Building Links to Exact Match Domains
-
What are the pros and cons having exact match domain and how can you create a brand name and build backlinks?
Say we have a domain personalizedbirthdaygifts.com
We are quite stuck with what anchor text we need to use and how do we vary it?
I've heard that we have to stay away from using commercial keywords as anchor text heavily. We have to also use our brand name. And here we get stuck as we don't have a brand name. In this case Our brand name should be personalized birthday gifts but this is also commercial keyword.
I have seen before similar websites droped from ranking because they have commercial keywords in their domain and most of their backlink anchor texts are commercial.
If I had a website called twentyfive.com selling birthday gifts it would be a lot easier. But when you have a website personalizedbirthdaygifts.com and trying to rank for personalized birthday gifts and birthday gifts it's tough. OR isn't it?
I hope I explained it well and didn't confuse anybody...
Thanks
-
Nop, not true at all, I ranked a a fairly competitive keyword No.1 with an exact match keyword domain name, we only focused on 2 variations of a keywords and no penalty.
-
Did these responses answer your question Jvalops, or do you still have questions? We're going through and looking at the older unanswered questions and trying to resolve them. Any lessons you have that you can share would be great, too!
-
Exact domain names do get ranked well in SEs and are a good choice when relevant like yours. They will get punished if what is on the site does not match the domain, or inbound links seem spammy.
If your site is about Personalized Birthday Gifts, then I see no reason why not to use the domain. I would not use exact anchor text when building manual links as most sites will list your URL as the anchor so that is covered. I would build links like this (presuming you have done your keyword research)
- Birthday Gifts
- Gifts for Birthdays
- Birthday Gift Ideas
- Personalized Gifts
The cons with exact domains is that you are boxed in as many see it. You can not easily sell wedding supplies. This comes into play with GEO TLDs such as using a location in your TLD such as San Diego or California. If you expand out of this area, then you boxed yourself in without great marketing.
Just Cabinets sells furniture, so they have marketed themselves out of selling just cabinets, but you can see the amount of effort it would take.
If you are going to sell nothing but birthday gifts, then I see no reason not to use the exact match TLD.
I hope that answered your question.
-
That would definitely be news to me. I have a bunch of EMDs that rank well and I've built links using the same anchor text. If your website name and therefore your brand name is "Personalised Birthday Gifts" then you can bet you'll get natural links with that in the anchor text.
There's no negative effect to using exact match anchors for exact match domains. Only positive.
-
One of my friend attended seomoz conference in london yesterday and he swears there was a talk that google pushes down exact keyword match domains which build backlinks with domain name as anchor text.
-
Use the anchor text "personalized birthday gifts" ... I've never heard or seen anything about commercial keywords damaging rankings. Do not stay away from using 'commercial keywords' as anchor text - this would be a disaster. When you say heavily, I guess you mean having all of your links with the same anchor text; while heavy usage of anchor text clearly correlates with good rankings, it's risky business (it's not particularly natural looking).
There is a trade-off between branding and EMDs. If you use an EMD then you have huge SEO benefits (at least for now) but with branding you'll have a memorable name that people become loyal to.
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
-
Linking Domain vs Domain authority : Do they related!!!? (Case study)
Hi everyone
Link Building | | serikozay
I just came across a website which I'm working on. As we know DA & PA directly related to each other. I'm building organic links through last year and the result is so odd !
As you see in Pic 1, number of linking domains is naturally increasing. But in Pic 2 DA gets negative impact through this process and decreases!
How are they related anyway? Can anyone helps?
site : didar.me 111.JPG
222.JPG0 -
Link Building Issue
Hi, While prospecting for backlinks target do you guys filter links less than a specific DA or PA? for instance - if PA<5 then remove
Link Building | | Janki99
My VA accidentally selected a PA 3 link where the site owner eventually gave us a backlink.
Due to that link the traffic jumped 14X!!!
Had it been my filtering process would never got the backlink and traffic. What do you guys suggest?0 -
How do the powerful links of an old domain help my new domain?
I recently purchased a domain with over twenty years age, a few .gov links and A LOT of .edu links. Of course, the domain is relevant to my site's content. I'm hosting the domain on my shared server and have setup 301 redirects for each page that had external links pointing to it via the htaccess file within the domain's root directory. These 301 redirects, of course, point to my new domain, which is on a dedicated server. Specifically, they point to a directory on my new domain. I've also verified the purchased domain and my new domain on Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools. Finally, I've completed a google site change request for the old site to point to my new site. My questions: Should I also list my old domain on the dedicated server over the shared server or does it matter? Will the backlinks of the old site show up in my new site's links via Google's search console, Open Site Explorer, etc.? Will the backlinks of the old site improve the authority of my domain? Also, keep in mind that I have the 301 redirects pointing to a directory on my new site, not the root page of the new domain. Will the backlinks of the old site help my new domain's authority? In the eyes of Moz I've read, NO. I understand it's just a MOZ metric but from what I understand it also correlates with Google's actual 'authority' metric/method of giving value to a particular domain over another based on the backlinks. How exactly do the backlinks of the old domain benefit my new domain and is there a way to measure this/see the relationship? Thank you for any help you're willing to give!
Link Building | | ninel_P0 -
Link value from high authority domains vs low authority domains. How big is the difference?
Hi Guys. Could you send me in the direction of some quality information on link value. i.e) How much 'link juice' do you get from high authority domains vs low authority domains. Also, I understand the Moz value for DA is logarithmic, not linear. Does this also mean that a link from a site with a really high DA would be exponentially higher value than a site with a low DA. You know....like orders of magnitude better? Cheers in advance, I love you guys 😉 Isaac.
Link Building | | isaac6630 -
Internal Linking Building
I'm launching a new blog for my new website. What's the best way to do internal link building for 3D Scanning? Do I link 3D Scanning to another page on my website or on a different website that has high authority for 3D scanning? Thank You in advance! -Nick
Link Building | | X2Metrology10 -
LInk Building Ideas for Large Site
Hi, I have a very large sized website of about 5 Million Pages. Earlier i used to rank very well with many naturally occurred links, But now, i lost my rankings with numerous Google updates. My content is user generated content and it wont be pure original as my users will post the same on other forums too. I all of my pages rank on #1 page for their keywords. Can anyone suggest me good link building strategy for larger websites as each url will have different keyword, i want all of my urls to be ranked well. Waiting for your replies.
Link Building | | Vegitss0 -
Learning link building
I want to learn from one of the best how to do real link building. I currently outsource this and just aren't sure if they're that good or not. Can you please let me know if Rand is doing any training or presentations on this in L.A or California this year? And if not him maybe someone else you can recommend who's good. Thanks much.
Link Building | | afranklin0