Does The Duration Of Your Domain Registration Have Any Effect On Ranking

You might already know that Google uses over 200 parameters in ranking websites. One of the notions that is propagated by domain registration companies is that Google and other search engines give a boost to websites that are registered for longer durations. You might have your own doubts regarding this. Does the duration or the number of years for which you register your domain have any effect on your ranking? Matt Cutts in one of the WebmasterHelp videos points out that Google has never made any such statements. In other words, the duration of your domain registration does not have any impact on Google as per Matt Cutts. However, he goes on to explain that such a notion might have been deduced from the fact that Google uses the history of the domain as one of the ranking factors.

If your website has a long history and it gives a reason to Google to presume that you are serious about what you are doing and that your website has not been created just to generate a link network online. If this factor is taken one step further, it can lead to the presumption that having one’s domain registered for longer duration should also have positive effect on the Google ranking. This is just a presumption and it is not really based on any Google teachings.

Matt Cutts says that Google is more concerned about the quality of the site. You should therefore be more focused on improving your domain value by creating a high quality website for your users.

There might be other benefits in registering your domain for longer durations. If you register your domain for five or ten years then you secure the domain name for longer. You reduce the chances of losing your domain name; this is very crucial especially if you have a premium domain name for which thousands of webmasters are just waiting to usurp. Secondly, registering your domain for longer durations will probably reduce the hassles for you as you may not have to renew the domain each year. Thirdly, many domain registration companies give additional discounts to orders that register the domains for longer durations. All these benefits have nothing to do with your website’s ranking in Google. So do not be misled. If you are planning to register your domain for longer durations do it for the right reasons. There is no harm in registering your domain for five or ten years but the point that we are trying to drive home here is that it may not bring you any specific ranking boost in Google.

Your website’s history however counts a great deal. You should therefore be very cautious to keep your website’s history. The efforts that you are taking today will fill the pages of your website’s history. So take only legitimate ranking and link building efforts. Stay away from all risky and unethical ranking or link building efforts.

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