Do I really have to look for an older domain?

Hi Folks...
Well, yes, I'm a newbie on the forum, but I think the question I'm going to ask might be interesting for many other guys like me...

So...I have a web site which has been registered more than 3 years ago. I didn't make any SEO before, since we weren't able to serve more customers than we had those days. Now we are growing and thinking about starting SEO campaign.
As far as I can see from almost all existing tools and topics, google check domain age and this is extremely important for its algorithm of ranking. Well, backlinks are also highly important, but we almost don't have them also yet For google we really don't have any ranking yet.

And here I'm coning to my question... Is it really would be helpful to change domain name before I start SEO and put links to our site where it's possible (I mean content is close to our's site)? What do you think?

Our competitor's domain ages are at least 6 years and few of them are older than 10 years. As I told before - my domain is only about 3.5 years old and
furthermore, in Internet Archive it looks like it only 2 years old at all. So that's why I'm starting to think about buying new domain. Does it really make sense?
I'm very appreciated in advance to those from you who have time and wish to help. Thank you guys!

i wouldnt bother changing the domain, rather just work on backlinks, getting traffic and keyword rich content

eskimo said:

i wouldnt bother changing the domain, rather just work on backlinks, getting traffic and keyword rich content

Click to expand...

Even in the case that competitors has thousands backlinks and PR more than 5-6? I've got only 3 sites that have PR of 3. But again, they have lots of backlinks...

It's always better to have a 3 year old domain than a new one...
Backlink are a lot of more important than the domain age.

I think you speak about competitor about your niche (ie: cellphone) but your real competitor are about the keywords. IE: If you can't beat them for the keyword "cellphone" (it's normal with a new non-optimised site), you can find something like "cheap nokia cellphone" that they haven't focus so you can beat them on these keyword

How to optimise your site for each keyword is a lot of learning. But it's the way to go if you want play the game

Hope it helps

Thank you guys...Now it's difficult questions for me to guess what Google will like more - my competitor with domain' age = 10 and 12K backlinks or my 2-years old domain + 14K backlinks...
thank you, guys, anyway!

People are often confused about age and google's perceptions... It isn't the age of the domain that matters... It is the age of the website... aka how long it has been indexed in google's systems.

I have access to hundreds of never before used domains that have existed since the early 90's... they get no bonus over a new domain... The domains I have that have had webpages up since the early 90's get HUGE bonus.

The minimum age of a website to receive any reputation seems to be about 10 months. Google seems to think that most web spammers will give up by then.

Use WayBackMachine to find out how long a domain's website has been indexed. Just keep in mind that an old domain is worthless... its an old website that has reputation.

@ipopbb: Your information is really inaccurate.

Domain Age is a critical ranking factor but, only applies to a degree of importance in certain situations. Your "reputation" time scale is also largely off base. If you know what your doing with SEO you can make things work in days not months. I've had clients move pages up in the ranks using white hat only methods in a couple of days.

While, I understand your going off your personal experiences I just don't see it as factual for SEO as a whole.