Does Your Domain’s Length of Contract Affect Your Rankings?

Now that’s the million dollar question. Let’s say you go to 1&1, and you decide to register your domain for $6-7. Should you pay for extra years upfront to get more love from Google? I first heard about this very issue a few years ago at a conference. A SEO professional was claiming that the length of your contract was very important to Google as longer contracts showed your dedication to build online assets and provide value to your visitors on a long-term basis. Well, that sounds like a noble idea.

Guess what? It’s not! I have seen sites that have a 6 year contract and are parked using Adsense for Domains or Sedo. That doesn’t sound like providing value to visitors. This is one of the myths that have been circulated by fake SEO consultants to justify those big pay checks (believe me, there are crazier so-called “ranking factors” out there). Google does care about you providing the best experience to its users, but it is not going to penalize you if you decide not to commit to a long-term contract for your domain. A lot of folks claim these things without properly testing them out (Testing doesn’t just involve creating two sites and choosing a different contract length for each but also isolating variables as well). By testing things, you can not only figure out what doesn’t work, but you may also stumble on what actually does work with search engines.