Isn't unfair that Keyword domain Exactly Match just overpowers every domain and page authority?

[bemcapaz]

Im currently doing a research for a low-medium competitive keyword (SEO Moz Keyword difficult Tool it showed 36% competition, its a one word keyword) in my country. That keyword had a Google AdWords Broad Match of 368.000 searchs and a Google AdWords Exact Match of 33.100 searchs in April.

The currently number one site for that keyword have an exactly match for that keyword, www.KEYWORD.com and nothing else.

Then I ran and advanced report to that keyword and heres the initial result:

This number one site has a domain authority of only 11 and a page authority of 25.

The second site have the following domain name -> www.companynameKEYWORD.com.br (its in Brasil, so theorically and .br should worth more than a .com domain right?)

Anyway the second site have a domain authority of 37 and a page rank authority of 45.

So after this link all the others are like that, www.companynameKEYWORD.com and the domain and page authority is according to how it suposed to be (higher domain and page are ranked better).

The exactly same thing happen when I search for a more long tail of this keyword (wich are 2 words) happen. The exactly match are ranked 1st with a very low page and domian authority while the others come first.

Some more info about that number 1 ranked site-

1. The layout is terrible and not user friendly.
2. The site took more than 10 seconds to load
3. Have not a single inpage SEO optimization.
4. According to alexa the bounce rate is around 50%

Now follows the data from Linkscape data between the 1st and 2nd ranked pages

• Overal Score - 19% x 38%
• Page mozRank - 2.04 x 3.95
• Page mozTrust - 4.92 x 5.45
• External mozRank - 2.04 x 3.95
• Subdomain mozRank - 1.81 x 3.45
• Domains Linkin - 4 x 163
• External Links - 8 x 265

So, looks like that only two things should be 90% of the focus from a SEO perspective. Have an old exactly keyword match domain and youre good to go

Edited 1:

About the linkbacks to each page

The 1st page in rank biggest page authority linking back (dofollow) have an authority of 36 from a domain authority of 49

The 2nd in the rank the highest dofollow linkback have a page authority of 40 and domain of 85

Edit 2:

1st in rank were created in 2000

2nd in rank were created in 2007

[JesusD]

Its totally unfair when done incorrectly. As many of you point there is nothing wrong with having an EMD or Keyword Exact when it has beautiful content, it has a certain brand image, respects the quality guidelines, has a nice social media signal.

But to be honest this isnt the case for most EMD scenarios. Ive seen some horrible stuff when it comes to EMD and i am happy that Google for the most cases is taking action.

I manage multi-languages sites, and ive seen that in other languages, or countries this isnt the case. I hope that Google starts taking action world wide, ASAP. EMD with poor quality or cross links to cover many long tail keywords, should be seriously penalized.

[xoffie]

Notice this becoming less and less of a problem, I don't find it takes much to beat exact match domains tha havent done much optimising. However, if they have, for sure its an advantage.

[InTouchMarketing56]

I noticed that exact keyword domains seems to perform better on Bing than Google. A good way to compare the results is to use the Bings vs Google Firefox plugin and you will see that in many search instances this is the case especially on low volume searches

[EGOL]

I have a domain wwwkeyword4u.co.uk and I have reaped in no benefits from having this in the URL.

I can tell you why... nobody anywhere is searching for "keyword 4 u".

The big benefit is for exact match domains.

[seohive-222720]

Agree

From my point ofview I have a domain wwwkeyword4u.co.uk and I have reaped in no benefits from having this in the URL. Other websites that have less quality content, no SEO, bad backlinks and low trust are ranking better.

I agree that there is something else that has been missed.

I beleive that for e-commerce sites that Google is also monitoring visitors that pucrhase items from a store based on what keyword they searched.  If the transactions are of great volume and conversion that this may play weight.

shiv

[pwpaneuro]

We have an exact match domain and we DON'T rank for our name, yet

Not sure if it's a matter of time or there's something else going on there: http://www.stocktips.com - onpage seo done ok, we did not do any black hat (maybe that's why), trying to get links from good domains...

[dittoeffect]

I have also heard that in the future keywords in the domain will not be as valuable. age is definitely a big factor as well as the age of links.

[toddmumford]

I would disagree with those that say they do not receive a favorable bonus. In competitive verticals we work in, indeed they (still) do. If I were to aggregate data I would suggest that for the most part, with all other conditions being equal, exact keyword domains require less than half of the total inbound links than non exact keyword domains need for the specific targeted keyword.

However, as you move into related and clustered keywords, the exact keyword domain in our research received no additional advantage over other similar urls with keywords in the url (but not exact)

It is unfair? That is best left for you to decide.

