There’s an ongoing debate as to how many years a business should register its domain name. Here is a simple breakdown to use as a guide.

1 Year

A one year domain registration is typical of bloggers, businesses, and private individuals in scenarios such as these:

  • You don’t have a lot of money
  • You want to try something and see how it goes before making a longterm commitment
  • You already own many domain names and you just wanted to get that one extra one

Many SEO experts believe that Google actually factors in the number of years you registered your domain name. There are of course other factors such as visibility of the address and how that address is associated with other domains, and so on. But let’s just consider the number of years for now.

If the number of years of domain name registration is a factor, it would follow that a one year registration is not a good idea for most businesses. How serious can your business be if you only intend for your website to be around for less than a year? In fact, in the past, I have actually stayed away from hosting companies that had domain name registrations that were fairly close to their expiration dates. Yes, I absolutely check that info out before committing to a 2-3 year web hosting plan. If they company doesn’t intend to be around next year, why would I pre-pay for the 3 year plan?!

2 Years

Two years is more of standard among real businesses and I suggest at least a 2 year registration for companies. From an SEO perspective, this is the minimum you should register as far as I’m concerned. It could be that one factor of 200 that helps bring your website to a better ranking.

5 Years

This shows that you plan to be around for some time to come and it represents a good initiative on your part. It’s a good middle ground between one and ten years.

10 Years

The 10-year domain name registration period is indicative of you representing a hardcore company that plans to be in business for a long time. Some people think that paying for so many years in advance is a waste of money because prices may go down, and for other similar reasons. I disagree. If you run a serious business, the cost of a 10 year registration is negligible and you don’t have to worry about it for a long time. Just make sure you keep the contact information up-to-date so that when it does come time to renew, you get the renewal email.