When buying a new domain, what do you recommend 1 year or multiple years?
Each time I'm buying a new domain, I don't know whether I should buy a 1-year domain, test the idea and later decide whether to renew it or not or whether I should buy multiple years at once so that I don't have to deal with renewing it and probably save money. What do you think?
Definitely one year! With auto-renewal there is very little involved in renewing the domains and you might end up losing way more that you'd save if you don't end up using all your time.
Multi year affects the email reputation of the domain. So buy one year to start, but if you actually launch something then just remember to upgrade it to either 5 or 10 year.
You mean it’s better for SEO to register for multiple year? Didn’t know that! Thanks
It makes your emails less likely to land up in your customers' spam folders. Not related to SEO.
Oh! I read to fast and missed the email part in your mail :)
It's becoming more and more clear to me that a one-year contract is more than enough. Thank you so much @Duiker101. This community is very active! 🔥
Multi year registrations give you that feeling of having lots of time ahead of you to finish work on whatever it is you got the domain for. A one year registration deadline puts good pressure and is good incentive to start early and finish up.
Thank you @joeyinajiffy 💪
Just a Tip: I just got one year .com domain with groupon code on Namecheap for $1.08
Looks like the registration length does not affect its SEO ranking: "...The notion that the age of a domain (i.e. how long it's been registered) is an important SEO ranking factor is a myth. When asked about domain registration length, Google's Matt Cutts said, "To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length of registration as a factor in scoring..." (as per https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain), so there is no apparent benefit from this perspective.
However, at times you can get a bargain on multi year signup, which would save you money in the long run (no need to chase discounts on renewal deals) and also offer piece of mind, plus you can always recycle it for the next pet project...
This is absolutely correct from a SEO point of view but I'll throw in a caveat ...
If you're a startup with little in the way of reviews, social proof, word of mouth then you will get some customers (particularly if you are offering an annual or lifetime plan) who will search the whois of a domain in order to ascertain:
a. that you are who you say you are and;
b. the length of time remaining on the domain
If you don't have the confidence that you'll be around in 12 months time then why would a customer buy an annual from you?
Great point @achtung and a funny thing I actually do whoising and similarweb myself all the time when ordering online. Thanks for adding this perspective!
Your reply is so awesome! Thank you @dv8 💪
@anthonyrod4, happy help!
@thomasm1964 is correct, buy just one year for start...
If the domain is actually useful for you then you can always buy more years later.
Thank you @justpaulo 💪
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I'd always opt in for 1-year, with auto-renewal disabled, for a few reasons:
I bought tenths of domains over the years prematurely, so I learned not to over-invest in a domain name unless I had already started working on the idea and/or was sick of the "Project ABC" placeholder...
Good luck!
Thank you @yasser for your advice. 🙌👨💻
Word on the internet is that your domain is more reputable if registered for more than one year. So, consider this: That difference might be all it takes for your site to show up last link of the first page on Google versus first link on the second page. How much are you willing to pay for that difference? $10 was a no-brainer for me!
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Thank you @jvagner 🙌
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@thomasm1964 thank you for such a fast response! I'll take your advice. I really appreciate it.