The ranking power of exact match domains
-
I've read previous Q&A where people have been a bit dismissive of the ranking significance of exact match domains but my experience recently using the keyword competiveness tool is that exact match domains seem to outrank other sites regardless of domain or page authority or other on-site/on-page optimisation.
I'm interested in other people's opinions and experiences.
-
In my experience you see exact match domains ranking higher than they "should" all the time. I have talked to another SEO who prefers to go with an exact match over a brand name almost every time.
-
I have a few exact match domains that compete in niches that range from easy to highly competitive.
In easy niches they can get you top rankings with a couple of links. However, as the degree of difficulty goes up the importance of doing "real SEO" comes significantly into play.
In my opinion, the two real values of an exact match domain are their impact on conversion rate but more importantly the amount of mental energy that it gives me to work on the site.
-
Completely agree with you, a site I am about to begin working on www.writeawill.co is ranked on the first page of Yahoo search for 'write a will' even when at the time it had no inbound links and no on-site SEO. The owner simply used a WYSIWYG tool and submitted in to the search engines.
-
Completely agree with you, a site I am about to begin working on www.writeawill.co is ranked on the first page of Yahoo search even when at the time it had no inbound links and no on-site SEO. The owner simply used a WYSIWYG tool and submitted in to the search engines.
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
-
Domain Name redirection to new Domain Name - VS - Transfering Domaine Name from account 1 to account 2
Hi there! Thanks for your time 😉 I have a new cutsomer that bought his domain name via WIX and your know... WIX sucks huge time for SEO. Basically, we want to do SEO outside of WIX. But I am not sure HOW I should proceed. I think I have 2 options: OPTION 1- We transfer the domain name from WIX to a new hoster. But we will lose 7 days during that, lose prospects while the website is in maintenance and we might lose the little bit of ranking we have on the way. BUT! ONCE Everything is done with the transfer, we will be able to operate our SEO campaing with a Domain Name that as 15 domain authority, links, little bit a ranking, etc. OPTION 2- I just buy a new domain name. I build the new Website on it and then use the SEO juice from the old domain name with redirect to push the new domain name. Like this, I won't lose any opportunities. BUT I will have to restart the SEO as new... Any tips or ideas for me? Maybe there is an OPTION 3 that I don't know about.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gab-SEO1 -
How recovering the ranking after an hacking
Hello, I'm Alexia and a few months ago (end of March) my site has been hacked: hackers have created more than 30.000 links in Japanese to sell tires. I've successfully removed the hack and after 14 days of struggle even decided to change the domain to Siteground as they've been really keen to help. I still have some problems and I desperately need your tips. In search console, Google is informing about the +30.000 404 errors due to the content created by hackers which is not available anymore. I've been advised to redirect those links to 410 as they might have penalty effects in the SERP I have 50 503 server errors recognised by Google back in April but still there. What should I do to solve them? I still have a lot of traffic from Japan, even if I've removed all the content and ask Googled to disavow spamming backlinks. Do you think I have on page keywords? I don't understand how they can still find me. Those KWs are indexed in analytics, but not effective clicks, as the content is not there anymore. I also asked Google to remove links in search console with the tool removing links but not all of my requests have been accepted. My site disappeared from the organic results even if it hasn't been recognised as hacked in Google (there wasn't any manual actions on the Search Console). What can I do to gain the organic positioning once again? I've just tried to use the “Fetch as Google” option on search console for the entire website. Thank you all and I look forward to your replies. Thanks! Alessia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlessiaCamera0 -
Move a blog from a domain to a new domain in the same hosting server
I have the need to find the best solution to move my viverezen.org blog on new domain naturazen.org because somebody stolen my brand. Now I registererd brand NaturaZen and I am going to use this website as main and have the old viverezen just to point in the new website I dont want lose autority and more important I dont want lose the 500 visits I have everyday. Both domain are under same hosting company What is best SEO solution you can give me to help? I thought to point the hosting on new domain naturazen and put all link with redirect 301 on viverezen but probably I am wrong stuck_out_tongue thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VivereZen0 -
Possible to Improve Domain Authority By Improving Content on Low Page Rank Pages?
My sites domain authority is only 23. The home page has a page authority of 32. My site consists of about 400 pages. The topic of the site is commercial real estate (I am a real estate broker). A number of the sites we compete against have a domain authority of 30-40. Would our overall domain authority improved if we re-wrote the content for several hundred of pages that had the lowest page authority (say 12-15)? Is the overall domain authority derived by an average of the page authority of each page on a domain? Alternatively could we increase domain authority by setting the pages with the lowest page authority to "no index". By the way our domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Merging Domains
Up until last week, we had separate domains for each of our 3 products. We've now merged two products to sit under one URL. The merge coincided with a CMS upgrade which effectively killed all of our old URLs save for the homepage. Is it best for me to 301 the old homepage to it's new place, as well as the rest of the old site's top pages to according pages on the new site? Or is there a better solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | taylor.craig0 -
Why is this site not ranking?
http://www.petstoreunlimited.com They get good grades from the on-page tool. The links are not amazing, but are not super spammy. Yet it ranks for nothing they target Any reason why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Not ranking on Bing but is on Google?
Hi What are the main differences between Bing and Google in terms of ranking sites? My site is ranking well in Google but in Bing it is very low down and does not deliver much traffic. In Bing webmaster tools there are no warning messages and I had sent in a sitemap back in 2011 and 77 pages are listed, but I had not submitted a URL could this be why my pages are not ranking highly? Or does anybody have a checklist on what a site should offer to get ranking on Bing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0 -
Confusion about domain extension.
Hi, need bit suggestions from you guys. After researchi found a KW that have some good Lcoal search volume.. My question is should i buy the CLD as it has good LS volume or i should go for .com , .net etc. Becasue as i know that LS means that number of people searching form that location(based on IP) not number of people searching in that local version of google. So no need to go for CLD as it vl help only in local version.. Bit confused waiting for reply thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Big_Zee0