Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. Exact Domain Match does it help or distract?

    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.

    Exact Domain Match does it help or distract?

    Link Building
    4
    7
    980
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Cfarcher
      Cfarcher last edited by

      Does owning / buying an exact domain match help or not necessary?

      For example our main website ranks for nearly 14,800 Keywords but one KW we are trying to get in the top spot for we are currently at the bottom of page #1. We do see an exact domain match available so we purchased it but i don't know if it would actually help us or distract us.

      I was thinking we could create an article about the keyword on that exact domain then do some on page seo and back linking. But would that be more of a distraction VS. just focusing on getting more high quality back links to the main website we have ranked on Page 1 at the bottom?

      Any ideas or benefits to use an exact domain match to help boost also?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • sarahwalsh
        sarahwalsh last edited by

        We see this quite often; sometimes, an exact match domain will rank much higher than websites that seem to have better organic SEO.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BlueprintMarketing
          BlueprintMarketing last edited by

          I don’t think it will do much. Unless you’re current  domain is really no doing well.

          It would need constant content to rank well.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Cfarcher
            Cfarcher last edited by

            The keyword is Multiple Listing Service. The domain we purchased is multiplelistingservice.com  do you think we should write one article based around the keywords Multiple Listing Service then have internal links that point back to our main website that is already ranked for this KW?

            or will that not do much? As multiplelistingservice.com is a new domain with no domain authority or links so even though its an exact match its not going to pass along much Link Juice .

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BlueprintMarketing
              BlueprintMarketing last edited by

              They matter a little bit but only for that one keyword if you have a great brand it is much better for you to use that brand name. Recently it seems Google is giving less and less attention to exact match domains I would not rush out and buy one.

              Will be creating a doorway page and even if it ranks number one you'll have to put a lot of good content into it not just by the domain

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Cfarcher
                Cfarcher last edited by

                I haven't looked at the age of the domain or if it was used. I have a feeling it is a fresh domain that wasn't used for anything.

                But I'm trying to weigh out if we should create content, an article on that domain based around that exact keyword then do backlinking OR if we should just get more anchored text back links to our main page.   or if we have any other options to use an exact domain match to help us rank either that domain or our main domain for the KW ya know?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Optimal_Strategies
                  Optimal_Strategies last edited by

                  Hi,

                  Exact keyword match in case of domain is always a good thing, however I wouldn't personally be able to predict if steps mentioned by you will help you rank for this KW for one particular reason. The reason is links - their quality and numbers. Also, what's the domain age? Did you check "Wayback machine"? If you didn't then have a look what was domain previously used for. Exact match is not everything now with more and more experts stating that you have to have good mixture of exact keyword match and url's. Hope that helps.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • zeitnot

                    What is the exact difference between guest post and paid links?

                    guest blog posting paid links

                    What is the exact difference between guest post and paid links?

                    Link Building | | zeitnot
                    0
                  • Sindre

                    My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?

                    Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
                    theglobe.co.za
                    www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?

                    Link Building | | Sindre
                    3
                  • Leads.Bz

                    I just uncovered a massive 500+ domain PBN linking to competitors

                    As the title, some competitors I've been watching are using a PBN they (or their agency) have built. I'm looking to get some discussion on how you approach situations like this - do you just report all of the domains to Google and pray they do something? There are 4 sites I'm looking at, all competing in the same niche with very similar websites (different branding and content, but essentially the same pages). I thought all were related, but after Excel-ing all the domains to see which overlap I've found that there's several sets; PBN 1 covers 117 domains that link to competitors A, B & C. Signaling to me that these are owned by the same person. PBN 2 links together B & C with 30 domains, PBN 3 is just C with 40 domains. PBN 4 is just B with 105 domains. PBN 5 is just A with 10 domains. PBN 6 is D by itself with more than 340 domains. Signaling to me that this one probably isn't owned by the same person. It looks like new domains are added to these PBNs every week and this has been going on for quite some time. Now, I'm fully against use of PBNs that don't use authentic websites that provide value, and I can't find any of these sites that aren't just a basic WP template with a single-word text logo followed by spun content. This is a goldmine, because according to Ahrefs these sites are pulling in well over 500,000 monthly visitors between them, and these links make up the majority of each site's link profile. If these networks were to crumble, that would open up a big opportunity for more authentic sites to rank well. How would you recommend to tackle this? Do I find example URLs and write reports for each of the 500+ domains or are there better ways of working through this?