[augustos]

Iae cara,

Até aonde eu sei, no Brasil o .com.br não altera tanto os resultados das buscas. Diferentemente do .DE da alemanha que trabalhamos aqui na empresa por exemplo.

Quanto a keyword ser exatamente o domínio, eu acredito que pode funcionar por um período curto, se você ver o post do Rand Fish sobre as alterações de 2011 e também procurar ler sobre o que o dono do google fala a respeito do domínio com as keywords verá que a tendência de keyword no domínio é de cada ver ser menos relevante a busca...

Um exemplo, eu trabalho com uma keyword que tem competição de 79% na ferramenta do SEOMOZ, e está dificil para pegar a primeira página das buscas mesmo com todas as keywords no dominio....

Eu acredito que você nessa keyword não tem tanta competição, e talvez não seja tão importa focar a keyword no domínio, faz sentido?

Você pode também pegar um domínio que as pessoas vão lembrar e ser mais comercial do que a keyword e fazer otimização numa sub-folder do domínio como:  www.vendopao.com.br/pao-frances/ ... Eu acho que pode ser até mais útil ao google dessa forma...

De qualquer forma espero ter ajudado cara.

Abraço

[miloszpekala]

Well you're correct that it doesn't have that many searches for it but incorrect when making a statement that others big sites are not SEOing for it.  Also missing the big picture that this page (as it isn't even a site) with zero content beats out huge sellers of burton snowboards.  
Also this keyword beats out buy burton snowboards in search volume.

Here are examples of sites that actually target this exact keyphrase:
http://www.tactics.com/burton/boards/sale - Title + H1

http://www.specialtysports.com/Burton-snowboards-s/244.htm H1

http://www.gearbuyer.com/bc/burton/snowboarding/snowboards/index.html?on_sale=1&price_range=100  Title and H1

Plus hundreds of "affiliate" sites that use the phrase in titles/body.   We have used affiliate sites as well but I think I would concentrate on buying a specific domain first if possible before going that route from now on.  The good ones are definitely not cheap.

To be honest I think this makes "gaming" rankings almost too easy.  But from what I have seen it it is a top 3 factor.

Another great example is home insurance quotes.  High volume high competition phrase.  $17.44 per click!
#3 is <cite>www.homeinsurancequotes.org! </cite>

Want to beat giants like progressive.com or Geico for that term?  Here is how to do it.  Maybe most SEOs are still in belief that this isn't a big deal anymore but that just makes it easier for me to beat them.

[SteveOllington]

Sounds like you've found yourself a potential goldmine then.

You should go for it... no/low SERPs competition = lots more chance of $$$ for you

Worth a shot I reckon!

[bemcapaz]

Umm, probably i didnt noticed that because in Brazil isn´t a really common thing to see, yet.

If you search for any product you hardly find any blog or a page about the product, you just get direct links to big e-commerce sites product pages wich in some cases barely have any SEO at all.

[SteveOllington]

Tonnes of that going on already with affiliate sites. i.e. product codes even... I've got some for TV's but even then there's competition as others are doing it too.

[SteveOllington]

Same, I get a Google sites app page with no content.

But then that doesn't exactly seem like much of a competitive keyphrase... I wouldn't have thought many sites would be SEOing for it. I mean, "Buy Burton Snowboards" yeah, but coming 5th for something with very little competition for having exact match only... well it makes sense I guess. If there were other sites working on those words, then I doubt it would be there.

Searches are pretty low...

49emj.png

[bemcapaz]

That is indeed mind blowing.

If we think about that for a sec, with the current algo and the exact domain match power, would be a great strategy for, lets  say, an e-commerce to boost their most lucrative/hard to rank products.

Buy a domain that have that product exactly keyword match and create a hotsites, not just a gateway to redirect to the e-commerce, but a real hotsite with 2 or 3 pages with good content and info about the product and then a a option to "Buy it Now" that would point straigh to the product on the e-commerce.

A few backlinks and you would be ranking in the top for that product, just like the example you used. Some backlinks and that page could be ranking higher than the Manufacturer site.

[EGOL]

Interesting... very strange... when I click through the listing in the SERPs, I land on this  URL.....

https://sites.google.com/a/burtonsnowboardsonsale.com/sites/system/app/pages/meta/domainWelcome

Anybody know what's happening here?

[miloszpekala]

I still think exact match keyword domain is more powerful than the most recent consensus.  I originally have thought that they (exact match domains) get the boost because of the natural anchor text but I have an example that recently blew me away.

Do a search for Burton snowboards on sale - or - B****urton snowboards sale

#5 result is www.burtonsnowboardsonsale.com and it has ZERO on-page or off-page factors EXCEPT domain keyword match.  No incoming links not even a functional page.

