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
-
Why are there less backlink domains in Moz vs. Semrush?
For our domain studyville.com, Semrush is reporting 46 linking domains, and Moz is reporting 7. Does anyone know where there is such a large discrepancy?
Link Building | | shelbythomas0 -
Exact Domain Match does it help or distract?
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?
Link Building | | Cfarcher0 -
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 -
Moving blogs to different domain
Hey guys, We currently have some blogs on one of our pages (fraserisland.com.au) and we are launching a complete rebranding of our sites. We want to move the blogs from fraserisland.com.au to the new parent page of travelfreedom.com.au (but still link it to fraserisland.com.au), however I don't know what affect this will have on the ranking of the blogs. The biggest thing I'm worried about is that the domain will be completely different, and not a sub domain, but I'm not sure what impact this will have on the effectiveness of SEO on the blog. Thanks guys
Link Building | | Mysites0 -
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 | | ganapro0 -
Does the root domain hold more power then an inner page?
Question, Lets say a new domain is launched, the root domain and an inner page target the same term. Google comes along for the first time and indexes the website. Does it see the target term on the homepage as more important then the inner page because you are putting it on the root? I get the feeling terms connected directly with the root domain have a better chance of ranking then the term being on a inner page. Any thoughts on this?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Building backlinks on sub-pages instead of main page(rood-domain)
Hey Mozzers! I am facing a problem and I need advice. I have recently opened my new website, which purpose is to offer quality articles, optimized for SEO. The problem is that I cannot find the right keyword to use for the main(root) domain (http://xxxxxx.org) as it is consisting of many niches. Is it a good idea to build backlinks on pages (http://xxxxxx.org/the-keyword-for-ranking) instead of building them on my root-domain? So basically, my root-domain will have less backlinks than my pages inside? Please give me some advice and way to act with. Thank you
Link Building | | Ralchev0 -
Are backlinks to a domain that redirects useless?
I am working on trying to get backlinks. We are currently redirecting a few Domains to our current domain name. One of the Domains that is redirecting is the main Domain, we will be advertising in the near future. Can I send backlinks to the redirected URL or does it only carry link juice if it is to the main Domain?
Link Building | | hfranz0