Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Exact match domain names

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Exact match domain names

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    9
    13
    2956
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • RikkiD22
      RikkiD22 last edited by

      Hello, Someone approached a client of mine to sell a exact match domain name for a very competitive and high converting keyword. Would this be of any use and what are the best tactics to employ if it is purchased? I was of the opinion that the 'power' of exact match domain names are dying fast but would be interested to hear what people with experience in this think and what they have done with them (i.e. set-up a website on that domain or re-directed it)? Thanks, Rikki

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RikkiD22
        RikkiD22 last edited by

        Thanks for your help all. Decided not to buy the domain and keep going with things as they are!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • EGOL
          EGOL @AdenBrands last edited by

          I find it infuriating that spammers are still able to get their hands on exact match domain names

          I've bought a few of these domains and had to pay a freeking fortune to get them.  The fact is, however, I decided that I wanted them in 2005, 2008, 2011 and the people who I bought them from had owned them for a long time collecting ad revenue from the type-in traffic.  Their price was waaay waaay more then the appraisal but if you want the domain and know how to use it you can make a freeking fortune back.

          Should google give them a ranking advantage?  I think the answer is yes, a small advantage and anyone who wants that advantage can obtain it simply by paying the price to get them.  If you are willing to pay or was smart enough to register the domain early then that advantage is your reward.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • AdenBrands
            AdenBrands last edited by

            I find it infuriating that spammers are still able to get their hands on exact match domain names and leave the actual brand sites who exist within the niche looking for business rather than click throughs suffer in the SERPs! Will Google eventually phase this out?

            EGOL 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • AlanMosley
              AlanMosley last edited by

              They still have value, you can usually get them to rank quite easly, but if they are spamming like THB suggests i would not bother.

              But are they cheap? if so, you may be able to resell them. I have a few that i am sitting on till i get the right offer.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • THB
                THB @EGOL last edited by

                My thoughts exactly (and other great points by other comments here).

                There are many factors that go into this issue, and of course, I'd love to have say, houses.com or realestate.com for a website that was offering real estate for sale.  But that doesn't mean that I should create some long-winded, keyword-stuffed domain name (real-estate-and-homes-houses-for-sale.com) as that will not do anything for my cause.

                I'm sure, as everybody has pointed out, that there is still some consideration into the domain match for the genre in question; however, domain name are basically impossible to come by nowadays for any popular/common item you are planning on building a website around.  I'm sure the search engines have also thought about that.

                But in all honesty, look at a lot of the major players in any niche, and majority of them have a unique, highly-branded name that doesn't have anything to do with the industry.  Not to say you shouldn't do it, but with a legitimate link-building campaign and top-notch SEO tactics deployed throughout the site, you can rank for anything under any domain name.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • EGOL
                  EGOL last edited by

                  I own several exact match domains.  I can say with confidence that they used to be very powerful in ranking a website.  However, google has turned down that benefit significantly as recently as this year.  I do think that they still give some value - but only for exact match queries.

                  I like them for reasons beyond that....

                  1. in my opinion they have extra good conversion rates because people who land on them think... "Oh... this is widgets.com... they must know their stuff about widgets."

                  2. this implied credibility - even if undeserved - makes them a better target for likes, links, tweets, mentions and they can easily become the "go to place" for their product or topic if you are willing to put work into them

                  3. finally, they give me mental energy.... If I owned baloney.com I would become the world's expert on baloney and build a fantastic site... if you own a domain like that you owe it to the domain to do a good job.

                  So, I would be willing to pay a good amount of dough for an exact match domain ... but only if I am the right person to control it.  I would not want knitting.com or even wine.com because I don't know anything about these subjects.

                  THB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • JamesNorquay
                    JamesNorquay last edited by

                    Exact match domains can be good, but I do agree they are becoming less powerful compared too say 2 years ago.

