EMD vs brand? I'm new to moz
-
Hi to all
so this is my first month using moz tools. When I check my competitors and keywords, everyone close to google #1 is a emd site
But with google always getting smarter, is it smart in order to compete to get an emd?
So say I rank first page #9, or not at all for my brand, if since my site is a construction site, if instead of say abc construction.com I find colorado home builders.com etc would I maybe do better? Or would google give me a bad ranking?
I am just so lost?
One last question? If I did build a emd site then just pointed my brand to it, would this be good or stupid for seo?
thank you for all advice and tips
chris
-
Thanks for the answers, EGOL and Andy. Really appreciate the time you both spend in here!
-
But its hard to know what is right and what is wrong. For years a phone book is all we needed, now we want to be found.
I understand. When I was starting out I spent a lot of time reading the basics of SEO. Moz has lots of resources for people who are learning. You can read the beginner's guide and ask questions here. It is also a good idea to record the changes that you make on your site, what works, what doesn't and use that as a source of learning.
The most valuable thing that I did was to start a site and then hire an experienced person to do a study and review. That person spend a couple hours learning about my business, looking at my website and then gave me an opinion of what I might do. That kept me going down the right road. Still, now, after about ten years and a nice amount of experience, I am still working on websites and still getting paid advice from people who are smarter than me and people who think differently than me and people who know how to do technical work that I don't want to spend time learning. I do 98% of the work myself but smarts, opinions and tech savvy from others are very important.
-
Thank you for the help.
It is truly appreciated.
This is why I am here in the first place to try and learn seo stuff, and Moz seems to be the best site around. So I am playing around with the tools and such, and it is all very scary, and confusing.
Like do I go with wordpress for a construction website that does not get updated very often because it needs new content, or is this exactly what Google wants, new content? So create content to stay afloat and survive the rankings game?
Basically I feel like I am at the bottom of the food chain with all of these big brands, with big advertising dollars eating companies up left and right for online rankings.
I understand that a site must be made for visitors first, then maybe Google. But its hard to know what is right and what is wrong. For years a phone book is all we needed, now we want to be found.
If I may ask, and this is left field - I have two Google + pages. Business and Local. Is it smarter to create posts and get likes and followers for the Business page or Local Page? I have read they may combine them one day, so don't worry about it much, yet I feel like I am in a boat that has a hole in it, so again just trying to survive.
Thank you again so very very much
Chris
-
I'm just a small local company trying to survive.
If this is the case... if you get most of your business from a certain city then you should be putting your time and brains and effort into local search.
** if a company has facebook likes, twitter posts, great backlink profile and content, then you should be able to go by whatever domain I would think?**
You have to beat your competitors by having a stronger web presence. The domain is only part of it or maybe none of it. Right now if people know you by our name and you plan to remain a small local company then your name might be a better choice of domain... like EgolsConstruction.com. I might not use that (or ColoradoGarageBuilders.com) if I was a younger person because I might decide to build homes or barns or do paving someday... and people who want those services might say.... :"EgolsGarages.com"... don't get them, they can build garages but would probably screw up building a house. Keyword domains can be very limiting.
I know a guy who does roofing in my community who has no web presence, does not advertise, does not give estimates, doesn't even have a truck with his name on it and he is flooded with work because he has been in business a long time and has done great work and everybody knows him.
The sign of an established business is a good reputation and immediate access to lots of work. You don't even need a website, in fact it might cause phone calls and queries that eat your time.
-
Wow great insight.
i have a lot to learn and I am truly grateful for your help. The reason I used the example as I did is because with using these moz tools if I put the state at the end, it showed traffic. If I put the state in the beginning, it showed a competition percent of 29, but no traffic.
so if I may venture to say, if a company has facebook likes, twitter posts, great backlink profile and content, then you should be able to go by whatever domain I would think? So maybe emd are helpful, but if you do not bring it, somebody else will.
