Exact Match Domains Post Penguin
-
I was wondering if it is still worth it to use exact match domains to rank for a desired keyword after the last penguin slap and if so, what would be the best strategy.
Thanks!
-
Exact match domains are definitely still worth it. Check out this case study on a couple thousand sites, which shows that exact match domains suffered LESS from Penguin than other sites:
http://www.jonathanleger.com/anchor-text-optimization-how-much-is-too-much/
Penguin tends penalize sites that spam anchor text exact keywords, instead of a more natural link profile that includes your branded keywords. However, when your brand IS your keywords, then it's very hard for Google to penalize you.
-
Thanks!
-
From my experience, the best way to get links with an exact match domain is to create some of the best content on the web for that topic. When people see that an an exact match domain they tend to link to it more readily than similar content on JoesWidgetShop.com.
I build content instead of links so I can't answer your question. As a result, most of the anchor text pointing to my site is stuff like....
exactmatch.com here this site etc.
-
Thanks!
Would it be ok if i build links only with branding anchor text (which is the actual keyword) and with the URL as anchor text?
Or should i vary them more?
-
Most of my domains are exact match and penguin didn't bother them. I my opinion, penguin was more about anchor text and low-quality linkbuilding jobs.
In my opinion exact match domains lost a little value about February 2011... but otherwise they are good domains and worth paying extra to get them. They convert better for me than other domains and when I own a nice domain it gives me energy to work on the site - and that is the secret of those domains for me.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Is surfacing top blog posts with read more link could create a boost in traffic to main domain?
Hi mozzers, Because our blog is located on blog.example.com on powered by Wordpress and currently can't migrate it to the main domain, unfortunately. Since we would like to grow our main's domain organic traffic and would like to test an option that could help us leverage the traffic of the top blog posts content. There is a Wordpress API that would allow us to get 100-200 words(snippet of the blog post) from the blog posts into the main domain that would provide a "Read more link" linking back to the blog.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty1986
Is this even a good idea assuming we would make sure content is not identical?0 -
Http & https domain names
We currently have a site which we found SEM Rush to show that their were duplicate pages for the site. Upon further inspection we realized this was because there existed both http:// and https:// Versions of the site. Is this a problem for Google that the site appears for both http:// and https:// and that there are therefore duplicate versions of the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
Changing domain for a magento store
Hi all, wondering if i could gather some views on the best approach for this please... We currently have a magento site up with about 150,000 pages (although only 9k indexed in Google as product pages are set to no index by default until the default manufacturer description has been rewritten). The indexed pages are mainly category pages, filtering options and a few search results. While none of the internal pages have massive DA - seem to average about 18-24 which isn't too bad for internal pages, I guess - I would like to transfer as much of this over to the new domain. My question is, is it really feasible to have an htaccess with about 10,000 301 redirects on the current domain? The server is pretty powerful so could probably serve the file without issue but would Google be happy with that? Would it be better to use the change url option in WMT instead. Ive never used that so not sure how that would work in this cause. Would it redirect users too? As a footnote, the site is changing because of branding reasons and not because of a penalty of the site. Thanks, Carl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
Should I serve images from the same Top level domain as the current domain?
We run a multidomain e-commerce website that targets each country respectively: .be -> Belgium .co.uk -> United Kingdom etc... .com for all other countries We also serve our product images via a media subdomain eg. "media.ourdomain.be/image.jpg"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jef2220
This means that all TLD's contain the images of the .be media subdomain. Which is acually seen as an outbound link. We are considering to change this setup so that it serves the images from the same domain as the current TLD, which would make more sense: .be will serve images from media.ourdomain.be .co.uk -> media.ourdomain.co.uk etc.. My question is: Does google image search take the extension of the TLD into consideration? So that for example German users will be more likely to see an image that is served on a .de domain?0 -
Exact match Title and H1 tags, and over optimization
Hi Mozzers - was just wondering whether matching H1 and Title tags are still OK, or whether there's an over optimization risk if they exact match?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Exact match domain ranking comparison.
Assuming all the following websites content is of the same value to google's eyes (or assume duplicate content isnt penalized and they are all the same) and they all go to the same landing page (assuming the above rules) in what order do you think these would rank in a US google search for 'shoes'. A)www.sho.es B)www.sho.es/shoes C)brand.com/shoes D)shoes.brand.com E) (if you have the time) Repeat B),C) and D) for .net
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | howiex10 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Link to domain
Let's say i want to rank for rental car service and purchases a domain rental-car-service and creates a site http://www.rental-car-service.com There will be few persons who won't use anchor text to link to the site, but will simply link using URL ( in this case http://www.rental-car-service.com ) So, will a link to http://www.rental-car-service.com from another site using http://www.rental-car-service.com as anchor text help the keyword rental car service ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050