I recently registered a 12 years old domain which is in the niche that I want to work in (it was expiring but never dropped). Does this domain help me in SEO and SERPs? Is it worth it? Does it help a new website? Thanks in advance
It can, Is it indexed in the search engines? Does it have any backlinks / PR Has it been banned by Google? Does / Did it link out to bad websites? Here's a similar topic I posted to a while ago.
It can help and as DoA mentioned on questions, you should answer them first and you will see if it's worth or not. Apart from this, I would give you a note. Old established domain and never dropped will help you archive ranking easier as they have established trust already. However, the content on the new website should be close topic to the old one. If it has completely different from the old one, or different niche topic, then the trust may be devalued anyway.
Thanks for replies DoA & Sxperm. @DoA 1. Yes it is indexed in search engines. The way back machine shows that the site in all these years had a page with 3 sentence, one of them is "coming soon". 2. It has no backlink 3. No it's not banned from adsense. checked by iwebtools and some other websites. 4. As I said, way back machine shows that in all these years it had a simple white page with 3 sentence in it. domain's first word is an important keyword. +rep added @Sxperm It had a white page with 3 sentence in it so I don't think if it affect what I want to start. (sorry, don't have any more reps to add to yours, but thank you!). The page which is already indexed by Google is the parking page of the registrar. Waiting for your reply Thanks! Ps. Also if you have any experience in the matter that I mentioned in the thread below, please help. (live links are not available to me). forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1795499 Thanks
ezz, Sxperm mentioned very important aspect - keep the theme. But there is even more important one - keep these old pages on the website! Than the domain transfer will look absolutely seamless in the eye of Google, and you will definitely not loose this 12 yo value.