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
-
Why does my old brand name still show up on organic search but as my new brand name and domain?
Hello mozers! I have quite the conundrum. My client used to have the unfortunate brand name "Meetoo" - which by the way they had before the movement happened! So naturally, they rebranded to the name Vevox in March 2019 to avoid confusion to users. However, when you search for their old brand name "Meetoo" the first organic link that pops up is their domain www.vevox.com. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, however it is when any #MeToo news appears in the media and we get a sudden influx or wrong traffic. I've searched the HTML and content for the term "Meetoo" but can only find one trace of this name through a widget. Not enough to hold an organic spot. My only other thinking is that www.vevox.com is redirected from www.meetoo.com. So I'm assuming this is why Vevox appear under the search term "Meetoo". How can I remove the homepage www.vevox.com from appearing for the search term "meetoo"? Can anyone help? AvGGYBc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz3 -
HELP! How does one prevent regional pages as being counted as "duplicate content," "duplicate meta descriptions," et cetera...?
The organization I am working with has multiple versions of its website geared towards the different regions. US - http://www.orionhealth.com/ CA - http://www.orionhealth.com/ca/ DE - http://www.orionhealth.com/de/ UK - http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/ AU - http://www.orionhealth.com/au/ NZ - http://www.orionhealth.com/nz/ Some of these sites have very similar pages which are registering as duplicate content, meta descriptions and titles. Two examples are: http://www.orionhealth.com/terms-and-conditions http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/terms-and-conditions Now even though the content is the same, the navigation is different since each region has different product options / services, so a redirect won't work since the navigation on the main US site is different from the navigation for the UK site. A rel=canonical seems like a viable option, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it tells search engines to only index the main page, in this case, it would be the US version, but I still want the UK site to appear to search engines. So what is the proper way of treating similar pages accross different regional directories? Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice
A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys. They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily. Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
How can I fix "Too Many On Page Links"?
One of the warnings from SEO Moz says that we have "too many on page links" on a series of pages on my website. The pages it's giving me these warnings on are on my printing sample pages. I'm assuming that it's because of my left navigation. You can see an example here: http://www.3000doorhangers.com/door-hanger-design-samples/deck-and-fence-door-hanger-samples/ Any suggestions on how to fix this warning? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
301 redirect a old site that has been "dead" for a while?
Hi guys, A quick question. I have a client who has an old business website that had some great links (Forbes.com, CocaCola.com, etc). The problem is that he knew nothing about SEO and let the hosting expire. He still owns the domain, but the site is no longer listed in Google. He did no SEO, so I am not worried about being hit by any artificial anchor text penalties, since the links are as natural as it gets. So my questions is, would there be any benefit from 301 redirecting that site to his new business? The new business is in almost exactly the same niche as the old site. I am thinking of 301'ing to a sub-page which will refer to his past venture with the old business, not to the homepage of the new site. Thanks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
Redirect non www. domain to WWW. domain for established website?
Hey guys, The website in question has been online for more than 5 years but there are still 2 versions of the website. Both versions are indexed by Google and of course, this will result in duplicate content. Is it necessary to redirect the non-www domain to the www. domain. What are the cons and advantages? Will a lot of organic traffic be lost at first (if non-www are getting a good amount of traffic)? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
How to deal with competition with a similar domain name as my client website?
How can I deal with other websites that have a keyword domain name similar to my client website? I get a few domains similar to my client domain name just to avoid the same issue, but there are a few others ranking for the same keywords and I don't want posible customers get confused with a similar domain name. I have social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and etc), but they are not ranking on the first page. This is the situation: www.domain.com that would be my client's domain. And the competition: www.bestdomain.com www.thedomain.com www.domaincomapany.com And a few more. At this time my client is ranking #1 position, but all the others ar 1 or 2 positions bellow.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpgprinting0 -
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