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
-
(Need helps here!) Can homepage and other internal pages (services) rank high together on Google?
Hi Moz community, Recently I am working on our website's SEO. Our company is a marketing agency. We provide general marketing services and also web design. Here is the content of our homepage and internal pages (specific services). Homepage (marketing agency) Internal page #1 (XXX marketing service) Internal page #2 (YYY marketing service) Internal page #3 (web design) I suggest to my supervisor that we could make some improvement and optimize different keywords for these 4 pages, respectively (homepage, internal page #1 #2 #3). However, my supervisor holds a different point of view that homepage and internal page#3 cannot rank both high for their own keywords because web design is not as related to marketing. So I did some research and look for some top-ranking marketing agency guys who also offer web design. I found their internal pages about web design service rank pretty bad for their own web-design-related keywords. Here are my thoughts and guess (please correct me if I am wrong): Google takes everything into account and deems web design to be kind of irrelevant content to the website, so the internal page for web design will not rank high. The internal page has so much lower power than the homepage so it got outranked by the guys whose homepages are all about web design and development. My question is: In above case, can homepage and other internal pages (our services) all rank high together for their own keywords? I know what I wrote is kind of confusing...But I really need help here and want to solve this problem badly. Really appreciate any help!! Thank you in advance! Best, Raymond
Competitive Research | | Raymondlee0 -
How can I find out the exact match visitors for a competitor's website?
Hi, I'm trying to find a way of finding out the estimated number of exact match visitors that a competitor's website has got. I know that SEO agencies can find this out, and there must be a way of doing this for myself. Thanks
Competitive Research | | MThacker0 -
How to approach link building/content in my weight loss coaching niche in a large scale way
Hello, I run a weight loss coaching business, bobweikel.com that is in it's early stages. I'm still working on making it graphically appealing I want to increase my number of national clients - it's coaching done over the phone or skype. I'm needing help analyzing my niche, specifically keywords, article content topics, link building tactics. I want to put a lot of time into it. Eventually I want to scale it up and hire other weight loss coaches and even SEO help. How do I get this dream going through gaining national clients online? There's not much traffic locally. I'm enough of an authority that, with enough time, I can create kickass content on the topics of weight loss and also the topic of NLP (NLP is the type of coaching I do, but it's little known) I'd like to add 5 best-of-the-web articles and a blog. Looking for advice. Would like to dream big. Tools I normally use (though I'm open to anything): OSE, Link Prospector, Excel Pivot Tables, Buzzstream, iPhone 5S video camera with tripod, youtube video embed, keyword discovery
Competitive Research | | BobGW0 -
Decent domain authority score with no links other than their own linking back to them. How is that possible?
Hello everyone I just spotted the following 'abnormality' while doing a little link analysis with Open Search Explorer. I checked out a site that has a domain authority score of 35, when the only domain linking back to them is ''the site itself'. They happen to have a domain authority of 35 themselves, but no other links pointing back to them apart from their own and yet they have the same authority as other sites with twice the amount of content and an actual backlink profile. How is that possible? 🙂 Links and authority scores, stills baffles me...
Competitive Research | | Hermski0 -
Page Linking Root Domains and Root Domain Linking Root Domains?
hi, i want to know if Page Linking Root Domains is less and Root Domain Linking Root Domains is higher in number, at that time your keyword is highly competitive or less competitive? for example if a keyword having this information:- Page Authority is:-83 Page Linking Root Domains:- 295 Domain Authority is :- 94 Root Domain Linking Root Domains:- 42,399 which point is more important to consider? if you want to bring your keyword on the first page of the Google ?
Competitive Research | | parallelseo0 -
Can you track multiple domains with the same key words and not use up your keyword limit?
I have roughly 7 domains that I am trying to monitor with the same set of keywords. Is there a way to do this without using up your keyword limit. They are the same words just different sites.
Competitive Research | | sixthcents0 -
When providing search results for SEO purposes to you use the exact results in Google Adwords
Hi Mozzers Just quick question When an SEO company are supplying their testimonials for example
Competitive Research | | mcliddy
Keyword Search Term has 33,000 visits a month
Keywords is in position 1 but the search volume they are showing is broad, i was always brought up to do research on exact results unless im using the reserch for a PPC campagin? Has anyone got any ideas?? should it be braod im looking at or exact?? Many Thanks Matt0 -
Fast Question - domain value
For example, If I have a domain: dvdumwandeln.com , and I want to focus in the bellow keywords: dvd umwandeln , dvd in avi umwandeln , and so on... I develop a IA like this: www.dvdumwandeln.com/dvd-in-avi-umwandeln/ . Here the domain will give any value to the keyword dvd in avi umwandeln ( if we have the domain dvdumwandeln.com )? I hope I did explain it well... If I do it, its a good SEO pratice, is this going to really boost my keywords? Thanks for trying to understand my explaination
Competitive Research | | augustos0