Do exact matter domain not matter anymore?
-
I need to buy a new domain and Im wondering if I should be looking at a exact matching domain or simply just some nice name. Did the last change from Google simply just lessen the importance of the exact matching domain or completely kill the importance of them?
-
I have a competitor that has 30+ site with EMDs. He uses the domain name to target the specific town he wants to market in. Let's say you buy Newyorkcityseo.com, you can then also use New York City SEO in the title, description, & keywords. Also any links with anchor text will be branded New York City SEO.
This still works really well for ranking high with Google, but it looks bad with to customers. Personally i would never go this route, but it does work. Like I said I have competitors that have been doing it for years, maybe one day they will fall.
-
Google described it as "turning down" how much EMDs matter. So although they probably do have a LITTLE bit of bearing, its nothing huge, if you have a brand name use that, if your brand name is close to the EMD then that should be fine. Just don't expect an EMD to help you massively when it comes to ranking like they used to do.
-
I think they matter but not as much as they did in the past
-
Just pointers... don’t rely on it... Google is changing fast and you never know when they might do that if they are not doing it at the moment...
If it matches your brand go for it but if not then prefer to go for a brand related URL instead of a keyword...
-
They do still matter.
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
-
Geo-target .ag domain?
Hi Guys, We are looking to purchase a .ag domain for a agriculture website, we want to target two countries Australia (primary) and United States. So the main site e.g. www.farming.ag (will target Australia) While the www.farming.ag/us/ sub-folder will target the United States From my understanding through after reading this: https://www.name.com/domains/ag .ag is for countries Antigua and Barbuda. So i was wondering can you even geo-target to Aus or even the sub-folder to United States in search console? Any advice would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
Domain Change Of Address & Sale
Hi Moz community Let's say I have two domains www.domain1.com www.domain2.com domain1 is my main website. Domain 2 was a peripheral side project I was working on. I recently decided to shut it down. So I hooked up the proper 301s and filed a change of address request with Google Webmaster tools. I have had an offer for someone to purchase domain2 - I have absolutely no use for it and would like to sell it. I just want first to figure out that: I can do this without losing any ranking to my main site. I can disassociate this domain from myself and my Company completely. I don't want any of the work we put into it to transfer to the new owner. How can I do this? thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shop-Sq0 -
Ranking Above sub-domains
So I work for a company that has a very successful affiliate that operates under a third level domain name such as "region.company.com". Their SEO practices are very good and they rank highly in keyword searches. However "company.com" does not even though it is not a subdomain. Even after optimizing the company.com's pages etc, the regional sub domain ranks much higher for keywords and the main company fails to rank at all. Is Google discounting the main company's page? Is it a matter of trust or time? or is it something else? How can I get Google to prioritize the main company website rather than a lower level domain affiliate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resolute0 -
Canonical link vs root domain
I have a wordpress website installed on http://domain.com/home/ instead of http://domain.com - Does it matter whether I leave it that way with a canonical link from the domain.com to the domain.com/home/ or should I move the wordpress files and database to the root domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JosephFrost0 -
Redirect non www. domain to WWW. domain for established website?
Hey guys, The website in question has been online for more than 5 years but there are still 2 versions of the website. Both versions are indexed by Google and of course, this will result in duplicate content. Is it necessary to redirect the non-www domain to the www. domain. What are the cons and advantages? Will a lot of organic traffic be lost at first (if non-www are getting a good amount of traffic)? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
301 redirect from one domain to other domain, How To?
Hi, I need to redirect 150 products pages from http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ to http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/ How can I do this? Is there a tool or anything I can do to do 301 from one domain to another one? Can I use Google Webmaster Tool? Thank you, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Time for a new domain post-Penguin?
Hi there, Quick overview of a client who came to us after having the vast majority of their link value slashed by Penguin. Client only has a limited 'recovery budget' Client had been outsourcing SEO to a foreign company The website was 'keyword stuffed' when we arrived Links were of poor quality, the company clearly majoring on quantity rather than quality. Client was ranking #4 or #3 for a keyword which was bringing in sales. Post penguin, dropped to page 5 and then out of the top 100 for that keyword, losing 70% of sales. The client, under our supervision has Rewritten spammy content so they work for human beings (so it now reads well) Gone through the website and is removing old/duplicate and low-quality content De-emphasised other pages for the target keyword so that only one page majors on it. After doing the above has submitted a reconsideration request (about 2 weeks ago, so I know there's time). We are focussing on ensuring her content is written well and on building decent links to the site (i.e. to put some good-uns where the bad ones were). We're into month 2 of the 'clean-up exercise' and the site is still only ranking #90 for the keyword. Given the client's budgetary limitation, could it be more beneficial to consider a new brand identity and domain name to start afresh (without a 301 redirect) or should we just continue along the track we are doing with this client? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody15609869897230 -
How important is sticking to an exact keyword?
The latest article I'm writing for my site is "Friends With Benefits Rules"... So the first part of my question is, what does SEOMoz advocate as being the ideal # of times to include the entire key phrase in the article? I know nobody but Google knows for certain, but is 4 (including in H1's etc.) generally considered enough, other than in the page title? Second part is, what is the consensus about how important is it to stick to the exact keyword? For the example I gave, is it just as good to include a comma, E.g. "...friends with benefits, rules..." or a hyphen "Friends with Benefits - Rules for..."? One thing I'm unclear about on this topic is stop words and plurals. I've been told before that Google ignores stop words, but results for searches with or without the word "how," for example produce very different results... Same thing with plurals. In any case, all of the above is assuming that the quality of the content would not be affected in either case...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corp08030