I have seen the video where Matt Cutts has stated about editing their algo so that this factor is not that important but obviously it hasn't happened yet.

That's my humble opinion.

[bemcapaz]

Thats a very interesting point. A combination of exact domain/keyword + title keyword + severall inbound anchor text with keyword would make a really tough domain to beat on SERPs

[Websensejim]

Often the reason why keyword domains are kicking ass is because most of their inbound links use the URL - which just happens to be the exact keyword match. It's old fashioned anchor text at work, not so much special boost for the domain name.

[bemcapaz]

Agreed, that post was really usefull. And in this niche i dont think will be hard to reach the 2nd place in the ranks

The brindes keyword have a lot of possible combinations and people tend to use those combinations (like the one you just used, "brindes promocionais").

Since the brinde keywords tend to be always used i had put my efforts on it alone, the best part is that its already started showing results for those broad matchs (but for brindes, so far, nothing )

[XSMedia]

TBH if the first place ranked site gives a bad user experience, as you mentioned, then a lot of people who go to that site first will click back out and move on to the second placed site instead.

User experience plays a large part in the number of people who come to your site. I know for a fact that people come to pages of my site that are ranked in 8th place on Google.

Based on information that has been published about 'hardly anyone will visit your site if it's ranked in the lower half of the first page' then the fact that your site is offering information that the user is actually looking for must play a factor in the number of visitors that come to your site.

Again, we can use the TITLE tag to attract visitors to our sites as I'm sure people must use that info to make a decision about whether to visit your site or not.

So if you can only get  #2 ranking than make sure you use the TITLE tag to snag the traffic to your site rather then the #1 ranked site.

[RyanPurkey]

It's megaman with his old school yellow face...;)  Or else MS Paint didn't have his closer skin colour.

One difference that's noticable is the title tag of the #1 site.  It's only keyword is "brindes". Do a search for _"_brindes promocionais" and the SERPs change dramatically.  With the amount of material you can offer in that vertical it seems like you'll have better success targeting the long tail, both in sales and visits.  Still, per EGOL's recent discussion on title tags, you can likely market yourself better than brindes.com and get better clicks than them.

[bemcapaz]

Actually the same thing hapenned to me a while ago. Once i found all the extensions i need it in chrome completly stoped using Firefox

[SteveOllington]

Okay, that's a considerable difference... but then 2007 is still 4 years old so you'd kind of assume it would have reached a plateau of trust based on age by now if there is one.

I'm guessing there's a fair amount of this issue resting in that age difference though.

[bemcapaz]

Just checked the domain age of both links

The 1st in the rank was registered in 2000, the 2nd in 2007

It kinda looks like the exactly same situation didnt it?

About the traffic metric.. i think that would be kinda easy to manipulate isnt it?

Anyway, google probly would scalate to measure the user experience of the site. Otherwise no new site with 100 visitors would stand a change against some competitor with 10 thousand visitors.

[SteveOllington]

lol, worrying at the same time though I think. Of course there's always bound to be other factors unknown... but if CTR and traffic data is indeed playing a much larger part now, the sites already up there will always have a big advantage, and big brands or companies with large marketing budgets will once again trample over the little guy.

[EGOL]

Thanks Stevev!  Interesting information!

[SteveOllington]

Ah didn't know they had one for Chrome too... I can stop switching to FF for it then (Anyone else find FF slow and cumbersome since 3.6?).

Nice one

[SteveOllington]

Yeah there was another post somewhere else on this forum a few days ago discussing that. Plus the 2011 Ranking Factors showed it as down on 2009 (and it was done with SERPs from after the update wasn't it?) plus most people estimating that it will sink in value more in future.

I think there will undoubtedly always be at least some bonus for it though.

We created a site with exact match a while ago and SEO'd it top (it was a new word which doesn't actually exist but the product does and media mentions made it started getting searched under that word).

Anyway, three months later we made another site with totally different design, content, etc... and it was exact match again but with a hyphen in.

The second site has had far, far more SEO and shows up with much higher MozRank, etc... loads more links and stuff. Yet the second site cannot take the place of the first site for position one. Bearing in mind there's only three months difference in age we're still confused by it. We came to the conclusion that there must be some factor of it being the first and original site, mixed with some level of traffic and click through data.

[bemcapaz]

Thanks, didnt know about this addon, im currently downloading the version for google chrome

[bemcapaz]

Well if you want to take a look the keyword im focusing is "brindes" and the two domains are http:///www.brindes.com and http://www.brindesgrafica.com.br (the brindesgrafica.com.br is, at least, the domain that showed the most times as 2nd in rank)

Anyway, the term has many daily searchs so even the 1st spot being hard to achive is already worth to be on top 10 only, and, like I said, isn't really competitive keyword (36%).

