We have reached the final contributing factor within Google’s decision making process. Here, it is understood that domain age and hosting trust are central to Google’s algorithm. Age is obviously an issue which no SEO expert can alter, irrespective of skill or effort. But to counteract this impact, although not fully; another consideration is to ensure your hosting trust is up to scratch – and of course, the previously discussed factors should be developed with greater attention to compensate a ‘newer sites’ age deficiency.
Domain Age and Hosting Trust
By obtaining a favourable Google ranking, it is important, yet not necessarily essential to have an older domain. An older domain suggests to Google that your site is perhaps an established and trustworthy service providing business which is beneficial to the user. Nevertheless, it is naïve to dismiss new sites on this basis.
Within this factor, keyword relevancy is also crucial. That is, the site with the most relevant domain name represents the most trustworthy name in terms of search engine rankings. It quickly determines what the site is about, and therefore, gives that site the priority.
Domain age is an important factor that occasionally prevents new, spam or fraudulent business’s popping up ‘overnight’ and purchasing several domain names in an effort to instantly out rank potential, long established competition and flooding the search engines with irrelevant and potentially harming content.
Hosting also plays a prominent role. It helps establish the location of the site in the world. So, if you are a UK based company, use a UK based hosting company with UK based servers. But ensure, the hosting company is first; reputable and secondly; recommends a dedicated IP address.
And finally, SEO experts have long suspected that Google checks for interlinking between websites hosted on the same IP address and penalises those sites that heavily link between each other from these addresses in an effort to uncover relationships and to detect spammers.
