Short EMD or Longer Partial MD: Which is better for SEO
-
Hey Guys,
I appreciate all of the amazing responses you have been posting over the last two days.
I have been a little tied up with Joomla 1.5 transfers, but I will make some comments soon!In the meantime, here is an interesting one: I have an existing domain with a little bit of DA - www.edmontonweb.ca as well as a parked domain with no DA - launchwebdesign.ca
I have been advised to redirect (301) to the launch domain, but I still wonder if the current domain is better - after all it is very short & was registered over 5 years ago. Since launching the new site it has been about a month. We are currently #1 for almost every term on Bing & Yahoo (web design, edmonton web design etc.) but 14th on Google for "edmonton web design."
Do you think switching the domain is a good call, or keep trying with edmontonweb.ca for a bit longer?
Thanks guys,
Anton
-
I wrote a post a couple of months ago which analysed a load of Mozcast data and one of the subjects I touched upon was EMDs and PMDs. Looking at that data I'd say don't bother switching domains.
The reason, to quote directly from the post is that
"Looking purely at the trends, the proportion of listings with exact (EMD) and partial (PMD) matched domains is definitely going down. A few updates in particular have had an effect: One huge jolt in December 2012 had a particular and long-lasting effect, knocking 10% of EMDs and 10% of PMDs out of the listing"
The conclusion was that
"if you plan on creating useful, interesting content for your industry then go ahead and buy a domain with a keyword or two in. You could even buy the exact match domain, even if that doesn't match your brand (although this might give people trust issues, which is a whole different story). But if you don't plan on creating that content, buying a keyword-matched domain looks unlikely to help you, and you could even be in for a more rocky ride in the future than if you stick to your branded domain."
-
I don
t see any advantage if you switch from a well-established (5 year old) domain that is already ranking in good positions to a brand new one. It
s a hard job and a lot of work and even if you redirect the old to the new one there will occure some changes. I would also recommend to redirect the new domain to the old one.I general it is a popular opinion that "EMD" is a little bit better than just "PMD" and the shorter, the better BUT this is not a written law. If you do an overall good job these aspects won`t have such a big effect on your rankings.
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
-
Local SEO Over Optimization
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved. The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based. Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added). My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will. What is my best course of action moving forward?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids1 -
SEO Best Practice for Managing a Businesses NAP with Multiple Addresses
I have a client with multiple business addresses - 3 across 3 states, from an SEO perspective what would be the best approach for displaying a NAP on the website? So far I've read that its best: to get 3 GMB account to point to 3 location pages & use a local phone number as opposed to a 1300 number. Display all 3 locations in the footer, run of site
Local Website Optimization | | jasongmcmahon1 -
Even after doing every possible thing required for SEO my client's website is not coming on top.can you tell me where i am lacking?
_ Hi team_ I have been working on a website called signboards.co.in since 4 months.it was not in top 100 but now below 50 for 2-3 keywords.even after submitting in many directories after competitor analysis moz shows only one external link in its link metrics.apart from this every possible thing required for SEO is done in a proper way,but still it is not giving results.can you help me out?all my other clients work is going good except this one.can you please let me know what is going wrong with my project?As the project submission date is near i need your help as soon as possible. Thanks Najia jehan
Local Website Optimization | | Najia-ali0 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
SEO Client not rankings in Google
Hello, I have a client that has continued to be problematic for my team and I. They have fair to middling rankings in Yahoo and Bing, but none in Google. I realize that they are three separate search engines each with their own criteria, but this client is the only one experiencing this problem. There is no significant duplicate content that can find, same with restrictions in the robots.txt file. These seems to be no reason why all my tools say that this client has no presence at all in google, especially when the client gains most of their traffic through Google. Can anyone assist me in finding out what is going wrong? Client website for reference: http://www.volvethosp.com/ Best, BeyondIndigo
Local Website Optimization | | BeyondIndigo0 -
Can to many 301 redirects damage my Ecommerce Site - SEO Issue
Hello All, I have an eCommerce website doing online hire. We operate from a large number of locations (100 approx) and my 100 or so categories have individual locations pages against them example - Carpet Cleaners (category) www.mysite/hire-carpetcleaners
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
carpet cleaner hire Manchester www.mysite/hire-carpetcleaners/Manchester
carpet cleaner hire london
carpet cleaner hire Liverpool patio heater (category)
patio heater hire Manchester
patio heater hire London
patio heater hire Liverpool And so on..... I have unique content for some of these pages but given that my site had 40,000 odd urls, I do have a large amount of thin/duplicate content and it's financially not possible to get unique
content written for every single page for all my locations and categories. Historically, I used to rank very well for these location pages although this year, things have dropped off and recently , I was hit with the Panda 4.0 update which i understand targets thin content. Therefore what I am int he process of doing is reducing the number of locations I want to rank for and have pages for thus allowing me to achieve both a higher percentage of unique content over duplicate/thin content on the whole site and only concerntrate on a handful of locations which I can realistically get unique content written for. My questions are as follows. By reducing the number of locations, my website will currently 301 redirect these location page i have been dropping back to it's parent category.
e.g carpet cleaner hire Liverpool page - Will redirect back to the parent Carpet cleaner hire Page. Given that I have nearly 100 categories to do , this will mean site will generate thousands of 301 redirects when I reduce down to a handful of locations per category. The alternative Is that I can 404 those pages ?... What do yout think I should do ?.. Will it harm me by having so many 301's . It's essentially the same page with a location name in it redirecting back to the parent. Some of these do have unqiue content but most dont ?. My other question is - On a some of these categories with location pages, I currently rank very well for locally although there is no real traffic for these location based keywords (using keyword planner). Shall I bin them or keep them? Lastly , Once I have reduced the number of location pages , I will still have thin content until , I can get the unique content written for them. Should I remove these pages until that point of leave them as it is? It will take a few months
to get all the site with unique content. Once complete, I should be able to reduce my site down from 40,000 odd pages to say 5,000 pages Any advice would be greatly appreciated thanks
Pete0 -
Is translating my SEO meta data to new languages worthwhile?
When translating a website to additional languages, is it recommended, for Google SEO purposes, that the keywords, re-written URLs, meta titles and meta descriptions of each page be translated as well; or have those elements been completely depreciated?
Local Website Optimization | | sptechnologies0 -
Can a localization web design update hurt SEO?
Hi mozzers, Me and my team are having a major website refresh and update for one of our client's. The structure of the website can be divided into 2 types of pages: corporate pages(representing the core services of the company which rank nationally) and microsite pages(representing each and every 30+ franchise locations ranking locally). Right now when you visit the Seattle microsite page you have localization feel but the main nav(of corporate site) remains at the top on top of the subnav(orange under map) which is customized for the location where you are in. My colleague who is the main person in charge of this website update would like to create a better localization experience for users in specific cities by having one main navigation instead of 2 displaying exactly the same pages displayed on the actual subnav (actual microsite) (images are below of actual and potential look of the website). FYI: URLs will remain the same. I really like this idea of a more personalized experience but I am afraid that the local seo strategy we have done so far may be jeopardized because of this new design but i am not sure. Am I right? Are we going to lose national and/or local rankings? Will this fresh design hurt the SEO we have been doing for the past few years? It would be great to provide me "best practice" tips to follow for this case as far as what are the steps I should be paying attention... Thank you guys! ktJrsNx.png Boq4Pvt.png
Local Website Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0