Could the EMD update affect my domain?
-
My domain is: http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/
"Scrabble Dictionary" is a huge keyword in my niche where I used to rank top 4. Do you see this domain as possibly being hit by the EMD?
My Google Analytics does not show that I was initially hit back in Sept 2012 when it first same out.
-
When you say "I would not do it" are you meaning that you would not add "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" at the end of all titles?
Right... I used to have my domain at the end of the titles and removed it.
If you believe that your title tag becomes irrelevant without that, and could be confused with any dictionary or any other type of site, then leaving it in would be a good idea.
What I am advocating works for my sites, which are a mix of information and retail.
When you say "I would not do it" are you meaning that you would not add "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" at the end of all titles?
-
I'm sorry but I think I didn't describe my title issue properly.
I currently use "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" on all my 500,000+ pages at the end of the titles. My homepage title only contains my brand name "Free Scrabble Dictionary"
When you say "I would not do it" are you meaning that you would not add "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" at the end of all titles?
Also when you said "because your domain name will appear immediately below the title in the SERPs - thus it is redundant." are you referring to the example in the image?
-
If it was my site, I would not do it because your domain name will appear immediately below the title in the SERPs - thus it is redundant.
Leaving it out of the title tag also frees space there for more keywords, a value proposition, or empty space to emphasize the words on the left.
-
What about using my brand at the end of all my titles
Example: - Free Scrabble Dictionary
Because of "Scrabble Dictionary" in that title on all of my 500,000+ pages could that possible be seen as spamming that keyword even though its my brand?
Maybe change my titles to "- FSD"?
-
Hi Cesar!
I dont think it's a problem unless you were blatantly over optimizing the site or maybe just stopped working on it if it's dropping in the rankings.
I love my EMD's. It's not as favoured as before from my POV but its still pretty effective.
-
I will agree with EGOL! In my opinion Google does not discriminate EMDs but according to the latest Moz’s ranking survey it is believed that Google still favor EMD’s to an extent. If you are losing rankings with EMD there can be other issues which can be over optimization, under optimization, low quality links pointing back to the website and more.
Hope this helps!
-
Could you try make your domain name 'Free Scrabble Dictionary' look like a brand rather than just a URL?
I thought the EMD update was quite old, and if it was going to affect your domain it should have by now?
-
Do you see this domain as possibly being hit by the EMD?
All of the domains that are important to my business are EMDs. I know other people who use EMDs as important parts of their businesses. In my opinion, Google does not discriminate against these domains. In fact, I believe that Google still favors these domains. So, if you have an EMD with ranking issues it is likely caused by other factors such as Panda, Penguin, competitors, technical issues, low-quality SEO, among others.
And, if I was going to start another business, the first thing that I would to is go straight to the person who owns the appropriate EMD and try to get it from them - and be willing to pay good money.
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
-
Can an external firewall affect rankings?
For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic. Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes? Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | samgold0 -
Ranking dropped after domain change
Dear Moz Community, first of all excuse my bad english, i am from europe and my english is not the best 😉
Technical SEO | | domiji
I use Moz Analytics for several days and try to figure out why our "main keyword" totally dropped after our domain change. We started this year with a new company name and a new domain. Our old domain was dp-hochzeitsfotograf.de and the main keyword we try to rank for was "hochzeitsfotograf" which means "wedding photographer" here in Germany. Last summer we reached position 1 and short before our domain change we still ranked on position 6. We register the domain change in google webmaster tools and redirect all urls via 301 redirect to the new domain. Our new domain name is yourheyday.de and all rankings adopted pretty good except our main keyword (now position 62) which could break our neck the next few month. I would be so so happy and really appreciate if anyone of you have an advise for us. Thanks and many greetings from europe
Dominik0 -
Transfer a Main Domain to a Sub-Domain
My IT department tells me they want to transfer my main site domain, which has been in existence since 1999 as an e-commerce site (maindomain.com) to a sub-domain (www2.maindomain.com) or a completely new domain (newdomain.net). This is because we are launching a new website and B2C e-commerce engine, but we still have to maintain the legacy B2B e-commerce engine which contains hard-coded URLs, and both systems can't use the same domain. I've been researching the issue across SEOmoz, but I haven't come across this exact type of scenario (mostly I've seen a sub-domain to new domain). I see major problems with their proposal, including negative SEO impact, loss of domain authority/ranking and issues with branding. Does anyone know the exact type of impact I can expect to see in this scenario and specific steps I should go about to minimize the impact? Btw, I will be using Danny Dover's guide on properly moving domains where appropriate. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AscendLearning0 -
Drupal Updates = errors
We have worked diligently to correct our SEO Moz crawl diagnostic errors to below 20. However, at least twice now, our coder updates the drupal security warnings and BINGO- every time - our errors go sky high again. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Stevej240 -
Change of domain name?
Hello, We are currently developing a new site for an existing online clothing retailer. The existing site is on a .co.uk domain, however we are targeting a global market and wondered whether we could/should launch the new site under a .com address and whether this would be beneficial? Most of our back links come from Affiliate blogs and we could quite easily change these to the new URL. Thanks Bilal
Technical SEO | | PLP1 -
Can I do a redirect to a new domain name only a couple of weeks after having redirected to another domain?
I have a client with two website with very similar content. Both had a lot of inbound links and performed fairly well in SERPS. We recently combined both sites and have redirected one of the domains to the other. The traffic dipped slightly initially, but is recovering nicely. Now the client registered a new domain name he would like to use for the site. Should I wait a few weeks for everything to settle down after the first redirect/consolidation of sites before doing a new redirect to a new domain name, or should I not worry about having any issues with doing it right away?
Technical SEO | | Drewco0 -
Sub Domains
Hi,,, Okay we have 1 main site , a few years back we went down the road of sub domains and generated about 10. They have page rank and age but we wish to move them back to the main web site. What is the correct or best way to achieve this. 1 copy all content to the main web site creating dup pages and then use a redirects from the sub pages to the new dup pages on the main domain... or 2 write new content on the main domain for the subdomain pages and redirect to the new content. Problem with 2 is the amount of work involved...
Technical SEO | | NotThatFast0 -
Redirecting a domain
I was setting up a new campaign and received the following error from Roger Robot. "We have detected that the domain www.sitename.com and the domain sitename.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here." I know about redirecting a PAGE using 301 Redirects and how to specify the www. canonical in Google webmaster tools, but is there a "DOMAIN" redirect that I'm missing. What would you suggest doing given the error message above. Thanks, Bill Sqnch.jpg
Technical SEO | | Marvo0