                    Link Building | | Leads.Bz
                    0
                  • asbchris

                    Backlinks from ads on parked domains? Is this possible?

                    Hello Moz Friends, So as I was researching some competitive backlinks and I noticed a lot of backlinks that a clients competitor has are on parked domains and they appear to be google ads from some point. You know the pages that this page no longer exists, or hey do you want to buy this domain? and it has like 6 google ads on it? Yep those pages. My clients industry is construction and their competitor has links from zombie websites, foreign, websites and more. But the links are no longer on the page. Like when it was crawled, their ad was showing. Does this make any sense and is it usually temporary? Thank you for your thoughts friends!

                    Link Building | | asbchris
                    0
                  • ganapro

                    Why is my domain authority so low?

                    Hello, a couple of years ago I started publishing on my site more than 10 posts a day of content that no one else had. For this reason, my competitors started paraphrasing my content without giving proper attribution, and they ranked better in Google. That's why I realized that apart from creating content I had to work on my SEO, so I started to get some backlinks, most of them via contests on blogs. I am getting about 1 high quality link from PR2, PR3 or PR4 blogs each week. According to Open Site Explorer, I have 20 root domain links (200 total links). In reality I have more backlinks but they don't show up (they do show up in Ahrefs, about 50 root domains). To my surprise, I only have 15 Domain Authority. This is the most evident example, take a look at this screenshot: http://imgur.com/dFk2rkx My website is on the far left, two of my competitors on the right. As you can see I win every category except total links and the most important, domain authority. Are total links that important for Domain authority, even if 99% are internal? By the way, I also have more posts than these guys, I don't know why the report says otherwise. Why is the site on the right ranking so high? The same thing happens with the rest of my competitors, they have a lot of low quality links from "lists of domain sites" and in general a lot of very spammy links. According to what I have been reading, my good quality links should be more helpful than my competitors'  spammy links, which should in fact affect them. So what is going on? I have no idea if I'm doing things right. Why is my domain authority so low? Thanks for your help. dFk2rkx

                    Link Building | | ganapro
                    0
                  • BobAnderson

                    A few questions I need help with and would appreciate any help.

                    I am currently building links to our website via estalished blogs ect (2+ years old), As far as I understand even if they are unrelated to what we do (print) as long as the post is about print the link should offer some value is this correct? Other questions I have which I would greatly appreciate advice in are as follows........ (1) Do charity websites or company websites with link pages ( about5-10 other links) or links / logo's on the front page offer value even on unrelated sites? (2) What happens if 80% of the link building I am doing comes from blogs? (3) If I have links that are clearly spam that have been built to our site can they be damaging our potential to rank and how can I remove them as I have tried to contact the relevant parties but fear pressing the button on the google tool may harm our site should I? (4) If I have a page that genuinely has a lot of mentions of a keyword (not so much the money keyword but part such as wanting to rank for pool table but end up with the different versions of keywords having table mentioned 5 - 10% of the time). Thank you for your time.

                    Link Building | | BobAnderson
                    0
                  • ArtiKalra

                    Linking to root domain or index page

                    While link building, should I link to index page of my website i.e www.mydomainname.com/index.html or should I link to root domain i.e www.mydomainname,com Also I see duplicate title error for index page and root domain in error statistic. How can I get rid of this.

                    Link Building | | ArtiKalra
                    0
                  • GardenBeet

                    Inbound links from porn sites into a professional business services site - remove help?

                    The website in question was hacked four years ago and there was porn on the servers. It was used as a peer to peer torrent streamer.  The images were deleted. We have just found inappropriate inward bound links (with great link juice!!)  - how can we remove these links - or should we? any advice would be appreciated thanks

                    Link Building | | GardenBeet
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.