Choosing the right domain for your startup is critical and hard. Some domains are crazy expensive and most of the good ones are unavailable.
To add to the pressure, you should select the right domain now, instead of changing it later.
Why do you need to select the right domain now instead of later?
Because, the age of your domain matters for SEO.
I should add in that it’s not just about the age of the domain, it’s about how long you’ve been actively adding new valuable content to your website.
High-quality content and backlinks are much more important ranking factors, but in today’s competitive markets, every little bit helps. So get it right the first time.
Domain Age as a Ranking Factor?
Google uses the age of your domain as a ranking signal, this does not mean from the day you bought your domain. It means when Google first found a link to the domain.
Google also looks at how stale your content is, so if a Google crawler, first encountered your domain back in 2005 (when Google first introduced domain back history as a ranking factor) and you’ve added little to no high-quality content to your website, chances are you will probably be outranked by a competitor whose domain is only a few months old.
Watch this video by Matt Cutts, a former engineer at Google
By the way, don’t take a domain name around your services. Focus on branding. A good brand name as a domain and target keyword is more valuable than any other keyword in your industry. I realize that’s a bold statement, but if you own a great company and plan to build a brand, buy your brand name now before a competitor does.
If you own a small brick and mortar store and have no plans to grow or stick around for a while then go ahead and buy a domain for the sole purpose of trying to get found in Google.