How much weight does Google give to Exact Match Domains?
-
I'm building a site on a virtual host and now it's ready to go online, but i still have to choose a domain name.
One of the main keywords i want to rank for is a 3-word keyword phrase with 9000+ exact match searches per month. Here's an example to better understand my question: 'Guitar training lessons'
My main competitor's domain is only 5 months old but it does have the full keyword phrase in it with '4u' added at the end: www.guitartraininglessons4u.com
I wanted to go with www.guitartrainingcenter.com (notice that 'lessons' is left out of the domain name) but i'm wondering if my main competitor would have a big advantage by having the full keyword phrase in his domain.
How much weight does google give to sites that have the exact search query in their domain name? Does a domain still qualify as 'exact match' if a word (info) is added to it? How much harder would it be to outrank this domain as apposed to a site that doesn't have the keywords in its domain name?
Thanks in advance
Freek
-
Generally speaking in my experience, EMD's are junk sites because usually the person is doing AdSense or something and the site has junk content w/ an EMD for page one rankings for the AdSense revenue. Just my thoughts, though.
-
A few years ago the boost for an exact match domain was significant. This positive signal has been devalued since then, but it is still a signal and for good reason. A quality domain can indicate a significant investment - not unlike thousands of pages of quality content. One signal of many.
A lot will depend on the competitiveness of the industry. Cellphone.com is a great domain, but it's in a competitive environment and the signal of the domain does not outweight all the many other strong quality indicators. I have seen many examples of where the domain name that is not an exact match, but still contains the keywords (such as your example) is not an indicator of quality. It's not necessarily lacking in quality either, but a signal boost it is not.
-
Much agree there. but GuitarLessonsCenter is not bad at all. GuitarLessonReviews would be great if all you plan on doing is reviews. It depends on what the niche is and why the site is created to do.
-
Because it's generally too limiting. It leaves little room for growth and having a brandable domain in my opinion is better.
My comment about a crap domain was in reference to a domain like www.GuitarLessonReviewsInfo.com or something. He was talking about those earlier, where people add-on some words because the EMD is taken but still want the phrase in there to get the EMD boost.
-
You are very welcome!
You could cover electric guitar reviews using "AcousticGuitarReviews.com" but why have a domain that implies you are only reviewing acoustic guitar reviews? To me, it makes more sense to build a brandable website!
With Google liking brands, it makes sense to build a brand and do things the white-hat way, this insures you don't fall off the map on every whimsical algo update, you know?
-
I disagree with not using an EMD. How is it crap if the metric goes away? As long as the EMD is descriptive and not spam, then it will be accurate and therefore always relevant.
-
Thanks for the detailed answer David. I do agree with you that in the long term, an EMD could tie you down to that particular keyword. If my main keyword is Acoustic Guitar Review and i buy acousticguitarreviews.com, i can't cover electric guitar reviews, because my domain name doesn't imply so...
I do hope google weighs down the importance of EMD's in the future, as some spammers use it to their advantage. I've heard people say they ranked for reasonably competitive keywords with just a domain that had a fresh wordpress install on it with only one article and and some backlinks...
-
WAY too much. I see exact domains ranking in the top 3 with hardly any site metrics. I always suggest getting one or two keywords in your TLD (top level domain) when it seems natural to do so. SEOsudo is mine which is how I add SEO into my TLD. (sudo is a UNIX command for Super User DO)
But more to your example. Yes, he would get a bit more over you when you have only 2 to his 3, but at this point, other metrics will play a stronger role.
I like your TLD name.
Richard
-
Nobody knows the exact boost you get, but I can assure you that it is quite significant. Very significant.
You will not get the full boost unless you have the entire keyword/phrase in the domain. So yes, your competitor would have an advantage over you. How much? No one knows for sure, but I will go out on a limb and say it's pretty substantial. You can beat EMD's but it requires a lot of links and a strategy that outperforms on every level.
Yes, it qualifies as exact match even if there are added words as long as the exact phrase appears in the domain.
It all depends on the keyword to determine how difficult it would be to outrank him without an EMD.
My advice? Don't use an EMD... they'll eventually take that boost away and you're left with a crap domain. Focus on high-quality content that is engaging and provides a ton of value. That will yield you better results in the long-term.
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
-
What basics should we be looking at in Google Analytics?
We have GA set up on our site for a while now. However, we do not look at the data. We did today and it's quite overwhelming. Is there anything in specific we should start with? A top 3 items we should start to monitor each week and try to improve? Bonus Question: Is there a way to use analytics to find out who are competitors are?
Competitive Research | | IcarusSEO0 -
How much should I analyze my competitors?
