Why Register a Domain for Multiple Years?

Your domain name is your online identity, often times the name of your business, or even your own name. Yearly registrations give you more opportunities to loose your domain. Credit card number changed by the bank or the account closed? Your domain name can't be automatically renewed. Change your email address and renewal notices might not reach you. Once your domain expires, your site and related emails can go down, affecting your business and clients. Redemption fees for expired domains can run from $80.00 per domain to hundreds of dollars depending on where the domain is registered. Worse than that, if you miss the redemption period, someone else can purchase it. You are now faced with the cost and hassle of re-branding your business to another domain, as well as making the changes to business cards, letterhead, and the website itself. Registering your domain for longer prevents this from happening, locking you in for a worry free web experience.

Registering your domain for the maximum number of years locks you in at today's low price. While DigitalDivaDomains.com's values clearly promise a Guaranteed Renewal Price, stating, "You'll never pay more to renew your domain name than the rate you paid when you initially registered it, or what our registration rate was when you transferred. (The only exceptions would be if the price the registry charges us increased, or if you took advantage of a limited-time, special price. If the registry increases our cost, yours will go up only by the amount ours did, never more.)" There is the chance that the registries will raise their prices in the future. If that happens, you won't see the increase until renewal, whereas someone on a year-to-year plan will be paying that increased amount each year.

Top search engines such as Google TM are now factoring in registration length when they calculate search result rankings. Stephan Miller, an industry expert, wrote "They [Google] will also be tracking the length of renewal on the theory that a person that renews for ten years will be more likely to build a worthwhile site than someone who only holds their domain for a year." (Source: S. Miller, The Google Patent and SEO, WebProNews, June 21, 2005.) Basically, when Google TM filed their United States Patent Application 20050071741 on March 31 2005, the contents of their ranking criteria were made public. Why does Google TM care how long you register your domain for? In addition to what Mr. Miller stated in his article, consider the fact that many sites who participate in spamming or other unsavory activities will only register their domain for one year, creating so-called "throwaway domains." Important note, Google TM factors many, many things into their ranking algorithm, and a ten-year registration alone won't grant anyone an immediate top ranking. Features such as site content, links, and TITLE and ALT tags will be used to calculate ranking. You can read more about Google TM ranking under the About Google section of their site. However, when you factor in the additional advantages to long term registration, it just makes good business sense.