I have read that Google also prefers it if the domain has more than a year to go before it expires, so you might want to consider registering for two years. Set yourself a reminder to re-register when the first year is almost over, so that you are always at least a year ahead (also prevents the risk of losing your domain because of registration muck-ups )

blessings,

Barb

Yes I agree that the best action would be re-register, age is important and once you get regularly updating the site again Google will reward you...

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You should definitely stick with the old name if it fits your niche, plus Google uses domain age in their listing criteria.

-Christopher Parker

Search engines consider age of websites very heavily. I would expect that if you re-register your old domain name it will count towards the overall age of the website. If a re-register is the same as starting over with more targeted domain names...go that route.