Does word order matter for exact match bonus?
-
Hello,
For a two word search does order of the two words matter to get the exact match seo bonus?
For example, would matchexact.com get the same SEO bonus as exactmatch.com?
I Googled many two word searches reversing the word order and I got the exact same search results suggesting order does not matter (yes I am assuming people are just doing a broad search)
Thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Thanks guys. It appears for lower competitive terms it has low/no impact but for more competitive terms it does matter a lot.
-
Though try 'free drug' and 'drug free'. Word order does matter a tad for that one.
-
>I Googled many two word searches reversing the word order and I got the exact same search results suggesting order does not matter
I'd say this is the main factor - sometimes they get treated the same, sometimes differently, depending on the keywords. If your keywords return the same results regardless of order, you should be good with either order.
Keep in mind that the exact match domain (EMD) SEO bonus was reduced by some recent algo updates.
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
-
Optimize for separate words or combined word.
I can't find good answers to this question so I'm asking here. Thanks for any help you can give. Most people, 4 out of 5, search for our product using two separate words, while the trademarked name of the product is one word. Think: CleanCar(tm) vs Clean Car. However our product is a leader in the industry so it would be like searching for perhaps "Play Station" vs "Playstation" if people were looking for a gaming console in general. Google separates them in the search volumes so I am assuming it does not see Clean Car in the same way it sees CleanCar. I (obviously) want to rank as highly as possible in both while keeping brand integrity in mind. Should I SEO for just the CleanCar or both? Perhaps using CleanCar in the title and Clean Car in the description? Does Google distinguish? Thanks! bnew
Algorithm Updates | | mcampanaro0 -
Does it matter? 404 v.s. 302 > Page Not Found
Hey Mozers, What are your thoughts of this situation i'm stuck in all inputs welcome 🙂 I am in the middle of this massive domain migration to a new server. Also we are going to be having a very clean SEO friendly url structure. While I was doing some parsing and cleaning up some old urls I stumbled upon a strange situation on my website. I have a bunch of "dead pages" and they are 302'd to a "page not found" probably a old mistake of one of the past developers. (To clarify the HTTP Status code is not 404) Should I try to fight to get all these "dead pages" a 404 error code or could I just leave the temp redirect 302 > "page not found" ( even though I know for a fact theses pages are not going to turn on again)
Algorithm Updates | | rpaiva0 -
Fetch as Google - removes start words from Meta Title ?? Help!
Hi all, I'm experiencing some strange behaviour with Google Webmaster Tools. I noticed that some of our pages from our ecom site were missing start keywords - I created a template for meta titles that uses Manufacturer - Ref Number - Product Name - Online Shop; all trimmed under 65 chars just in case. To give you an idea, an example meta title looks like:
Algorithm Updates | | bjs2010
Weber 522053 - Electric Barbecue Q 140 Grey - Online Shop The strange behaviour is if I do a "Fetch as Google" in GWT, no problem - I can see it pulls the variables and it's ok. So I click submit to index. Then I do a google site:URL search, to see what it has indexed, and I see the meta description has changed (so I know it's working), but the meta title has been cut so it looks like this:
Electric Barbecue Q 140 Grey - Online Shop So I am confused - why would Google cut off some words at start of meta title? Even after the Fetch as Googlebot looks perfectly ok? I should point out that this method works perfect on our other pages, which are many hundreds - but it's not working on some pages for some weird reason.... Any ideas?0 -
Using a stop word when optimizing pages
I have a page (for a spa) I am trying to fully optimize and, using AdWords have run every conceivable configuration (using Exact Match) to ascertain the optimal phrase to use. Unfortunately, the term which has come up as the 'best' phrase is "spas in XXX" [xxx represents a location]. When reviewing the data, phrases such as "spas XXX" or "spa XXX" doesn't give me an appropriate search volume to warrant optimizing. So, with that said, do I optimize the page without the word "in", and 'hope' we get the search volume for searches using the word "in", or optimize using the stop word? Any thoughts? Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | MarketingAgencyFlorida0 -
301'ing away from an exact match domain.
Hi Moz Community! My website gets just over 50% of its traffic from ranking in the top 3 in over 10 countries for my exact match keyword domain. 80% + from keywords related to the exact match domain. We are now looking at doing a to 301 re-direct to a new domain to start a fresh branding to the site to increase scope and expand. This would involve removing the keyword from the homepage and domain entirely . However. Considering all competitors ranking for our main keyword, have the keyword in their domain as either a subdomain to or in their root domain and in their homepage content, would this make ranking without the keyword in domain & content hard? I have found a very similar example that has done so, so I guess the answer to that question is no its not. about 65-70% of our anchor text on our backlinks is for our domain keyword. Can anyone advise how best to go about maintaining rankings after 301ing or how best to go about 301ing to make sure that we can maintain the rankings for our main keyword! Any advise at all would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | howiex10 -
Undertanding Google's PMD (Partial Matching Domain) policy...
Hi, If your business name contains keywords, is that an issue? Some companies, have keyword based brand names... So what is Google's policy regarding EMD or PMD? What happens when the company name has a keyword in it? If anyone could help clarify, I would appreciate it. Thanks, Ben
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
Should We Switch from Several Exact Match URLs to Subdomains Instead?
We are a company with one product customized for different vertical markets. Our sites are each setup on their own unique domains:
Algorithm Updates | | contactatonce
contactatonce.com (Brand)
autodealerchat.com (Auto Vertical)
apartmentchat.com (Apartment Vertical)
chatforrealestate.com (Real Estate Vertical) We currently rank well on the respective keyword niches including:
- auto dealer chat (exact match), automotive chat, dealer chat
- apartment chat (exact match), property chat, multifamilly chat
- chat for real estate (exact match), real estate chat To simplify the user experience we are considering moving to a single domain and subdomain structure: contactatonce.com
auto.contactatonce.com
apartment.contactatonce.com
realestate.contactatonce.com QUESTIONS:
1. Considering current Google ranking strategies, do we stand to lose keyword related traffic by making this switch?
2. Are there specific examples you can point to where an individual domain and subdomains each ranked high on Google across a variety of different niches? (I'm not talking about Wikipedia, Blogger, Blogspot, Wordpress, Yahoo Answers, etc. which are in their own class, but a small to mid size brand). Thank you,
Aaron0