In my recent article, How the Office Products Industry has Failed the Office Products Resellers, I built my argument for this failure around various internet terms, such as domain age and authority, the website's "grade," backlinks, and global traffic rankings. I realize not everybody may entirely understand what each of these terms means and why each is so important for a business to focus on.
So, I will publish a series of blogs to explain them.
Part I - Domain Age and Authority
Part II - Website Grade
Part III - Backlinks
Part IV - Traffic Ranking
Part V - Social Shares
Part VI - Social Authority
Part VII - Conclusions
I'll publish these once every day over the next couple of weeks, and they'll fill in some gaps that may have been left in my previous article.
What is domain authority?
Domain authority is calculated on a 100-point logarithmic scale and is used to measure the power of a domain name and predict how well a website will rank on search engines. The domain authority score will constantly fluctuate, both up and down, with it being much easier to get from 10 to 20 than it is [for example] from 60 to 70.
How can I find out what my domain authority is?
You can click on the following link "How do I check my domain authority?" and check a specific URL at the SEO Review Tools site or use this embedded link to https://www.Moz.com and install their free Moz browser extension. Once the extension is installed, you can display a toolbar in your browser that shows the domain authority, page authority, and spam score. Every website you visit while signing into Moz will automatically display its domain authority.
What's the role of domain age in search engine ranking?
The clock starts ticking in terms of the effective age of the domain once the search engines have crawled the site. Generally, well-established and reputable sites have older domains, whereas spammers quickly register and drop fields. Google and other search engines will likely treat newly registered "one-year" parts cautiously or even suspiciously until the site operator starts to place high-quality content and accumulate quality backlinks. Of course, sites that search engines treat with suspicion are not returned in search results because the search engines want their users to stay away from them.
No one knows how much weight Google [for example] places on the age of a domain and its impact on search results. However, it's fair to say that the age of a part, in conjunction with numerous other factors, plays a vital role in how highly a site may rank in search results.
For example:
The website age in conjunction with its backlink profile
Over time, the owner of a domain has the opportunity to build high-quality backlinks
However, if an owner neglects this task, even an old domain with stale content, few backlinks, and is not optimized for mobile will rank lower in search results than a newer site.
Search engines reward sites with frequent content updates and well-structured internal links between individual site pages. New sites with high-quality, unique content, active and regular updates, mobile responsive, and display an increasing numeric trend of high-quality, relevant backlinks are, almost certainly, ranked higher than older sites lacking these attributes.
Domain Age & Authority
There's an essential difference between a domain's "effective" age and the date it was first registered.
A domain may be registered and then "parked" without being taken live or populated with content. But, only when a site goes live and the search engines can index it, can any "credit" or domain authority accumulate. In other words, registering a domain and leaving it dormant for months or years doesn't do the owner much good regarding the longer-term goal of building domain authority.
The future term of domain registration is an essential consideration for search engines. An owner who registers [and necessarily pays] for a domain five or more years into the future is considered to be making a statement of intent and commitment to the end of that domain. Conversely, an environment with a registration expiring in a few months may alert the search engines that it's about to be closed or left to pass. This may be particularly so with a domain registered less than 12 months because it mirrors the behavior of spammers and is a profile the search engines are programmed to flag.
Conclusions:
The older a domain, the better, but only if it has a history of frequent updates with high-quality content, authoritative backlinks, and a registration extending significantly into the future. Other requirements also come into play, such as the need for a well-structured site with logical internal page links and, particularly in our increasingly mobile era, is fully responsive to multiple screen sizes.