Do Exact Match Domains Still Have Value?
-
I realise that there has probably been a lot said about Exact Match Domains, however, I want to know 2 things:
-
Is this two exact match domains or one EMD: "londonfootball.com" and "footballlondon.com" so is "London Football" one EMD, and "Football London" another?
-
Does having an EMD add a big advantage in getting ranked? Is it worth paying 2 months SEO expense to buy an EMD? To me if it still has an advantage then it probably is. However, I would like to hear the opinion of the experts.
I would specially like to hear from anyone who owns or bought an EMD to rank.
Thank you.
-
-
Glad to help Ryan. It sounds like you have a good plan going forward. As long as the site has good content and seo, I'm sure you will be fine. Best of luck with the new site!
-
Thanks to all for your responses.
@VZ Pro The domain in question was not londonfootball.com , this was just an example.
I personally have made a domain rank 2 years ago constantly for about 1.5 years on the top of Google, until the most recent Google update, with very little links, just by being an EMD, it was just a simple brochure site. Nothing spammy, and the business I was involved with made substantial amount of money through just this one domain. To make matters worse, this was a org.uk domain, which, for those in the UK, are often considered low value domains, and I think Google gives it far less weight then co.uk. So this proved to my that EMD's can be well worth it. This was also in a very small geographic niche, which probably made it easier to rank. I only paid around £6 ($10) for 2 years registration. The site stopped ranking because we made the mistake of using someone who got us some bad links, so the Google update hit it badly. But since disavow, it still continues to bring in some business.
Now currently I am negotiating with someone on a domain broking site for an EMD for a niche. I am hoping to I can negotiate him to $1,000. I was just debating in my head if there is still potential in the domains. Based on what you guys are saying, it seems like there is still quite a lot of potential. Especially if you make the site good, and make sure it has quality content and is not spammy.
-
I agree and the EMD update in Google wasn't about Exact Math Domains themselves, as much as EMDS with very little or "thin" content. Before, you could literally rank a EMD with no backlinks. I own a sports ticket buying site that I never did SEO for and was making around $6000 during the college football season until the update came out. I never had a single link pointing to it and it floated in the number 3 to number 5 spot for a 10k per month search. Not so much any more...
Here is a great article from over at Search Engine Land on some EMD rearch http://searchengineland.com/google-emd-update-research-and-thoughts-137340
-
EMD or keyword-driven domains can carry a huge amount of weight when optimized correctly. I agree with William "EMDs still carry weight, more than they should IMO"
If you use a EMD, you can potentially limit the exposure of the site, due to focusing only on one keyword or subject matter. This is where I agree with VZPro, where a branded EMD would provide more benefit.
I'm guessing you are referencing the cost due to someone selling the domains mentioned at a high cost?
-
I think that EMDS are still good if they are BRANDED EMDs. If you want to name your company that particular EMD then you'll be alright. I think domain metrics are a better judgement of a value of a domain name vs just the name itself. Neither one of them will give you much value (I ran them through MajesticSEO). You are basically starting from scratch either way. I would spend my money elsewhere unless you plan on branding the company "London Football".
-
EMDs still carry weight, more than they should IMO.
LondonFootball.com and FootballLondon.com are two different EMDs, just similar.
Is it worth paying two months of your SEO budget? Depends on the EMD and the SEO you were going to hire. Also make sure to do a lot of research on the EMD to see what it's history is. It is indexed? Does it have an acceptable backlink profile? Was it used for anything shady in the past?
There are very few domains I would drop thousands on, and even fewer that I would purchase strictly for SEO gain.
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
-
Product pages - should the meta description match our product description?
Hi, I am currently adding new products to my website and was wondering, should I use our product description (which is keyword optimised) in the meta description for SEO purposes? Or would this be picked up by Google as duplicate content? Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | markjoyce1 -
Canonicals from sub-domain to main domain: How much content relevancy matters? Any back-links impact?
Hi Moz community, I have this different scenario of using canonicals to solve the duplicate content issue in our site. Our subdomain and main domain have similar landing pages of same topics with content relevancy about 50% to 70%. Both pages will be in SERP and confusing users; possibly search engine too. We would like solve this by using canonicals on subdomain pointing to main domain pages. Even our intention is to only to show main domain pages in SERP. I wonder how Google handles it? Will the canonicals will be respected with this content relevancy? What happens if they don't respect? Just ignore or penalise for trying to do this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
The evolution of Google's 'Quality' filters - Do thin product pages still need noindex?
I'm hoping that Mozzers can weigh in with any recent experiences with eCommerce SEO..... I like to assume (perhaps incorrectly) that Google's 'Quality' filters (formerly known as Panda) have evolved with some intelligence since Panda first launched and started penalising eCommerce sites for having thin product pages. On this basis i'd expect that the filters are now less heavy handed and know that product pages with no or little product description on them are still a quality user experience for people who want to buy that product. Therefore my question is this...
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO
Do thin product pages still need noindex given that more often that not they are a quality search result for those using a product specific search query? Has anyone experienced penalty recently (last 12 months) on an ecommerce site because of a high number of thin product pages?0 -
US domain pages showing up in Google UK SERP
Hi, Our website which was predominantly for UK market was setup with a .com extension and only two years ago other domains were added - US (.us) , IE (.ie), EU (.eu) & AU (.com.au) Last year in July, we noticed that few .us domain urls were showing up in UK SERPs and we realized the sitemap for .us site was incorrectly referring to UK (.com) so we corrected that and the .us domain urls stopped appearing in the SERP. Not sure if this actually fixed the issue or was such coincidental. However in last couple of weeks more than 3 .us domain urls are showing for each brand search made on Google UK and sometimes it replaces the .com results all together. I have double checked the PA for US pages, they are far below the UK ones. Has anyone noticed similar behaviour &/or could anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue? Thanks in advance, R
Algorithm Updates | | RaksG0 -
Directories and Domain Authority
I read all the time about how directories have very little weight in SEO anymore, but in my field, a lot of our competitors are propped up by paying for "profiles" aka links from places like martindale-hubbard, superlawyers, findlaw, nolo, Avvo, etc (which are essentially directories IMO) yet all those sites have very high DAs of 80 and above. So, are links from these sites worth it? I know that's a vague questions, but if Moz's algo seems to rank them so highly, I'm guessing that's reasonably close to what google thinks as well...maybe? Thanks for any insight, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Does Google use data from Gmail to penalize domains and vice versa?
Has anyone noticed issues with Gmail deliverability and spam inboxing happening around the same time as other large Google updates? For example, if Google blasted your site in Panda or Penguin, have anyone seen them use the same judgement across into Gmail deliverability to blacklist your domain?
Algorithm Updates | | Eric_edvisors0 -
Will Parked Domain hurt My SEO as Duplicate Content?
Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is: migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain migration-lawyers.com is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png
Algorithm Updates | | thealika0 -
Why do I have 7 URLs from the same domain ranking on the 1st page?
I have a client that has individual pages for authorized dealers of their product (say "Car Dealers"). When you search for "brand name + location", Google returns 7 "dealership" pages from the parent company's domain as the first 7 results, but there is one that gets pushed off to the 5th page of the SERPs. The formatting of content, geo-targeting, and meta data on the page is identical on every single one. None of them have external links and there is not one extremely distinguishable thing to assess why the one page doesn't get placed on that first SERP. Why is the one getting pushed so far down? I know this may be a bit confusing, but any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0