Before Buying a Domain Name, Check its SEO Factors

While you think of SEO you possibly first think of placing keywords on your pages. You may also think about having keywords in your domain, at least I hope you think of that prior to registering or buying your domain.
Now let me fill you in on some of the SEO items you may not have considered yet.

If you are starting off setting up a brand new domain, here are some of the things you need to know to incorporate into your new site's design. Plus you need to pick your domain name with SEO in mind, don't have your domain name work against you.

If you are preparing to buy a domain from someone else you really need to keep these factors in mind before you pay for something you may regret later.

The measureable factors that affect your SEO are:

1) Backlinks

The more relevant links there are to your website the more SEO value it will carry. Obviously a new domain will not have any backlinks to it yet. If you can buy an established site with a lot of relevant backlinks that will make your life easier as creating these links to your site can be quite time consuming.

2) Google PageRank (or PR)

Google automatically checks for the quantity and also the quality of backlinks there are to your website. This along with some other factors will determine the pagerank for each page on your website from 0 - 10 (0 for new pages & 10 for authority sites such as CNN.com).

These numbers are calculated to the power of 10, so for example a PR3 is 10 times more powerful than a PR2. So the higher ranking the more powerful it will be.

3) Age of Domain

The age of a Domain is determined from the date it was registered. Age is also an important SEO factor as Google puts a lot more trust in a site which has been around for some time, rather than the new kid on the block.

4) History of Domain

If the domain name you are looking at purchasing did have content on it before which was related to the niche you are going into, then the history of that domain is good and Google will reward you.

On the reverse side if the domain had content that was not related to the niche or was of questionable quality then the bad history of that domain could hurt your SEO. So in this case you would probably be better off to register a brand new domain in your niche.

5) High Value DMOZ & Yahoo! Directory Listings

If you can get your hands on an aged domain name which already has a listing in DMOZ or in the Yahoo! Directory, then you will be saving yourself a lot of time, money and effort. It is very difficult and expensive to get these listings.

6) Indexing

If you are starting a brand new site then clearly you need to get your web pages listed on Google or the other search engines., otherwise known as getting your pages index. This is how people will find you. The more indexed pages a site has the more weight it will have with the various search engines.

So now you know some of the SEO factors to watch out for when deciding whether to buy a domain name or start from scratch.

You do not want to be penalized for things you really had nothing to do with, but why don't you take advantage of a domain for sale with SEO factors working in your favor?
About the Author: Janet Andersen - Do you want to learn the secrets that will help you make more money online, and easier? Read my review on a simple system to make money online here.