What are the benefits of keeping my existing domain?

Having an old domain is valuable to a practice in many ways. Most importantly, the older your domain is the more likely it is to have higher authority within the search engines. This is because the longer your website has been around, the more people have clicked on your link within their search engine results to get to your page. Google’s main priority is customer satisfaction, so when they see a link people are actively visiting they are more likely to point users in that direction, thus raising your results within rankings.

Websites that have been around for a long time are less likely to be spammy sites and more likely to be high-quality websites representing authentic businesses, especially if there is a consistent volume of engagement with that website. Even if your old website has not had much engagement, it is still beneficial to keep your old domain because it has built up some domain authority (or, trust with Search Engines). Even if your old website has a page authority of “1,” it is better than starting at “0”!

When you choose to create a new domain, you’ll be starting from scratch. Gaining the authority any older domain has takes time and patience because the new site is fresh in Google’s index. Like any relationship, it takes time to build even a little bit of trust. That is why the best way to get positive results within search-engine rankings is to keep your old domain and the authority already built around it, and improving upon that with the tools Practice Growth offers such as optimized content and blogging.