                    You can still get the following with a EDM:

                    • Good for branding

                    • Great for type in traffic selling Auto Insurance, 2-3% of people direct type in domains example autoinsurance.com

                    • EDM SEO ability still evident yet it is dropping.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • leadsprofi
                      leadsprofi last edited by

                      I think, exact domain name, is not bad, if you down white-hat strategy to rank it higher, it's nice, but if you use spam tactics its bad for exact and non-exact match domain name.

                      for example if you search "shoes" on google.com you will see the domain "shoes.com" on 1st or 2nd position on 1st serp. this is not bad if you down the right seo for a domain.

                      for the keyword "seo" is the same too.

                      from my side, take it, down the whitehat tactics seo, and finish that's all.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • jeffreytrull1
                        jeffreytrull1 last edited by

                        I think you're right that Google has discounted the value of exact match domains now as it's not as easy to increase rankings solely on the merit of the domain alone. However, I don't agree that exact match domains aren't helpful at all anymore. I see cases all the time where exact match domains are very higher in search rankings in Google. Value of having the exact match domain may be "dying," but I wouldn't say it's dead yet. If this is a new domain with no domain authority, it does you no help to simply redirect from that domain to yours regardless of how good the keywords in the new domain are. At minimum you would need to build up the new domain to get any value out of it (unless you you want to buy the domain just to ensure competitors don't get a hold of it).

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • marker-311528
                          marker-311528 @RikkiD22 last edited by

                          I’m new to SEO but wouldn’t it still help? If you are trying to rank for the keyword "pickles" and your url is pickles.com, every link back to your site will contain the word "pickles" because its in your url. Where as if your site was called peanutbutter.com and you weren’t able to change the tag it would say peanut butter. Wouldn’t Google say pickles is way more relevant to pickles than peanut butter is, wouldn’t they give the pickle url more consideration? Again new to SEO and I might be missing something here.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • RikkiD22
                            RikkiD22 last edited by

                            Thanks THB. You re-confirm what I was thinking really but it's just when they are offered I think they make you think about it a bit more. Would be interested to hear any other views on this?

                            marker-311528 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • THB
                              THB last edited by

                              You are correct in that "exact match domain names" are dying out, and that is due entirely in part to spammers (don't they just ruin everything??). It's all about branding now, which means you can basically have any domain name you want and rank for anything you want. Mind you, you're not going to see cars.com trying to rank for telephones anytime soon, but you know what I mean. While it might be tempting, it is not necessary to have your niche keyword in your domain name anymore. Last I heard, Bing was the only search engine actually taking these things into consideration, and that was over a year ago, so I'm not sure whether they still do.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • 1 / 1
                              • First post
                                Last post

                              Got a burning SEO question?

                              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                              Start my free trial


                              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.

                              • See all categories

                              Related Questions

                              • Virginia-Girtz

                                Why does my old brand name still show up on organic search but as my new brand name and domain?

                                Hello mozers! I have quite the conundrum. My client used to have the unfortunate brand name "Meetoo" - which by the way they had before the movement happened! So naturally, they rebranded to the name Vevox in March 2019 to avoid confusion to users. However, when you search for their old brand name "Meetoo" the first organic link that pops up is their domain www.vevox.com. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, however it is when any #MeToo news appears in the media and we get a sudden influx or wrong traffic. I've searched the HTML and content for the term "Meetoo" but can only find one trace of this name through a widget. Not enough to hold an organic spot. My only other thinking is that www.vevox.com is redirected from www.meetoo.com. So I'm assuming this is why Vevox appear under the search term "Meetoo". How can I remove the homepage www.vevox.com from appearing for the search term "meetoo"? Can anyone help? AvGGYBc

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz
                                3
                              • chiplab

                                Subdomain replaced domain in Google SERP

                                Good morning, This is my first post.  I found many Q&As here that mostly answer my question, but just to be sure we do this right I'm hoping the community can take a peak at my thinking below: Problem: We are relevant rank #1 for "custom poker chips" for example. We have this development website on a subdomain (http://dev.chiplab.com).  On Saturday our live 'chiplab.com' main domain was replaced by 'dev.chiplab.com' in the SERP. Expected Cause: We did not add NOFOLLOW to the header tag. We also did not DISALLOW the subdomain in the robots.txt. We could have also put the 'dev.chiplab.com' subdomain behind a password wall. Solution: Add NOFOLLOW header, update robots.txt on subdomain and disallow crawl/index. Question: If we remove the subdomain from Google using WMT, will this drop us completely from the SERP? In other words, we would ideally like our root chiplab.com domain to replace  the subdomain to get us back to where we were before Saturday.  If the removal tool in WMT just removes the link completely, then is the only solution to wait until the site is recrawled and reindexed and hope the root chiplab.com domain ranks in place of the subdomain again? Thank you for your time, Chase

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chiplab
                                0
                              • piazza

