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.
How to Beat Exact Match Domains
-
Hi all,
Has anyone got any particular methods for beating exact match domains in the SERP's?
I've got a stronger link profile than the 7 results ranking above me, but cant seem to get anywhere in the SERP.
I'm thinking:
-
links with keyword anchor text
-
aggressive on page optimisation
-
more links
Any ideas/experiences you've had would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
James
-
-
fair point
-
Cool, thanks for the detailed response. Makes a lot of sense. J
-
Lots of people ask... how do I beat exact match domains... how do I beat spammy links... how do I beat the link buyers.... how do I beat...
Just get in there and build great content on a great site and you will defeat all of these "competitors of the month".
-
We've had some pretty good success in beating exact match and partial match domains in the SERPs. I don't think I could attribute it back to any one thing that we did, but here is something that we did:
We aggressively pursued many exact-match or near-exact anchor text links from a number of websites directly to the page we wanted to rank. Your link profile may already be stronger than theirs, but it needs to be even stronger. This is pretty tough - When I look at our stats vs the exact match domains that are still page 1 but now lower on page 1, they have very few inbound links. Below is a screenshot from page 1 of Google for "marketing automation".
I know OSE hasn't crawled a lot of inbound links for this page or some of our competitors, but you can see the rough impact. We have a DA of 86. They have an 11. You might not think they would even be in the same ballpark as the other domains ranking for this term, but Google loves exact match domains, at least for now.
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
-
linking domain issues
Hello guys. I am having issues with my linking domains. These domains are made outside of my website. I have tried to disavow these links but not able to do it. These are mostly from google redirects links. Here is the```
Link Building | | Rom1988z
code_text0 -
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
Link Building | | Sindre
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?3 -
Redirects affect on page and domain authority
Hi - excuse me if this is stupid question but I'm rather new to this. Currently the PA for the home page is 16 and the DA 28 and I have some concerns that my efforts are being diluted. When I use OSE on www.sassandgrace.co.uk I get different link results to sassandgrace.co.uk but there is a redirect in place to sassandgrace.co.uk and cannot run a crawl report, for example, on www.sassandgrace.co.uk. The PA and DA are identical for each but the number of links different With a smallish number of links pointing to each but with a redirect in place, am I losing some of the effect or is having the redirect in place giving me all the credit for links to both addresses? Thanks
Link Building | | Sassandgrace0 -
Would you consider these domains spammy or at risk for penguin penalty?
I'm doing a bit of competitor backlink auditing and am curious how you view these domains? I also am doing this for others as a comparison and growing reference maybe of domains that they can crosscheck with their own backlink profile and make sure these aren't on there, in preparation for penguin algo release to core. Either chime in with known domains to be spam, and I will create a live list based on answers here. Domain Domain Rating directoryworld.net 64
Link Building | | Deacyde
prlog.ru 60
torchbrowser.com 60
jzip.com 58
localbiznetwork.com 58
gimpsy.com 54
pageonepower.com 52
nashvillelife.com 49
2thetopdesign.com 49
seocounsel.com 48
healthywealthyaffiliate.com 48
hollinslegal.com 48 On a working Disavow list either in root domain or extended url form seocourt.com
wldirectory.com
onpaco.com
lostdirectory.com
ligginit.comligginit.com
alivedir.net
tiptopdirectory.com
onemilliondirectory.com
submittolinkdirectory.com I've read that sitewide footer links even from parent company sites will only count as one, regardless of how many links they have, I was wondering if that was true as well?0 -
Backlinks from the Same Domain (But Different Pages)
Wayyy back when (in the days of yore) Mr Cutts spelled out in a video that page rank is distributed equally between the external links on the page. If there are two links on a page, each gets passed 50% of the available page rank etc. (Perhaps an oversimplification but bear with me). As a result of this, the company I worked for at the time (this was the dark ages when sidebar homepage links were in vogue) decreed that we would only ever approach a site about a link for a client once, as additional links had little extra SEO Value. Now you could argue that if there are 5 external links, each acquiring 20% of the power, and your site has 2 of those, you are getting 40% of the power, but lets forget the basic math for a minute. I have scoured the web and Mr Cutts' videos and I cannot find the answer to my question: If my site (Site A) has a backlink from SiteB Page 1, and a backlink from SiteB page 2 - does this count as two separate links in the eyes of Google? If the SAME site links out to my site, linking to different pages in different posts, does this give me more SEO benefit? Thanks for your time!
Link Building | | Turkey0 -
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 | | ArtiKalra0 -
Building Links to Exact Match Domains
What are the pros and cons having exact match domain and how can you create a brand name and build backlinks? Say we have a domain personalizedbirthdaygifts.com We are quite stuck with what anchor text we need to use and how do we vary it? I've heard that we have to stay away from using commercial keywords as anchor text heavily. We have to also use our brand name. And here we get stuck as we don't have a brand name. In this case Our brand name should be personalized birthday gifts but this is also commercial keyword. I have seen before similar websites droped from ranking because they have commercial keywords in their domain and most of their backlink anchor texts are commercial. If I had a website called twentyfive.com selling birthday gifts it would be a lot easier. But when you have a website personalizedbirthdaygifts.com and trying to rank for personalized birthday gifts and birthday gifts it's tough. OR isn't it? I hope I explained it well and didn't confuse anybody... Thanks
Link Building | | Jvalops0