About domain names

[webindustry]

Hello all. I am a new member of SEOmoz and liking it so far. This is my first post to you all (my new family).

I have a client who is starting a new company. We know for sure that he needs a new domain name. The question is two part:

Part One

Should he buy (is it worth the money) a parked domain that has some age to it. For example, a 9 or 10 year old domain that is getting "0" traffic and has no PR?

Or Should he just put that same say $1000 price tag back in his wallet and spend the money on a link building campaign to his new $9.95 domain name?

Part Two

We found a domain he really likes but only the ".co" ".net" and ".biz" are available. The .com belongs to a big company that has made a simple landing page from the .com domain name (that we really want) and will probably never let it go to us. So we will always be stuck without the .com portion of the domain registrations for this domain name if we go for it.

Question: a. Will we have difficulty competing for our own name recognition since the "big company" owns the landing page (even though it is a "0" PR page?

b. Can we live on only the .co extension or would we live to regret not getting all the extensions related to our domain name?

thanks everyone! I look forward to contributing here as well.

[philipbuuck]

I would be hesitant to buy a parked domain - what if the previous owner had gotten themselves penalized in some way?  You may end up having to work harder to overcome the effects of the penalty.  I would spend the money on content or linkbuilding.

[kchandler]

Part One:

If the only reason you would spend $1000 on a domain is because of its age then i think it is a bad idea. Focus on a domain name that makes sense for the company and its mission, don't make ALL your decisions in the name of SEO. If it happens to have a targeted keyword in the domain or some old backlinks, then bonus.

Part Two:

Do you have to have a .com to rank well, of course not. However a few things to think about if you go with what you are thinking in part two...

1. Is this client a direct competitor of the person who owns the .com? 
   If so, procede with caution, especially if it is a copyrighted or trade-marked term.
2. Is the .com targeting the same keywords as you? 
   If so, then you may be hurting yourself by confusing customers and end users.

Personally, without knowing any other details on the project, i would keep looking. Find a .com domain if that is what you truly want. Keep wordsmithing different variations and utilize Google's keyword tool to give suggestions. You'll find a winner eventually.

Good luck - Kyle

[USHoleInOne]

Personally, I think there is certainly some value in having a domain name with some age and would lean towards investing your money in that direction.  Your client certainly doesn't want to abandon getting some links to this page so I would encourage them to keep some budget open for that but if I had to recommend one over the other I think I would recommend getting the domain name with 9-10 years of history.

Good luck!

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Buying a aged domain name has numerous problems, not least of which is that if the domain registration information changes and then shortly after the site is up, but completely different to what it had been in the past, Google may wipe any ranking clean and consider it a new site with a new owner.

You'll still benefit from any existing inbound links, but it's worth bearing in mind.