EMD and dot CO domains
-
This may be a basic question for some. I would like to get opinion of SEO experts on EMD and .co domains.
I understand from what I have read that exact match domains have less value nowadays but they still have some value, that's what I seem to be sensing from experts. So I wanted to know how .co domains are viewed in term of SEO. And can an exact match .co domain have a better opportunity against another domain which is not an EMD if all other things are equal?
-
Hi Ryan,
Inherently all domain extensions are equal, and Google treats them as such.
So keyword.com vs keyword.co should in theory be on a level playing field, however...
There's quite a few different factors which go into getting a good domain for SEO including:
- Familarity - Does it look authorative or like a familiar domain?
- Location - Does it have a .country extension on the end?
- Industry - Are there conventions within the industry e.g .IO for tech or .agency for digital marketing?
- Length - How much keyword stuffing is too much? D
- Brandability - Will the brand name be easy to remember, and will people want to Google it directly rather than find you in the SERPs?
A combination of these means that due to established conventions and our cultural bias for lack of a better phrase, not all domains are created equal in terms of the ease in which people may feel comfortable clicking and linking to them.
Personally I wouldn't overthink the whole EDM thing too much. Google released an algorithm in 2012 to help neuter the immediate ranking potential of them out the box: https://searchengineland.com/library/google/emd-update
One example I have of this is my personal website which is an EDM of my name. It has been live about 2 weeks and ranks 50th or so for my name, and about 4th if I add "SEO" on the end. Over time I suspect it will rank well, but until you build backlinks and establish authority...an EMD really isn't a silver bullet to ranking!
Basically don't overthink it and simply try to get a partial keyword match and brand all in one.
This would be my advice, and besides you will need to get creative as all the "obvious" domains have probably already been snapped up
Good luck!
Nick
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
-
Domain Migration Question
Lets say there is a brand that has one primary product type at different optional tiers. (Think something like SMB/Enterprise/Individual) Lets also say that 1 year ago this brand migrated from having everything under 1 domain (Domain A) to moving 2 of their product tiers to another domain (Domain B), a new domain. They have done some initial SEO work on this domain and had a pretty successful migration but it has also been decided that they are going to no longer offer one of these product tiers and they intend to eventually migrate everything back under the 1 domain (Domain A) They just are not sure whether they should do this now or later.
Algorithm Updates | | DRSearchEngOpt
During this next year or so there is also going to be some likely re-branding/design, etc...stemming from this decision, on the domain, meaning content changes and all that fun that goes into a migration/re-design/re-branding strategy. The timing of this has not been fully decided on. Here is the question: Should they a) Migrate back to Domain A first and then do the re-design or b) Keep 2 separate domains for now, figure out the re-design/re-branding, make content changes and then migrate Site A over in a year or so after all changes have been made? My concern with option a) is that they migrated a little less than 1 year ago and will be migrating back which I feel could have a negative impact on the content and the domain. The positive side I see here is that this impact could be just as large even if we waited so doing this now might be a better, more efficient use of our time if we can migrate and make content changes fairly close together or concurrently.
My concern with option b) is that the tier they no longer offer makes up the majority of that sites business and traffic, leaving us with not much in terms of content that ranks well and garners much traffic. Trying to optimize for the remaining product tier by itself on it's own domain could be quite hard and then having to migrate it in a year or so back to Domain A could negatively impact any small organic impact I can make on applicable pages/domain. Does anybody have any input here? I am leaning towards Option A and but wanted to get some other opinions. Thanks Everybody! Edit: So far, this has received a lot of views but no input. I am hoping to have a bit of a dialog on this so any ideas or input is welcome.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 -
301 a purchased domain
I've purchased a competitor. They rank well organically for keywords that I target, and I want to optimize the way I get value from their current rankings and traffic (and customers -- we will obviously market to their email/customer list). Which is better: (1) use a 301 redirect for any access to their domain and point it to my home page. I think this would force Google to de-index all of their pages, right? (2) put up a stub page as their homepage that announces the site has been bought, and have a do-follow link to my home page (which maybe is auto-redirected after 10 seconds or something)? Maybe this is better to keep their home page in Google's index for a while? As for option (1), I thought I read somewhere recently that 301'ing a domain to the home page of another domain would no longer pass link juice (?). Maybe I should 301 the newly purchased domain to a sub-page on my site that explains the acquisition and asks them to sign up on my site? Both sites are legit. No spamming happening here; just industry consolidation as one competitor acquires another. Thanks in advance...!
Algorithm Updates | | scanlin0 -
301'ing away from an exact match domain.
Hi Moz Community! My website gets just over 50% of its traffic from ranking in the top 3 in over 10 countries for my exact match keyword domain. 80% + from keywords related to the exact match domain. We are now looking at doing a to 301 re-direct to a new domain to start a fresh branding to the site to increase scope and expand. This would involve removing the keyword from the homepage and domain entirely . However. Considering all competitors ranking for our main keyword, have the keyword in their domain as either a subdomain to or in their root domain and in their homepage content, would this make ranking without the keyword in domain & content hard? I have found a very similar example that has done so, so I guess the answer to that question is no its not. about 65-70% of our anchor text on our backlinks is for our domain keyword. Can anyone advise how best to go about maintaining rankings after 301ing or how best to go about 301ing to make sure that we can maintain the rankings for our main keyword! Any advise at all would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | howiex10 -
Redesign, new content, new domain and 301 redirects (penalty?)
We merged our old webshops into one big project. After a few days we received our rankings back and traffic was coming in. Then suddenly we lost almost all rankings overnight. We did not use any wrong seo techniques and have unique content, written by our own writers. Is this a penalty or do we have to wait longer?
Algorithm Updates | | snorkel0 -
Why is my domain URL ranking instead of individual pages?
Hello, Google is ranking my homepage for many keywords instead of showing the various sites pages? Any idea why? Thanks, David
Algorithm Updates | | DavidSpivac0 -
301 from multiple domains to one single webshop
First of all i want to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer and i am a webshop owner from the Netherlands (we sell plants/herbs products) I have a very important question (and i can`t find a clear answer on the internet). So i hope someone can help me, At this moment me and 4 other friends own each a seperate webshop. We all started the webshops 5 -7 years ago and work all in the same business. (plants/herbs). We talked last week, and we want to make one big company and combine all 5 company`s. All 5 webshops have a huge pagerank, lots of organic traffic and very good incomming links. We registered new domainnames and want to redirect the 5 "old" domains to one new domain to pass over the Google juice. Our new company is a multilanguage webshop and each language has its own domain. (for example) (www. plantsandherbs example .nl)
Algorithm Updates | | snorkel
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .es)
(www. plantsandherbs example .fr)
(www. plantsandherbs example .com) Does it harm us if we 301 redirect all the 5 "old" websites to the new webshop? And what is the best way to redirect the "old" webshops to the new one? I am afraid of a Google penalty because it maybe looks like we bought some domains to pass the juice to the new project.0 -
Is purchasing domain names still relevant?
Our MD is requesting that we continue to renew a long list of domains that we purchased many years ago. Is this practice still relevant or is there more to be gained from SEO and keyword strategy on our own site? All of the domains are redirected to our main site, but the main reason for purchasing was to stop others using them. Can someone please advise? Don't want to be spending money on this if it is of no benefit to us at all.
Algorithm Updates | | DonaldRussell0