What's the best way to hold newly purchased domains over 2 years?

[Adido-105399]

Hi,

A friend has just bought 3 domains and is not planning to build websites with them for around 2 years. He asked me what the best thing to do with these domains was...I have 2 ways of look ing at it:

a) Putting a holding page on these and submit to Google Webmaster Tools - this way they are indexed by Google and hold search engine trust when the site finally goes up - HOWEVER, if they are not updated with fresh content would that work against them in 2 years time?

b) Simply redirect them to their existing site and don't do anything else.

Let me know your thoughts.

Adido.

[RyanKent]

Given the choices offered, option 2.

Purchasing a domain in and of itself offers no value. A 10 year old domain is not worth any more then a domain you acquire today. Any word to the contrary is a myth.

There can be a correlation whereby an active domain earns links over time, and the longer a domain has existed the more links it has had time to earn. But buying a domain and sitting on it doesn't help a domain's SEO value on any level.

If the domain names you acquired are in some way related to an existing domain, you can perform a 301 redirect to the main site and gain some value from them in that manner. For example, seomoz.com redirects to seomoz.org. Some people might mistakenly visit the .com site and redirecting to the main site has some value.

[Adido-105399]

Thanks for your quick response Ryan...can anyone else shed light on whether domain age is important...everywhere I've read says it is important...any other Mozzers have an input into this one?

Cheers,

Adido

[irvingw]

I  respectfully disagree with this statement "A 10 year old domain is not worth any more then a domain you acquire today." why do you think this?

I have helped people with 10 year old domains do SEO and have seen very fast and excellent rankings results, even on sites that were crap and the only way I can explain that is that they built trust in Google due to domain age.

My suggestion for someone buying domains that they plan on sitting on for a couple of years and then using is to prime them by creating a two page site with each page having about 2000 words of relevant content, getting a few  links pointing to it and let Google find (and index) the site on it's own. Then the site is considered a live site and not parked or 301 redirected and it will begin building up age.

Even if we cannot completely confirm either way that domain age is a factor, it is always best to play it safe, there is no way a brand new site would be seen by Google as more trusted than an established aged site, right? That is as long as the site you set up is not a site with flimsy pages. Google doesn't care how many pages the site is, it could be 2 pages just as long as those 2 pages have a lot of relevant content it won't get smacked down.

[RyanKent]

A 10 year old domain is not worth any more then a domain you acquire today." why do you think this?

When asked this question Matt Cutts replied "We can't promise that it's not a factor, but if it is a factor, it's super tiny. It's a really small thing. We're using it primarily in conjunction with other things to try and see what's going on." It's often hard to pin Matt down on things of this nature and that response is about as clear and definitive of a response as one could hope for.

Overall, the theory is often supported with correlative results. "Hey look at these older sites which rank better". Older sites often have shorter, more brandable .com URLs. Older domains have had a lot of time to earn links and recognition. These are the value factors. Going through the process of picking up domains which otherwise don't have value, then hosting these domains and adding random content to put them through the "aging" process is not an acknowledged SEO best practice. It is an idea someone came up with that caught on, nothing more.

You are welcome to disagree with me. I freely acknowledge I could be wrong. As long as search engine algorithms are kept secret we could all be wrong about a great many things. All we can do is rely upon what search engine employees such as Matt Cutts share with us, and our testing. Based on the above information, I maintain the belief domain age is not a ranking factor. Even if I am wrong, the factor is given such an incredibly small weight it is unlikely to ever make a noticeable difference.

Some links which may help:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/age-of-site-and-old-links-whiteboard-friday

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/5-common-pieces-of-seo-advice-i-disagree-with

[RyanKent]

everywhere I've read says it is important

My early SEO days weren't pretty. I read a lot of information which was far from credible. Much of the information made perfect sense in a "of course the world is flat! If it was round the people at the bottom would fall off" type of way.

Much of my day used to be spent optimizing meta keywords, building links from blogs with follow links, and many other activities which are frankly crap but otherwise promoted from random sites as having value. Then I changed my focus from learning SEO from anyone who seemed like an expert and restricted my focus to truly credible sources. That change was the single best move I made.

If I may make a suggestion, stop reading SEO information from "everywhere" as the overwhelming majority of it is crap. Focus on a few, reliable sources of information. Even then, always question and test new learnings. A few sites to start with are: SEOmoz, mattcutts.com/blog, matt's videos on youtube, and Google's official blog. It would take months or years to sift through the information on these sites alone. You will pick up links to other credible sources of information and be able to form your own opinions.