As I research I find sites in my competition that do not even have the name colorado or term searched showing, yet they have a huge national following.
I'm just a small local company trying to survive.
-
a few years ago he is quoted to have said how Google was going to crack down on EMD's
Matt did say that and Google did do that. But they mainly hit EMDs that had crap content. EMDs that had robust content were not really hurt. The value of the EMD might have been diminished a bit but they are still slightly favored.
Slightly favored means that they will rank well in low competition with few links, however, against major competition the advantage is very small. They still have to earn their position.
I think to myself, as long as I get a good social, link, and content profile, I am going to compete with them.
If they have any strength at all that will not happen. I advocate EMDs but not for that reason. If you think you can buy an EMD and loaf, you will be disappointed.
I think that domain sounds spammy. Very few people are going to type "garage builder colorado" into search. That is the exact match. What will it get you? Sounds like somebody talking who doesn't know proper English. I would not use it. It sounds like a spammy domain and not the domain of a business.
I would use ColoradoGarageBuilders.com if I owned a business that lived up to that name by building garages all over Colorado. buildergaragescolorado and garagebuildercolorado are domains registered because somebody wants to stuff keywords. Just my two cents and personal opinions.
-
Thank you for your thoughts.
I guess my main worry is that I have Google + local, and Business, Facebook, twitter and social stuff that all point to my main brand, which is my business name. Yet there other sites, for years have never left the #1 through 4 positions just based on having so many keywords in their domain name.
Now these are not keyword-keyword-keyword.com These are like garagebuilderscolorado type of domains. So when you type in a variations of this name, the site is always ranked well. Even though a company might be 123 enterprise or whatever.
I am just nervous because I watch Matt Cutts video's almost to the point where I look at him like the all knowing Google prophet. So if he says something, do it. So here a few years ago he is quoted to have said how Google was going to crack down on EMD's so I'm like well if they are doing it, I'm going to do it. Say I buy the un-plural version of the EMD. So in this example, which is completely an example, I go and get garagebuildercolorado to compete with garagebuilderscolorado. I think to myself, as long as I get a good social, link, and content profile, I am going to compete with them.
But this whole thing seems like a chess match. I am just trying to rank at a state level. Colorado is my state. So by adding Colorado to a keyword domain name seems smart, yet now with Google Local, maybe it does not matter?
I just thought well I will get a EMD, and then point my company domain to it. So people will still find me by company name, maybe those backlinks follow a pointed domain, and play this game of keyword rich domains?
Again I appreciate all of your thoughts and advice. I am new to the tools here, and I am having fund with them.
Chris
-
I use all EMDs and have spent good money to obtain them. I believe that they compete better if you place good content on them. In my opinion they convert better and are easier remembered by your visitors.
It is really hard to create a brand if you are competing nationally or globally, however, an EMD can make it easier for you to be remembered, in my opinion.
A lot of people think that EMDs are penalized. In my opinion that is BS. They still give some advantage if you have the Exact Match Domain and not a partial match or an exact match and a word. If I thought that EMDs were penalized or any disadvantage I would be out of them, instead they are kicking butts.
Most important, the EMD gives me mental energy to work on the site. If I have that the competition is in trouble.
I think that you are going to get a lot of "opinions" on this question.
-
Hi Chris,
There is a lot to consider in the purchase of a domain, but you will not get any SEO benefit from having an EMD to a brand. Your positions are all to do with how good your site, content and link profile are.
The trouble with your example of an EMD, is that this then means you are completely tied to that as you move forward. Google have also started to give preference to Brand vs EMD, so I would say you should purchase the brand domain and then work on getting that brand known.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
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
-
Hreflang Errors 404 vs "Page Not Found"
For a websites that differ between catalogs (PDPs) what hreflang error causes the least harm? Obviously the best solution is to only have hreflang for shared products, but this takes more work to implement. So when no identical product exists... 1. Hreflang points to 404 or 410 error. 2. Hreflang points to 200 status "Page Not Found" page. This obviously has the additional issue of needing to point back to 100+ urls. I want to avoid having Google decide to ignore all hreflang due to errors as many correct urls will exist. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | rigelcable0 -
Changes taken over in the SERP's: How long do I have to wait until i can rely on the (new) position?
