Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Beating a keyword Domain
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
It's one of those domains setup for that keyword only by the looks of it.
The keyword is pretty much their brand term.
-
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.
-
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 ?
-
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.
-
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!
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
-
Lost ranking after domain switch
I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects. I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com). Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?
Technical SEO | | wfm-uk0 -
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
Choosing Focus Keywords
Hello everyone! I am new to the community and I have a question about determining keywords. I have created a blog {LulusLikes.com} to practice my SEO. I have installed the Yoast SEO plugin and I have noticed the plugin always encourages you to choose a different focus keyword. So if my focus keyword is "Dog of the Week" and it's a weekly contest, wouldn't that be my focus keyword each time I had that type of post? How should I choose my focus keyword for that type of post? I hope that makes sense. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Lulus_Likes0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0 -
Does a TM in the keyword have effect?
If I include TM in a keyword string, does this make it another keyword or does Google ignore that? Example: Kentucky Hot Sauce vs Kentucky Hot (TM) sauce. Of course the TM would be done properly via ™ Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Malarowski0 -
How to 301 multiple domain names to a single domain
Hey, I tried to find and answer to this seemingly simple question, but no luck. So, I have one domain name with a website attached to it. I also registered all the other domain names that are similar to it or have different extensions - I want to redirect all the other domain names to my one main domain name without getting penalised by the big G. It looks like this: www.mainsite.com - this is my main domain I also have www.mainsite.com.au, www.mainsite.org, and www.mainsite.org.au which I all want to just redirect to www.mainsite.com I have been told that the best way to do this is a 301 redirect, but to do that you need to make a CNAME for all the other domains that points to www.mainsite.com. My problem is that I cannot seem to create a CNAME record for http://mainsite.com - I have it working for http://www.mainsite.com but not the non www record. What should I be doing differently? Is it just my DNS provider is useless? Thanks, Anthony
Technical SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Outranking a competitor when their domain name is the keyword
Hi I'd just like to ask the opinion of my fellow members here : We are currently ranking second for a very important keyword and would obviously like the top spot on the SERP - the site that is ranking first has the domain name as the keyword phrase(along with a good amount of quality links from a variety of domains) - now I know it is possible to outrank them since I do remember reading about this in one of Rands posts(I think it was the whole white hat black hat one he posted recently) - bascially we have more domain authority, slightly less links but from double the amount of root domains and a higher page authority too! Does having the keyword as your domain make THAT much of a difference when we are(imo) quite close in terms of great content and link profiles(and all the onpage factors) ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DanHill0