Is the history of my domain important for SEO?
Domain History and Google rank
SEO as the most important digital marketing method refers to the standards, techniques and tactics to be utilized, for the sake of improving a website’s position on major search engines like Google.
As the main goal of SEO in Australia and other parts of the world is to optimize a website rank on Google, SEO professional agencies would highly consider the elements that Google takes into account, when ranking websites on its search engine result page. There are many factors that are more or less effective on Google’s ranking decision.
How does Google rank a website?
There are many elements that play vital roles in Google’s decision, when ranking a website. The website’s traffic, bounce rate, session duration and conversion rate are a few out of many that Google considers to rank a website.
One of the elements that is effective on a website’s rank and consequently on SEO is the domain history.
What is domain history?
Domain history basically refers to the past and present domain’s owners and their contact details. However, this is not the only information that is stored on domain history.
All the information about a domain past performance such as the field that the domain has been operating in, domain’s traffic, conversion rate, inbound and outbound links, backlinks, any penalties that Google might have considered previously due to any reason and all other data that can be effective on the domain’s position on Google, are completely stored on a domain history. Therefore, a domain history not only contains all domain owners’ identification over time, but reflects how a website performs from the beginning day till now.
How domain history can impact SEO
Firstly, you must note that when we talk about SEO here, we are talking about Google’s judgment on a website’s performance.
As we already know, Google crawlers frequently navigate through a website and analyze and assess many elements, in order to position a website on Google result page. One of the main elements that crawlers normally check, is how the website has performed previously; basically, Domain History. In other words, all past performance information about link buildings, quality of contents, traffic and all other information that are stored in a domain history will be checked by Google crawlers, so a huge impact is expected from a domain history on its rank and consequently on SEO.
Furthermore, if the website has ever used Black Hat SEO and was spotted and penalized by Google in the past, crawlers would take a negative score into account as they are able to see such information on domain history.
How to create and maintain a SEO friendly domain history
Now that we understand the importance of domain history for your website SEO , let’s discuss the actions that need to be taken, for the sake of starting your online business in the right direction.
There are basically two options for you, when you decide to buy your domain name and start your online business. You can either buy a brand-new domain name or an existing domain name.
1- Buy a brand-new domain name
If you choose to purchase a brand-new domain name, there is no history on that domain, so you don’t need to be worried about that. However, as mentioned earlier in this article, your website performance in terms of SEO will be stored on your domain history and will be highly effective on your website’s future performance.
Therefore, you must have a professional SEO plan in place and implement it consistently and persistently, so in addition to improving your website rank on Google, you will create an authoritative website.
2- Buy an existing domain name
You may have some good reasons to buy an existing domain. If you choose to do so, you must carefully check the domain history to see how it has performed before. Even though the negative impact of a bad domain history can be recovered by implementing a good SEO plan over time, it takes time and costs money. More importantly, you must be aware that no action on earth can recover your domain history from an unresolved comment if it exists for the domain you are considering to purchase.
Long story short, you must check the domain history carefully, before stepping into any deal.
If you are not familiar with how to check a website domain history, you may read through Why Domain Authority is important to gain some useful information.
Also, you may come across a situation where a change in your domain name is needed. In this case, you must make the change with care to avoid losing your good domain history and consequently your rank on Google. You may read through How to change my website’s domain without losing my rankings article to see how to change your domain name without losing your rank.
Bottomline
As we have explained in this article, your domain history plays a crucial role on how your SEO performs and how Google ranks you on its search engine result page.
There are multiple things that must be done with care, in order to avoid the negative consequences of a bad domain history on your website SEO which was outlined earlier in this article.
However, if you still need some help on this matter, we are more than happy to help. You may kindly contact us ask for a free consultation meeting and we are always here to provide the best solution for our customers.