this
http://tools.seochat.com/tools/page-link-analyzer-seo/

NEXT: HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD DOMAIN NAME