                                Changing Brand and Domain Name - SEO Impacts

                                Hi everyone I'm hoping a few of you can help me out... We're an online-one retailer and we're currently looking at rebranding.
                                This is for commercial reasons: Our current name is difficult for customers to spell It's not wholly representative of what we now offer We want to push offline and social marketing to help increase or DA In a nutshell, our current name implies 'cheap' and we're moving more upmarket.
                                Our DA is only 10, and a re-brand will make our brand more marketable.
                                A stronger brand and DA will help us climb up the rankings quickly - last year we ranked no 1 for a relatively competitive term before dropping a few places. In terms of current traffic: 30% is via SEO (we have a low DA but rank ok for certain phrases) 70% is via adwords We had our website redesigned last year and it performs well. 
                                The idea is to have a new brand logo and colours and move to a new domain.
                                We will keep all our existing products and content. Please could anyone let me know the implications of this move?
                                What are potential pitfalls, and what will we need to do to alert Google?
                                I have read about 301 redirects, would these be required? As always, any help is very much appreciated. Many thanks Abs

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | piazza
                                0
                              • LJHopkins

                                Domain dominance

                                I've just started to work for a company who've purchased masses of domains with every conceivable permutation based on all their products with every extension possible e.g .biz  . eu. .net (including .co.uk and .com of course). I have two questions: 1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire? 2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LJHopkins
                                0
                              • sofla_seo

                                Domain Redirect and SSL Cert

                                Hi, When redirecting an entire site to another domain, do you have to maintain the SSL certificate? The SSL expires 3 days before the planned redirect. Thanks in advance.

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sofla_seo
                                0
                              • inhouseseo

                                "sex" in non-adult domain name

                                I have a client with a domain that has "sex" in the domain name. For example, electronicsexpo.com. The domain ranks for a few keywords related to the services offered. It is an old domain that has been online for over 10 years. It ranks well for local keywords. No real SEO effort has been made on this domain, so it is rather a clean slate. I am going to be doing SEO on this site. Will the fact that the word "sex" exists in the name have any sort of negative consequence. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING adult related or pornographic on this site. I would think that search engines are sophisticated enough to differentiate, but would potential customers with things like parental filters be blocked from viewing content? Is this hurtful in anyway? If so, would I be better off changing domain names? TIA

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo
                                0
                              • Jay328

                                Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls

                                Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors. 
                                For example:  http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
                                2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
                                0
                              • Cordstrap

                                Is it worth switching from .net to .com if you own both domain names

                                For over 20 years the company I work for has used www.company.net as their TLD, because we could not register www.company.com at that time. However, currently we also own www.company.com www.company.com has a 301 re-direct to www.company.net  We are a global company, and market leader in our industry. Our company name is associated with the product we make, and our competitors use our company name as their targeted keywords to attract visitors to their sites because our company name is synonym with the product we and they make. As we are a global company we also have lots of TLDcc's. The email address of all our employees worldwide have a .net email address extension. Would you advice switching from www.company.net to www.company.com??? And if so, what would be the reasons for this switch. Would it only be for branding purposes? Looking forward to some insights before taking on such an invasive switch (because of the switch of all email addresses of employees worldwide). Best regards, Astrid Groeneveld

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cordstrap
                                0

                              Get started with Moz Pro!

                              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                              Start my free trial
                              Products
                              • Moz Pro
                              • Moz Local
                              • Moz API
                              • Moz Data
                              • STAT
                              • Product Updates
                              Moz Solutions
                              • SMB Solutions
                              • Agency Solutions
                              • Enterprise Solutions
                              Free SEO Tools
                              • Domain Authority Checker
                              • Link Explorer
                              • Keyword Explorer
                              • Competitive Research
                              • Brand Authority Checker
                              • Local Citation Checker
                              • MozBar Extension
                              • MozCast
                              Resources
                              • Blog
                              • SEO Learning Center
                              • Help Hub
                              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                              • How-to Guides
                              • Moz Academy
                              • API Docs
                              About Moz
                              • About
                              • Team
                              • Careers
                              • Contact
                              Why Moz
                              • Case Studies
                              • Testimonials
                              Get Involved
                              • Become an Affiliate
                              • MozCon
                              • Webinars
                              • Practical Marketer Series
                              • MozPod
                              Connect with us

                              Contact the Help team

                              Join our newsletter
                              Moz logo
                              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                              • Accessibility
                              • Terms of Use
                              • Privacy

                              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.