PS.: Its megaman with a blond beard in your profile pic? ˆˆ

[SteveOllington]

Try the Google Global Firefox Add-on for stuff like that, it's nice and fast to use.

[EGOL]

I am willing to bet a month's pay that google devalued them a notch or two just a few weeks ago.  I saw lots of them slip in the SERPs that I watch.  Domainers should be complaining that their investments have been tarnished.

[SteveOllington]

EGOL: "But they are not the magic bullet that some people think that they are.  Get to work on your SEO"

Ah thank you, you just explained in one short sentence what I just practically wrote a novel trying to say lol. I do tend to ramble a bit much.

[SteveOllington]

It's really not as simple as that. Everybody has known for a long, long time that there's an exact match bonus for domains... but the reason this thread started is because of Bemcapaz's unusual findings which don't really match what's considered as the normal amount of value given to an exact match bonus. I'm assuming Bemcapaz found it as strange as the rest of us, hence posted it up for all to see. If it were actually as simple as just getting an exact match domain then there would be no SEO industry, we would have no jobs, and there'd be no point in us having learnt all of the stuff we have done, and continue to do. Check out the SEOmoz search ranking factors and you'll see there's a hell of a lot more involved.

For example, if like you said you could just build multiple sites with exact match domains (I'm assuming rarer, niche market keywords here and then a mixture of different TLD's and domains with/without hyphens, etc...?) Then we'd see much more of that in the SERP's. If we Google stuff we'd just see loads of exact match domains coming up top... which we don't. It would be especially difficult if you were to own all of those sites too, since you'd need them all registered to different people and hosted in different places, with different content and products on each, etc... In other words, you'd need to do a lot more to try to get it past Google than just having a bunch of exact match keywords.

[EGOL]

ha!  I like KW domains.

If you want to rank for "baloney" then you should go out and buy baloney.com.  That will make you the baloney man for sure.

And if you are dedicated enough to spend what it takes to buy the keyword.com for your niche then you deserve a boost in the SERPs.   If you are not willing to spend what it takes then stop complainin'.

Honestly... I own a few KW domains and admit that they do give a little boost in the SERPs.  But they are not the magic bullet that some people think that they are.  Get to work on your SEO.  You can beat them.

[joemas99]

So you found out that too! Just develop other sites using the key word you want to rank for. You will have to rank it well as you do your main site page, and watch for duplicate content. You will also lose the value of the age of your site, but all things considered, the exact keywords as the URL kicks butt. Don't listen to anyone who disagrees!

[RyanPurkey]

Is it TUDOBEM.com?  Kidding.    I think since it's such a succinct keyword there is more weight being given to navigational searches in this instance. Plus, the domain name itself likely has a high value which makes it difficult to just purchase and rank from a spam point of view. Without specifics though it seems like you've found an outlier example that Google is weighting strongly for navigational reasons. Your best bet is to focus on other related keywords that drive visits and the competing domain doesn't rank.  If there are advertising slots available on the top domain you may be able to target some of those as well, depending.  Again, hard to say without a better idea on what terms and domains are at play.

[SteveOllington]

I don't know then, I don't have any answer but if exact match domains had any where near that kind of influence then spam sites would be all we'd see at the top of the serps everywhere.

I think you'd need to run the same test on some different keywords and sites before accepting the outcome here.

[bemcapaz]

That would be the case like the sex.com page?

The keyword is indeed kinda common here, but people in Brazil commonly type more the .com.br than the .com address.. so it kinda makes me think that would be the case if the page were www.KEYWORD.com.br

Anyway i gave a try trying google.com or google.com.br the results were exactly the same, also change the location of the search to the entiry country. Exactly same results

An even broader search with the Anonymous navigation on chrome (wich dont register ur preferences nor country) ended up bring me results from Portugal, so it wasnt really helpfull, hehe

[RyanPurkey]

Are the results the same when searching via google.com and google.com.br?  Since it's a one word keyword search, the incidence of domain navigation is going to be fairly high, i.e. people typing in KEYWORD or KEYWORD.com into Google search when they're trying to navigate to that site.  Even if this isn't a popular site it's a common enough phenomenon--especially on such a direct keyword--that the exact domain matching may have more strength in this specific case.

[bemcapaz]

But theres only two things that comes to my mind that I had not covered, the keyword matched domain and domain age.

For a second i tought that would be some linkback from a high valuable site but the biggest page authority linking back to the first page is a page authority of 36 from a domain authority of 49

The 2nd in the rank the highest dofollow linkback have a page authority of 40 and domain of 85

[SteveOllington]

Nah, exact match keyworded domain isn't that much of a big bonus. There has to be more to it than that somewhere.