I changed different things on a particular page (mainly reduced the exaggerated keyword density --> spammy). I made it recrawl by Google (Search Console). The new version has now already been integrated in the SERP's.Question: Are my latest changes (actual crawled page in the SERP's is now 2 days old) already reflected in the actual position in the SERP's or should I wait for some time (how long?) to evaluate the effect of my changes? Can I rely on the actual position or not?
On-Page Optimization | | Cesare.Marchetti0 -
Moz is advising that a page has too many of the same keywords.
But this sub-category page includes products that have the keyword in the product name. Should I be concerned?
On-Page Optimization | | Tacony_Corporation0 -
Should Title Tags Differ From H1's?
I never thought this was an issue, but now, I'm not so sure. Is it a problem for your title tags to be identical to your H1's? From Moz' OnPage Grader section on "H1's and Title Tags," I thought they were supposed to both match your keyword. Any thoughts? Thanks, Ruben
On-Page Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
New content cause for drop? Still showing old cache though...
About 10 days ago I added about 750 words of new text to a homepage as it was simply a sign up landing page and rather sparse. I presumed that by adding content it would help google understand the content of the site as it is a single page on the root domain (as soon as users sign up they go to a subdomain). Yesterday though the site recieved a huge drop in traffic and now recieves almost no organic traffic at all from google. I've done the obvious like checked WMT for messages but I'm not sure as to what caused the drop. As far as I'm aware there were no confirmed google updates on 7/6/13. The strange thing is that when I check the google cache its about 3 weeks old so I'm guessing google is using the old cache to reference my site content against search queries. Does that mean the changes I made are not the cause for the drop in rankings? The title tag however has changed when the site is showin in the SERPS. How can that be if google has an old cache?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Best start for int'l SEO?
Hi all We're soon going to begin our international SEO efforts, and I wanted to get some opinions on laying the foundation first. I'm aware of the best, most ideal practices (getting a proper translator, ccTLDs vs subdomains vs folders, etc.) and wanted to know if this would be a good first step: Creating folders by language/country code (does it matter which?) that will have unique copy on the respective page, and targeting those pages to the corresponding country via Google WMT. The nature of our website would require a massive, coordinated effort to translate all of the content, so I was thinking about starting with the homepage for each country and going from there. Is the risk of duplicate content for every new folder too high to chance not translating EVERY bit of content? Thanks for any help or advice!
On-Page Optimization | | brandonRT0 -
Corporate Re-Branding, How to best lead into new website?
I have a company that is going to be moving away from a name they have had for 40 years, into a name they have had for the past 10. They are becoming a bigger brand in Canada and want to move away from the west coast name. http://www.wcmachinery.net/ is becoming obsolete. http://shearforce.ca/ will be taking over for both sites. Both of the websites are identically built by a previous web company. The current root domain metrics are shown in the image provided. What do you Mozzers feel would be the best way to phase out the old site without losing the little bit of domain authority wcmachinery.net has gained? west coast machinery is also well know to its customers, so getting the branded search traffic to the shearforce site is also a priority. I am fairly certain this can be handled easily in the about page where it explains the relationship between the two companies. As a side note I have not performed any SEO work on either site as of yet. So please do not judge me based on this site! Thanks for your insights, Randy edit edit
On-Page Optimization | | PixelgemsCreative0 -
20 x '400' errors in site but URLs work fine in browser...
Hi, I have a new client set-up in SEOmoz and the crawl completed this morning... I am picking up 20 x '400' errors, but the pages listed in the crawl report load fine... any ideas? example - http://www.morethansport.co.uk/products?sortDirection=descending&sortField=Title&category=women-sports clothing
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0