How Long To Register Your Domain Name
One of the first things that you do when starting a website is to register your domain name. I had more than one of my customers ask me “should I sign up for one year or more?”
I have always believed that because that information is public and freely available that it would make sense to register your name for a longer period of time. Most registrars will go ten years and some even longer. I wrote an article called “Why Should A Search Engine Trust You” where I talked about that.
I told my customer that I believed that having a domain name registered for a longer period of time will help your rankings because it makes it look like you plan to keep the site around for a while, while most fly by night ones will only register for a year at a time. While the average visitor won’t know that, the search engines will.
Today I read on the Search Engine Guide an article by Jennifer Laycock called “Does Registering Your Domain for Longer Periods Help You Rank Better?” Jennifer is an SEO expert who’s opinions I think very highly of and she doesn’t think that registering for longer periods of time will help.
While neither of us know this answer for sure we both agree that it won’t hurt your rankings and that it’s very hard for a new site to get to be listed for anything but their name on Google for at least six months.
My recommendation won’t change, if you are planning to keep your site going for any period of time registering your name for a longer period of time really costs you nothing, it won’t hurt your rankings and it just may help.
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