Does my website have an Exact Match Domain or a "brand"?
-
I'd like to get some input from the Moz community about the domain name I use on a travel website I run as a hobby. I got heavily whacked by an update in September 2012 which some have said was because my site is an EMD. Others said it was because I had poor quality backlinks (but in fact I hardly had any). With the benefit of hindsight, I'd love to know what really happened.
The website is www.traveltipsthailand.com (now www.asiantraveltips.com) and the "brand" I use is "Travel Tips Thailand.The traffic penalty I incurred was around 80% and despite a LOT of work overhauling the site and trying to build some better quality links, I don't believe it has really recovered much. It ranks for non-competitive, low-traffic key phrases (which means it's not penalised as such), but struggles to rank anywhere meaningful on any phrase likely to drive traffic to the site.
At this stage I really just want to know whether to persist with the site (it's heartbreaking, to be honest) or drop it an build something new from scratch. I monitor the site's progress using Moz Pro, so I can see all the search ranking, authority and backlink data.
-
Hey Tony,
Thanks for following up like this. I think Asian Travel Tips is a much better, more brandable, domain than the other ones you have listed.
Google may tell you that you don't have a "manual action" while you may have an algorithmic one. The people on the team you contacted (at the time it was called Google Webmaster Tools, but whatever they're calling it this week) probably have no way of knowing whether your site has an algorithmic penalty, or is being given lower rankings algorithmically.
Generally speaking, fewer domains is better than lots of more niche microsites if they're all part of the same theme - in this case travel to Asia. Here is a post about this concept:
https://moz.com/blog/2-become-1-merging-two-domains-made-us-an-seo-killingHere's what Rand has to say about it:
https://moz.com/blog/rebrand-or-redirect-my-site-consolidate-multiple-sites-whiteboard-fridayI had a look at the screenshot you sent and the site looks good. Keep posting unique, useful content about traveling throughout Asia and you should be fine. I like that you're leveraging the Trip Adviser connection, as it adds trust for the user.
Good luck!
-
For anyone who stumbles across this post and wonders what happened, I did what I suggested above and scrapped the old domain, broadened the site content to South East Asian destinations and registered a new domain http://www.travelnasia.com. I have recently changed that to http://www.asiantraveltips.com which I had sat on all the time worrying about penalties if I used it. So far so good. Traffic from Google these days is much higher than for the old site so I must have done something right.
-
What's really bizarre, Gary, is that Moz reports that I rank at 16 for "traveltipsthailand" on Google US, but looking at it today I couldn't find an entry anywhere in the top 100.
I have another connected domain "asiantraveltips.com" which also does not rank but has not manual penalty notifications. I say connected, because they cross-link to each other.
I know it's not a server-wide penalty or C-block action because I have other sites on the same shared hosting account that are ranking OK and holding PR2 or PR3.
My only recourse now would seem to be to migrate all my Asian travel content onto a new domain, kill the old ones and all links and start again. It really is getting that desperate. But I'd still like to know what I did wrong to deserve this mistreatment by Google. FYI I rank bloody well on Bing, for what that's worth. On the phrase "traveltipsthailand" I rank #1 and on "travel tips thailand" I rank #2 and on "thailand travel blog" (my other brand term) I rank #5. So it's purely Google that hates me.
-
Thanks Richard, I will look for your direct reply.
-
Hi Gary, that's been my concern all along. I have actually asked Google twice about penalties and both times they have responded that I have none.I am running Cloudflare CDN on my site to speed it up, but having trouble with some critical plugins (like Wordpress SEO) when I run full compression. Still tweaking. My links are mostly "travel tips thailand" or "thailand travel blog" and I don't really rank for either. But I do rank well for my domain name.
-
It concerns me that doing searches for snippits of text on your site in Google, show much weaker sites first.
Such as "We love to visit Thailand when ever we can and we always"
and that you do not rank for "traveltipsthailand" as one word. this screams penalty when you see other sites like statistic sites ranking. Yours is 83rd!
