All things being equal, how old your domain name is will generally put you at a higher advantage than your competitors.

The reason for this is that the age of a domain cannot be faked.  That is, unlike links which can be gathered from everywhere online and even purchased (and which also have an age factor assigned to them), the age of a domain is not something that can be manipulated.

So how does someone establish credibility with the age of a domain if they’re just starting out and need a new domain name?

One way is to purchase an older domain.  (The older the better).  However, just because a domain has been established for some time does not mean that you should rush right out and get it.  There are a few factors to take into account first.

1. Does the domain you’re considering have any current links pointing to it?  How long have those links been pointing to the site?  (The age of your links also plays a factor and we’ll talk about that in our next blog post).
2. Just because a domain name has been around and registered for a long time does not mean that it has been indexed for that same amount of time.  It’s important that the domain you’re thinking about purchasing has been indexed in the search engines and established itself already.
3. If a domain has been indexed, you’ll next want to determine if that domain has been penalized in the search engines for any reason.  One simple way to determine this is using the Wayback machine at http://www.archive.org/index.php (this will also help you determine how long pages have been indexed in the search engines as mentioned in #2 above).  Enter in the domain name you’re considering and take a look at the different pages you receive.
   Here’s an example.  In a well-publicized event in early 2006, Google penalized the site http://bmw.de.  If you visit http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://bmw.de and click on the pages for this time frame, you’ll see that some pages are no longer available (as of the time that the Wayback machine viewed them) and that they didn’t show back up for months.  This is in stark comparison to previous years when they were indexed nearly every day and at least once a month.  If you happen to notice something like this for a website you’re considering, it’s best to move on to another domain name opportunity.

The bottom line is, if you want to get a head-start on your website efforts, you might want to consider looking into buying an existing domain especially if you don’t want to have to wait to establish credibility in the search engines.  Just be sure that the domain you’re considering is, and always has been on the up-and-up.

It’s a brand new free report that I’ve just released entitled Bonehead SEO’s Quick Traffic Guide and it will show you (with proof included) how you can get your website, your product, your blog, whatever it is, listed in Google in under an hour!

Now, even though there’s plenty of proof included in the report I obviously can’t *guarantee* that the same will happen to you but on the tests that I’ve run so far, it’s never failed.

You can get this free 18-page report at http://BoneheadSEO.com/freeSEO/

Enjoy it, use it, and if you’ve had the kind of success using this same method yourself, let me know about it by posting your success stories here!

Who said Friday the 13th was bad luck?

- Kristine

1. Google’s Newbie area for AdSense publishers. A must-read if you’re looking to become an AdSense publisher for the very first time – plus a nice refresher if you still have some outstanding questions.
2. Smashing Magazine offers up “Things You Probably Don’t Know About Google AdSense”.
3. As this title says, there are 100 Google AdSense tips contained on this very precise and easy-to-read page. Give it a once-over for helpful information on AdSense.
4. An AdSense experiment that created an unethical but legal $10,000 a month.
5. AdSense Tips, Layout and Optimization Tricks for a Higher CTR (Click-Through-Rate)
   If you’re wondering how to make money with Google’s AdSense program, this site offers up tips on how to do just that. Especially if you want to stay away from those ads that won’t earn you much money.
6. A website publisher that takes you beyond the typical “newbie” experience of using AdSense on your own site.
7. The different Google AdSense ad styles and what they actually look like.
8. Some Google AdSense publishers make innocent yet violating mistakes when using AdSense on their websites; innocent mistakes that could get your site banned all together. This site pulls together those violations and helps you understand if you’re making the same mistakes.
9. 18 AdSense-Optimized WordPress themes that you can start using immediately.
10. A popular SEO blogger tells you how he uses arbitrage with AdSense to make the most out of his AdSense income.
11. How to boost your AdSense revenue; including the advantages and disadvantage. There’s a whopping 12 pages of information here for anyone interested in learning the ins and outs of AdSense as well as how to make the most of it.