The ranking power of exact match domains
-
I've read previous Q&A where people have been a bit dismissive of the ranking significance of exact match domains but my experience recently using the keyword competiveness tool is that exact match domains seem to outrank other sites regardless of domain or page authority or other on-site/on-page optimisation.
I'm interested in other people's opinions and experiences.
-
In my experience you see exact match domains ranking higher than they "should" all the time. I have talked to another SEO who prefers to go with an exact match over a brand name almost every time.
-
I have a few exact match domains that compete in niches that range from easy to highly competitive.
In easy niches they can get you top rankings with a couple of links. However, as the degree of difficulty goes up the importance of doing "real SEO" comes significantly into play.
In my opinion, the two real values of an exact match domain are their impact on conversion rate but more importantly the amount of mental energy that it gives me to work on the site.
-
Completely agree with you, a site I am about to begin working on www.writeawill.co is ranked on the first page of Yahoo search for 'write a will' even when at the time it had no inbound links and no on-site SEO. The owner simply used a WYSIWYG tool and submitted in to the search engines.
-
Completely agree with you, a site I am about to begin working on www.writeawill.co is ranked on the first page of Yahoo search even when at the time it had no inbound links and no on-site SEO. The owner simply used a WYSIWYG tool and submitted in to the search engines.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website?
Hi, Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Do links to a domain that re-directs to my domain pass link equity?
Hi guys. We've recently taken control of a third-party site and we're going to set up a domain re-direct so any traffic comes to our site. With any existing links that the third-party site has, will these pass link equity to our main site through the redirect? Thanks, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
Does my website have an Exact Match Domain or a "brand"?
I'd like to get some input from the Moz community about the domain name I use on a travel website I run as a hobby. I got heavily whacked by an update in September 2012 which some have said was because my site is an EMD. Others said it was because I had poor quality backlinks (but in fact I hardly had any). With the benefit of hindsight, I'd love to know what really happened. The website is www.traveltipsthailand.com (now www.asiantraveltips.com) and the "brand" I use is "Travel Tips Thailand.The traffic penalty I incurred was around 80% and despite a LOT of work overhauling the site and trying to build some better quality links, I don't believe it has really recovered much. It ranks for non-competitive, low-traffic key phrases (which means it's not penalised as such), but struggles to rank anywhere meaningful on any phrase likely to drive traffic to the site. At this stage I really just want to know whether to persist with the site (it's heartbreaking, to be honest) or drop it an build something new from scratch. I monitor the site's progress using Moz Pro, so I can see all the search ranking, authority and backlink data. 5254ab15dcaa91-52423790
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
SEO value in baclklink from blog.domain VS domain
Will a back-link from "domain.com/abc" and "blog.domain.com/abc" have same value from an SEO perspective? Assume same article written on both sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen
I have been told the bots look at the domain value and the only links from blogs that have less value are in case of comments. As long as the "blog.domain/abc" page includes a full article and not a blog comment then it counts fully for SEO. Is this correct?0 -
Rankings dropped - Why?
At the end of November a client site dropped significantly in the rankings. The drop effected almost all the keyphrases we monitor. Historically the homepage has always ranked higher than the sub-pages - however now it seems Google is no longer ranking the home page, and instead ranking the sub-pages, just far far lower down. Any ideas what could cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0 -
Multi domain redirect to single domain
Hello, all SEOers. Today, I would like to get some ideas about handling multiple domains. I have a client who bought numerous domains under purpose of prevent abuse of their brand name and at the same time for future uses. This client bought more than 100 domains. Some domains are paused, parked, lived and redirected to other site. I don't worry too much of parked domains and paused domains. However, what I am worrying is that there are about 40 different domains are now redirected to single domain and meta refresh was used for redirections. As far as I know, this can raise red flag for Google. I asked clients to clean up unnecessary domains, yet they want to keep them all. So now I have to figure out how to handle all domains which are redirect to single domain. So far, I came up with following ideas. 1. Build gateway page which shows lists of my client sites and redirect all domains to gateway page. 2. Implement robots.txt file to all different domains 3. Delete the redirects and leave it as parked domains. Could anyone can share other ideas in order to handling current status? Please people, share your ideas for me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Artience0 -
Domains merging
Hi everyone, The company I work for has two domains, one for the english version of the website and another one for the french version. Example: www.digitalmusic.com (in english) www.musiquedigitale.com (in french) (these are examples***) I would like to know if on SEO standpoint it would be better to only have one domain so all of the links link to the same domain. Would it increase the domain authority and our rankings ? We will then have: www.digitalmusic.com/fr/page1 for pages in french www.digitalmusic.com/en/page1 for pages in english with all the 301 redirects required... Thank you in advance for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxxum0 -
Googles Now Giving More Power To Ranked #1?
Not sure if this has been discussed before, but if you make certain searches in google i.e. "sports authority" you will find that the site ranked #1 has extra links below it like a "library" into their site. How do you get this "library" to appear on your site when your site is in #1? Attatched is a URL to flickr with a screenshot of the search. http://www.flickr.com/photos/65949972@N07/6006729328/in/photostream/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HCGDiet0