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
-
Does having a different sub domain for your Landing Page and Blog affect your overall SEO benefits and Ranking?
We have a domain www.spintadigital.com that is hosted with dreamhost and we also have a seperate subdomain blog.spintadigital.com which is hosted in the Ghost platform and we are also using Unbounce landing pages with the sub domain get.spintadigital.com. I wanted to know whether having subdomain like this would affect the traffic metric and ineffect affect the SEO and Rankings of our site. I think it does not affect the increase in domain authority, but in places like similar web i get different traffic metrics for the different domains. As far as i can see in many of the metrics these are considered as seperate websites. We are currently concentrating more on our blogs and wanted to make sure that it does help in the overall domain. We do not have the bandwidth to promote three different websites, and hence need the community's help to understand what is the best option to take this forward.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinodh-spintadigital0 -
Changing domain names but still ranking as old one
Hi there, I have a client who changed domain names back in November 2015 but is still coming up in search engines with their old domain name not their new one. For example, I search for my clients name, let's call them Example B. So I search for "Example B" and within the search results they come up top and the title tag is correct as it says something along the lines of "Welcome to Example B". However the URL underneath is actually their old name which is Example A. When you click on the link, it redirects over to the new name so thats fine, but it's just annoying that Example A is still appearing when it should be Example B now. I don't think they have a new Webmaster Tools account setup for their new domain (I need to check still), but they do still have their old one setup. Is there something I can do within Webmaster Tools to tell it that Example A is now gone and to start indexing and referring to them as Example B? What else should I do to make sure their new name is coming up not their old one anymore?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
Is it normal to initially rank low in the SERPs, then over time gain rank?
We just released a very targeted page for a specific item about 18 hours ago. For the main keyword as well as multiple variations, we currently are ranking around # 40 to # 50 depending on what the exact query is. Is it normal to initially rank lower in the SERPs and then as the page ages, gain? Thank you for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1231 -
Why Keyword is not ranking
I have blog website - http://uncutweb.com/ My website ranked for keywords - What Color Shoes To Wear With Gold Dress, Keywords is having Moz Difficulty Score: 35% with A grade moz On page Score. But why my website is not ranked for What Color Shoes To Wear With Purple Bridesmaid Dress or **What Color Shoes To Wear With Coral Dress???**They have less difficulty score and having A grade.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Domain changed 5 months ago still see search results on old domain
Hi, We changed our domain from coedmagazine.com to coed.com in April'13. Applied 301 redirects on all pages, submitted 'change of address' to google but we still see site:coedmagazine.com fetching 130K results on google as opposed to site:coed.com fetches 40K results. Can anybody here throw some light on what might be going wrong? [ Site runs on wordpress, hosted with wordpress as well ] thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Should I buy a .co domain if my preferred .com and .co.uk domain are taken by other companies?
I'm looking to boost my website ranking and drive more traffic to it using a keyword rich domain name. I want to have my nearest city followed by the keyword "seo" in the domain name but the .co.uk and .com have already been taken. Should I take the plunge and buy .co at a higher price? What options do I have? Also whilst we're on domains and URL's is it best to separate keywords in url's with a (_) or a (-)? Many thanks for any help with this matter. Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoSheikh0 -
Domain buying
hello Mozzers - a bit shout out to all of you. Question - I have a 3 keyword, and the domain is available - the only thing is it has a hyphen example: black-book-covers.com Is it worth getting this domain? There is a fair amount of traffic to this domain. Thank you all - we love you, Best, Vijay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vijayvasu0 -
Which domain should I use?
I own a couple domains that are specific to a product and would like to know which one folks on here recommend. Primary Google Search Term Example: "Tax Bond" Example Domain 1: www.taxbonds.net Example Domain 2: www.tax-bond.net I've done research on here before and have come to the conclusion that hyphenated domains aren't bad (no more than 2 hyphens though). So, do I go for the EXACT search term with the hyphen or do I go for the pluralized search term without the hyphen, even though most people will not add the "s" in the Google search? Thanks, Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbuckles0