What's the current situation for exact match ecommerce domains
-
I'm looking for some current opinions on exact-match domains when it comes to ecommerce sites.
I currently own an "OK" brandable domain in a specific ecommerce niche.
The opportunity has now come along to own the exact match domain for this category.
For example catfood.com
Is it more advisable to focus on brandables these days? I know Google doesn't give weight to exact match anymore but is there still a correlation not causation factor to consider?
IE: the links back would be more targeted possibly?
-
These are personal opinions... you will find lots of people who disagree...
Google still gives a good bonus to exact match domains in the search results. I own several and believe this is true. They will not automatically rank you for highly competitive money keywords. You must still work there - but not quite as hard.
Lots of people think that EMDs get an unfair advantage in the SERPs. These are people who purchased their domain late, want to buy cheap, or just don't understand that prime domains are just like Main Street real estate in a prosperous town. If you are willing to pay the obscene price you will get all of the benefits. I go after them. I want the EMD for my important sites.
Lots of people talk about the EMD penalty... they are full of beans. What they think is a penalty is the EMDs not getting quite the full bonus that they did in the past. Now, if you publish crap on an EMD, that EMD will not perform well - just like publishing crap on any other domain.
Lots of people think that a partial match domain gives a big bonus in the SERPS... I'd say don't waste your time unless you have a brandable slogan or name.
Conversion rates can be higher on exact match domains. That is my experience.
It is easier to get cooperation from other people if you own an important EMD. The EMD can give you immediate credibility even if undeserved.
Most importantly... owning the EMD gives me mental energy. If I owned baloney.com then I would be the big baloney and build the best site around for that topic. This mindset is more powerful than any SEO.
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
-
Sub domains take away the pagerank/link juice of main website?
Hi all, I would like to know how sub domains will be collaborated with domain or main website in terms of authority, backlinks, link juice, etc...Link juice will be passed to sub domains from domain or vice versa? If there are large number of pages in sub domain, will that going to impact the ranking of main domain? Backlinks of sub domain are going to be a deciding factor for website ranking too? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Moving established :COM site to a .ART domain
Hi! We have an existing website that has a .com TLD with our brand name, which is completely unrelated to any of the terms we want to rank for except for the brand search of our company of course. We have an online shop and the .com site has been online for a good few years. The business activity is related to art, in fact some of our customers would search for "name of artists + art" and we appear in results. From what I have read, Google is not going to give better rankings for a .art domain name, but will the extension be counted as a potential keyword and relevancy to users searches based on example above? Does anyone have any experience with regards to this consideration? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
Studies showing that social sharing does/doesn't affect rankings?
I'm currently researching this area in order to show to a client that social shares aren't as valuable for SEO as they might think. Can anyone point me in the direction of the best studies done on this topic? Thanks in advance!
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO0 -
Complete website redesign: original domain vs subdomain vs new domain ?
Hello dear community fellas!
Algorithm Updates | | PayPro
The story goes like this: my company has a good ol' website launched back in 2008 and since then nothing much was updated there. Our rank dropped significantly because, well, barely any SEO was done for it. Me and my team decided to redesign the whole thing: content, structure, visuals, links, everything but this time really making it right. However, with our oldie we managed to get a nice user base, so we still want to get all the traffic juice out of it. Now the questions is where do you think is the best place to publish our new website: Our original domain www.companyname.com? Create a subdomain new.companyname.com? Totally new domain www.namecompany.com? Cheers!0 -
What's the best way to go about building/using interactive snippets?
I'm starting to see interactive snippets (I guess they're called islands) like the attached image in our SERPs, so I figured I would look into experimenting with them, but I'm not entirely clear how to proceed. I have only seen them in adwords, so is that the only way you can use them? Is there some way to set them up or some service you need to set them up organically? Lost, but intrigued, Ruben SW7ak4d.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Our root domain is no longer appearing in search results
Hi all The root domain for our site, roadtrippers.com, has been disappearing from Google's search results. Subfolders and subdomains still appear, but our root domain isn't found at all. I believe I've verified this by searching "-inurl:trips -inurl:byways -inurl:support -inurl:blog -inurl:places -inurl:guides -inurl:destinations site:https://roadtrippers.com/" in Google and our root domain is nowhere to be found. This may or may not be related to another issue we've had, where the root domain is appearing with a seemingly rotating set of parameters. Sometimes it'll be ?mod=, sometimes it'll be ?tag=translation. Originally they appeared to simply displace our ranking root domain, but now they and our root domain are completely disappearing. Our dev team believes they fixed the problem with recent 301 tags to any unapproved parameter being added to the root domain, but this hasn't fixed the original problem. Any insight into this is greatly appreciated! Brandon
Algorithm Updates | | brandonRT0 -
Old website, new domain name
Hi, We have an old website which is currently being 301'ed to a new domain name / bespoke e commerce website as we're rebranding and having an increase in the range of products we will be selling. My question is can we keep the original e commerce website selling the original products under a new domain name and escape duplicate content issues with the product descriptions as we have copied & pasted product descriptions to the new website ? I'm looking to the future and building another domain name will help with future expansion plans / thoughts. Both websites are registered to us at the same business address if this helps. Please feel free to ask questions if I haven't worded this very well! Many thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | OliverBainbridge0 -
What's better .NET or a hyphenated.COM domain
What's better .NET or a hyphenated .COM domain I know this is simple but in selecting a domain for my current project and I only have two options. firstname-lastname.COM or
Algorithm Updates | | RonSparks
firstnamelastname.NET I'm leaning to the .COM as after reading the how to choose a domain name post. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name Thanks1