Hi, Recently I've started a competitor research (aka competitive analysis). A few hours after I began, I've started to feel that maybe I'm doing too much unnecessary work. What I've been doing so far is analyzing the competitor's links (using the Dr Pete's Link Profiling excel and some other things), and their site optimization. The on-site optimization analysis has been very light, just to see if the competitors are doing something really well, or not. But still, I think that maybe I'm doing too much work. So, I'd like to see your thoughs: How much work is necessary when doing competitor analysis? What things do you analyse? And how much do you report to the clients? Thank you all in advance! Ivan
Competitive Research | | ivankrm0 -
Ranking and Domain/Page Authority
I'm not seeing a very good correlation between ranking and domain/page authority. Am I missing something here? ie., 2nd raning at 1/0. Also seeing competitor as "12" domain authority in "competitive domain analysis", but shows much higher here for same competitor? <colgroup><col width="94"> <col width="171"> <col width="108"></colgroup>
Competitive Research | | delphia
| Page Authority | Page Linking Root Domains | Domain Authority |
| 70 | 40 | 83 |
| 1 | 0 | 41 |
| 51 | 3 | 97 |
| 34 | 5 | 36 |
| 41 | 3 | 52 |
| 23 | 1 | 59 |
| 59 | 49 | 100 |
| 48 | 2 | 100 |
| 52 | 6 | 77 |
| 27 | 2 | 14 |
| 1 | 0 | 57 |
| 15 | 1 | 36 |
| 28 | 2 | 36 |
| 28 | 2 | 36 |
| 24 | 1 | 57 |
| 28 | 2 | 36 |
| 21 | 1 | 36 |1 -
Should I set up multiple websites with keywords in the domain?
I work for an e-commerce brand that manufactures sells 2-3 uniform products for medical professionals. Of course, we set out originally using our brand name as our domain name, and we will continue down that path. However, our best products are the premium lab coats we sell, and we're currently facing an uphill battle for the keyword combo, "lab coats" which is 44% competitive. In our ranking analysis, we can see that we're up against 2 major competitive forces: extremely high domain authority (i.e. Amazon & Ebay), and stores that have the phrase "lab coats" or the word "lab" in their domain name. We recently dropped the hosting package we had with the domain www.scrubsandlabcoats.net (which was redirecting to our primary domain) and our ranking dropped almost immediately afterwards. We put that site back up and now 301 redirect it to our main site but it doesn't look like we restored whatever it was that was in place on that site (before my time) because our rankings haven't improved back to where they were a few months ago. Question is: Would it make sense to purchase a domain with the combination of our brand name and the words "lab coats" and then put up a few pages with links to our top productus OR would that be no more effective than what we already have in place (www.ourdomain.com/lab-coats.html)? Also, any guesses on what kind of crazy set up we used to have on that other domain (scrubsandlabcoats.net) that was helping us in the past? Really appreciate the help!
Competitive Research | | dstepchew0 -
What is the best way to know your accurate ranking on google? what analytics are most trustworthy?
with seomoz, i rank on google in one spot. With market samurai, I rank in another spot, With KPMRS (or whatever) i rank another place. But then when i just type my keywords into google, it puts me in a whole different world... am confused... and the client i am trying to help rank higher is confused. Thanks for any help you can offer be blessed bd
Competitive Research | | creativeguy0 -
How does Google decide whether a Google News box appears in organic search results?
How does Google decide whether a Google News box appears in organic search results? A list of any specific factors, if known, would be very helpful.
Competitive Research | | pathjoy0 -
Is it valuable for a local business to build links into its Google Place?
G'Day All, Almost all of my clients are geo-based small service-based businesses. I've noticed during my research that the google places for our competitors in 3 separate niches (3 different clients) seem to be the dominating results for almost all relevant keyword terms. I'm curious to see if anyone has actively tried to increase the ranking of a google place by building links into it. Is this something that anyone else sees value to for a local small business? I would love to get some thoughts. And for that matter I'm also curious to see if anyone thinks there might be value to optimizing a Facebook Fan Page or Yelp Business page. They all seem to be key drivers of traffic our client websites so I'm wondering how difficult it is to make them rank as opposed to a website. Thanks!
Competitive Research | | blahblahblah20150 -
Keyword Ranks reported by SEOMOZ don't match actual searches
SEO Moz reported that various keywords I was tracking were not in the top 50 results on Yahoo or Bing, yet when I did a Yahoo or Bing search for those keywords (from multiple computers and not logged into any Yahoo or MSN/Bing account) I found the keywords easily. What's the scoop?
Competitive Research | | Cybernautic0