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Beating a keyword Domain
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Has anyone here managed to beat a keyword/exact match domain to top spot?
I am currently second and wondering if it is worth the time and effort to knock it off the top spot. How hard is it to get these very annoyingly favoured domains off 1st?
Any help and advice much appreciated.
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Keyword domains used to be a lot more powerful than they are right now. Based upon watching a lot of their rankings, I believe that Google turned down their value in early 2011 - shortly after Matt Cutts said that their value would likely be turned down. Maybe they will do that again, I don't know.
I agree that some of these sites rank well with very little content and poor user experience. That generally occurs where competition is rather low in Google or where it is low to moderate in Bing. Where competition is high a domain only makes a fractional contribution to the rankings. So when you see them ranking well for highly competitive terms they are doing the same type of SEO as any other site with poor onsite assets.
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Thankyou for the reply.
Forgive me if i am a little unsympathetic but time after time i see keyword domains ranking for huge terms but the site itself offers very little in terms of quality content and user experience.
Yes it is annoying to many online search marketers who try very hard and provide natural quality content to be out ranked by a keyword domain because a particular search engine has a bias towards exact match.
No offence but in my opinion the sooner we see keyword domains getting treated the same as any - the sooner we will see a better quality of results.
Forgive me if you are one of the people who produce quality sites on your keyword domain, i respect you if you do.
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I own several keyword domains. Some of them have top rankings for their exact match query and some of them don't. There is no special formula for beating them. Just compete against them as you would any other domain.
If you ask me the bigger problem is google giving easy top rankings to weak content on ehow, about, wikipedia and other powerful sites.
How hard is it to get these very annoyingly favoured domains off 1st?
This really seems to bother you. But if you turn that around you would consider them to be a huge asset. So, maybe you should just go out and buy one. Find the guy who owns one and ask "what will it take for you to sell it to me?"... or hire a pro to do that for you. I've done it a few times and am happy with most of the results. They seem to produce a higher conversion rate too.
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It's one of those domains setup for that keyword only by the looks of it.
The keyword is pretty much their brand term.
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It really depends on how competitive the keyword is and how strong your competitor is aside from just the exact match aspect. Of course it's possible to beat an exact match domain, and these will probably hold less and less value by Google in the future.
Overall, I would say that fact that it's an exact match domain doesn't change much of anything for me in terms of if it can be outranked. Looking at all the factors holistically is much more important.
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Social Media presence has been actively influencing the SERPS. I have seen the impact both on local as well as global search. Even if the links from those websites are nofollowed or are not links at all, just URL mentions (or citations) they help. So I would just analyze their backlink profile and get better links. Also, are you outranking them for other keywords, keyword variants and other long tail keywords which are essentially beyond their exact match domain? How is your Domain Strength and Page Strength vs them ?
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Thankyou for the reply.
One of our big competitors has a huge youtube presence. I alwayus wondered how much of an affect having an active youtube channel can have. What do you think to that?
Thankyou for your advice.
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Just because the top site is an exact match doesn't mean you can't dislodge them from their #1 spot.
Without knowing all that you have done for your site, the best advice I can give is to look at what they are doing, and then think about other ways to beat them. For the sake of this discussion, let's say that they have a great youtube channel and are very active on twitter. First, you will have to make sure you have a presence on those two sites as well.
Then, you need to take it to the next level - make sure you have a Pinterest, LinkedIn, FB, StumbleUpon, reddit and delicious accounts. Make sure you have the google +1 button on your site and a Google plus page where you link back to your site from.
Simply put, you will have to do more than them in order to take the top spot.
In regards to if it's worth it or not, only you can determine that.
Good luck!
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