Aged / Expired Domain Dilemma

[Cache Money]

Got 2 domains available to buy this week in my niche:

A
- Decent branding
- Was previously an ecom store
- has history
- 40+ links (not amazing but alright)
- Site still indexed
- Has ton of history for 6+ years but was dropped once and registered Feb this year

B
- 15 year old domain
- One guy has sat on it since 2004.
- No backlinks - just had a for sale page all this time
- SUPER brandable

Which one would you go for?

 

[spyguyzz]

i would go for B getting site indexed and strong backlinks not hard

 

[mzonas]

B.

 

[fb3003]

A - because it has backlinks and history.

i have a domain that is over 20 years old, and have not done anything with it. you think it is going to help me with backlink efforts? probably not.

 

[SirLouen]

Branding => Up to you, if you are planning to do a money site of that exact type of niche of the brand, otherwise, useless
History => Both seem to be fine
Links => The only worth for a domain, from my own perspective. Time & money saver all the way.
Aging => 6+ years in the worst case, is more than enough

I may go for the A unless links are not that awesome and B is something like cars.com

 

[Cache Money]

Thanks for your replies.

It's super tough, site A used to be an affiliate merchant so has links from affiliate networks on their directories.

Site A also has been dropped and only just registered in Feb this year...does this not have an impact?

 

[AngelSeo]

A is nothing special - those links can be obtained easy anyway.
B - as long as is clean (the drop is not a problem at all) - go for it.

 

[Cache Money]

A is nothing special - those links can be obtained easy anyway.
B - as long as is clean (the drop is not a problem at all) - go for it.

Thanks, looks like I may opt for B.

 

[Himpy]

Sorry to hijack a little, but does a site have to be indexed on Google to be considered an 'aged' domain, or is it purely from when it was first registered?

 

[Ken Josh]

Would go for A.. because it has backlinks and history which can help you.

 

[AngelSeo]

Sorry to hijack a little, but does a site have to be indexed on Google to be considered an 'aged' domain, or is it purely from when it was first registered?

Age of registration (from whois).

 

[MrSempay]

I'd go with B. Brandable domains are great and getting backlinks is fairly easy.

 

[phoenix9]

None. Age is nothing.

Find better domain.

 

[aidenhera]

both r bad

 

[PHPInjected]

Don’t listen to these people saying “age is nothing” because that’s an absurd statement.

Personally, I like creating my own brand on an expired domain. So, if they’ve already had a brand, I dont buy it.

I’d say go with B. Just make sure it hasn’t been penalized in the past.

 

[michealcay]

A, if those backlinks came from top websites like today.com, nytimes... Who said these backlinks are easy to earn?

 

[MisterF]

both r bad

For what reason?

 

[aidenhera]

For what reason?

one has 0 links and other has 40 links of "average quality", thats not enough RD to rank

plus i wanted to repeat someones answer and boost my post count

 

[twaen]

The right answer I see, is different: A/B test them. It's far simpler than you think, and the only surefire method.

Prepare a few articles for each site, like less than 10. If possible rewrite the second copy (like a spin but well done, preferably by hand) so you have like twin sites, but with different content so you don't get a duplicate penalty. Launch them at the same time and watch. . You don't need to get a lot of traffic or whatever, what you need is a comparison. Add to GWT, submit pages to the index. and stay on them for some time (1 month at least, preferably more if you can wait that long). Watch what happens in the Performance tab (no of keywords and especially ranking). I prefer to launch with all pages at once as this speeds up the process for G.

The little time spent rewriting comes with a big reward, knowing exactly which is best.

I use a similar method to test new domains I'm buying (having a bunch). Usually having good DA + root PA is key but some domains far outperform others, sometimes for reason well hidden in their past history, which is not always obvious or even visible.

 

[tiiberius]

A - if you want PBN unit

B - if you want money site