Does the length of your website’s domain name registration affect search engine optimization and results?
Should you renew your domain name for a long period of time?

And if so, how long is long enough? If you want to stay ahead of your competition, then you might consider looking at the length of time your competitors have registered their domain names. If your competitors have generally renewed their domain names for one or two years, you might consider registering your domain name for 5 or 10 years. While putting off your domain name’s expiration date might help your search engine rankings, keep in mind that this may be only a small victory when it comes to search engine rankings.

Its good business sense to register a domain for at least 10 years. You don’t want to deal with the process   annual process of renewing them every year. It’s best to obtain the domain names that you want to keep for a while and renew then on a 5 to 10 year plan.

If your domain name expires, there’s a good chance that someone will register your domain name immediately after it expires. If, for whatever reason, you don’t renew your domain name, someone watching a ‘watch list’ of expiring domain names will try to capitalize on the online business that you’ve built over the years.

They know that there is potential website traffic they can have simply by renewing your old domain name. By renewing your domain name for several years, your domain name won’t expire for a while, and it won’t be opened up to expired domain name buyers.

If you really want to stay ahead of the competition, you might consider registering or renewing your domain name for 100 years. Currently, Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) is the only registrar offering the 100 year option, which costs $999.00. GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com), currently offers to renew or register a domain name for 10 years, at a discount of $6.95 per year.
Yes, you can lose critical positioning in the search engines if you don’t reregister your domain name in time. You may have to start the SEO process all over again!

My personal favorite domain registrar is namecheap.com.  I register my domains for 12 months at a time and they give me plenty of warning that the domain needs renewing. They also offer an easy way to transfer domain ownership if you are selling your domain - and believe me - transferring a domain is no easy thing. I’ve learned from bitter experience and now I don’t buy a domain from anyone unless it’s registered with namecheap or they transfer it to their namecheap account first.

Working on improving your rank within the different search engines - especially Google - can feel like a very complicated puzzle sometimes. This maze can be extremely time consuming; especially when you just complete one effort and then find out that they’ve once again changed the rules on you - rules that you weren’t even sure of to begin with!

It is very well known that when you try to better the rank you’ve achieved with search engines, the best techniques that you can use are:

• Acquiring quality inbound links • Acquiring any links to your site at all, including reciprocal links • Continually adding new, relevant, and fresh information to your site • Using a good density and placement of the right keywords • Creating a website that is interesting and relevant enough that visitors who arrive spend time there.

However, what is not so well known is a major point that is missing from this list. Domain names are beginning to become extremely important with Google. It isn’t the domain name itself - that is, the words in the domain - nor how long it is, but how long you’ve had it. Google is now valuing sites that have been registered for longer, and that prove their intention to stick around for a long time.

Google is starting to give lower priority to sites that have been registered for a year or less, since they may simply be spammers who are looking for a fast dollar and then disappear.

On the other hand, for sites registered for five years or more, Google considers them serious websites or businesses that intend to exist for a good long while.

Therefore, one of the strategies important to gaining a strong ranking is to pay a little bit more money for your domain name registration to register for a few extra years, so that Google can tell that you intend to stick around for a long time. This will give your site Google value and your ranking will go up.

The problem that many webmasters are finding with this is that they either don’t have the budget for the additional years of registration, or they don’t want to register a site for a long time when they haven’t proven to themselves that the venture will be successful. They don’t want to pay for an additional four or more years of registration for a project that may not get off the ground.

The decision that therefore needs to be made is how important Google ranking will be to your website. Will it be the primary part of your internet marketing effort? Will you be concentrating a good deal of your time gathering reciprocal and one-way links? Will you be working hard on search engine optimizing (SEO), possibly hiring a professional, so that your site contains the right keywords the right number of times and in the right places?

If you’ll already be putting a lot of time, effort, and possibly money into your Google and search engine ranking, then you may find that registering your site’s domain name is really a minor investment to get you started in the right direction.

It’s all a matter of balance, and making sure that you do the search engine optimizing strategy completely, and not cheap out before you can even give yourself the chance to truly shine. In fact, simply shelling out a little bit more to reserve your domain name may be the easiest part of your search engine optimizing strategy. As long as you do your homework in advance and find an affordable, or even cheap domain name registry business, then you likely won’t have to pay much more than fifty dollars to get going.

As you can see, if search engine optimizing is important to your website, it’s vital that you don’t miss the most commonly overlooked part of SEO and reserve your website for a good length of time, to prove to Google that you’re serious about building a quality, successful web presence. You’ll show that you indeed deserve to be among the top ranking websites out there. With that done, you’ll be ready to move to the next step of your SEO and watch the traffic start rolling in.

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Mark Nenadic Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North , where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

If you are thinking to design and host your site, think again. Not every step of domain registration is easy. The best web hosting service may make web hosting look easy, but that is not the way it is. Services like godaddy has contributed significantly to this, but there are certain domain name rules that are to be followed at all times. Using cheap domain hosts is therefore fine as long as you have dedicated servers.

There’s been a lot of hype in recent years about all the good domain names being taken. Nonsense. It all comes down to creativity and a few simple tips on how to make your favorite names do-able!

After you’ve created an exhaustive list of your best domain name ideas, begin researching your favorite names on a registration site. If your favorite name is taken, try some simple variations.

For example, suppose you’ve decided on a content site about camera tips and techniques.

At the time of this writing, the domain cameratechniques.com is already taken. But, add an additional word on the front or tail end and you’ll find lots of available options.

Some variations on cameratechniques.com:

cameratechniquesTODAY.com cameratechniquesONLINE.com EASYcameratechniques.com TODAYScameratechniques.com BESTcameratechniques.com

You get the picture.

Short, descriptive additions to your desired domain name will not only get you online faster, but can actually enhance the your domain name. With the flood of sites out there today, adding more specifics on what a visitor will find at your site only makes it more attractive. And more clickable!

Once you’ve found a name that’s the perfect fit, buy it for goodness sake! It’s amazing how quickly a site will begin to take shape once the domain name is in place.

Learn how to build your own Website. Dee Gold has been building Websites personally and professionally for more than 10 years. Today she strives to help others weave their own corner of the web without losing their minds or spending a fortune. As a renowned reviewer of online services, Dee helps developers of all skill-levels improve their site content, clarity and conversion.