Can you confirm you have checked Webmaster Tools for any alerts or warnings?
If your link building efforts have been based on those words there is a good chance you are being devalued for them, but to me something more serious is going on.
Not that it should be an issue related, but I do find your website is a little slow to load than most.
-
Well after a quick look, your links are pretty weak. You have a lot of ground to cover to get back to your original rankings but it should be do-able since you have a pretty strong domain name and age.
I will send you a PM with a little more info
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
-
Redirecting Old Websites to New Websites
Hi Everyone, We are about to take down a number of websites in favour of a new singular B2B hub and would be looking to redirect all of these sites to the new home. For SEO purposes, what would be the best way to do this? Due to the difference in setups and scale of the site, it would be difficult to correctly match up each page to page between the sites for individual 301 redirects. Could someone advise on the best plan of action? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chbiz0 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
Duplicate content across similar computer "models" and how to properly handle it.
I run a website that revolves around a niche rugged computer market. There are several "main" models for each computer that also has several (300-400) "sub" models that only vary by specifications for each model. My problem is I can't really consolidate each model to one product page to avoid duplicate content. To have something like a drop down list would be massive and confusing to the customer when they could just search the model they needed. Also I would say 80-90% of the market searches for a specific model when they go to purchase or in Google. A lot of our customers are city government, fire departments, police departments etc. they get a list of approved models and purchase off that they don't really search by specs or "configure" a model so each model number having a chance to rank is important. Currently we have all models in each sub category rel=canonical back to the main category page for that model. Is there a better way to go about this? Example page you can see how there are several models all product descriptions are the same they only vary by model writing a unique description for each one is an unrealistic possibility for us. Any suggestions on this would be appreciated I keep going back on forth on what the correct solution would be.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | The_Rugged_Store0 -
I'm a newb, built a website with Wix want to redirect it to a domain I own, but am reading that Wix is bad for this
Hi, I am building this site for my boss http://charlesfridmanpr.wix.com/real-estate and am still working on it. I'm getting close to the stage where I want to redirect it to the URL we want to use, but in reading these forums, it says that because all of subpages (?) have a # in them, they will not be read or indexed by google. I am very new to this, and while it may not look like it, the website has taken me quite a while to design. Is there a way to fix this? We want to appear high up for a non competitive keyword. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charlesfridmanpr0 -
Where the "fudge-nuggets" are my internal links?
Ok, so... Google Webmaster Tools Internal Links are not showing any links to my site's homepage. I only link to the homepage by wrapping the logo with the link throughout the site. Does Google need these to be text links to show them? [/](<a class=)" title="Kona Coffee">![](<a class=)http://1s93mbet6ccj5zkm31703gqj8.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/kona-coffee-1.png" alt="Kona Coffee"/> Site is here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AhlerManagement
http://goo.gl/4C8GKc Could CDN image source be affecting it? Lost... please help!0 -
What is a "good" dwell time?
I know there isn't any official documentation from Google about exact number of seconds a user should spend on a site, but does anyone have any case studies that looks at what might be a good "dwell time" to shoot for? We're looking on integrating an exact time on site into or Google Analytics metrics to count as a 'non-bounce'--so, for example, if a user spends 45 seconds on an article, then, we wouldn't count it as a bounce, since the reader likely read through all the content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Rel="external" What affect if any does this have on SEO
When building Anchor text links what affect if any does rel="external" have on inlinks placed to your site. Thanks, Kjay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0 -
No longer to be found for "certain" keywords.
I'd like to see if anyone could potentially shade a light on this rather strange scenario: Basically yesterday I noticed that we are no longer to be found for 'certain' keywords that we had page 2-3 ranking. Yet, for other keywords we still appear on page 2-3. These keywords are very competitive and our rankings has constantly improved in the course of 5-6 months. Now my question is that what could or may have contributed to the fact that for only some keywords we are no longer to be found? Another question is, can Google remove you from their SERPs for certain keywords 'only'? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | micfo
Maximilian.0