Could the EMD update affect my domain?
-
My domain is: http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/
"Scrabble Dictionary" is a huge keyword in my niche where I used to rank top 4. Do you see this domain as possibly being hit by the EMD?
My Google Analytics does not show that I was initially hit back in Sept 2012 when it first same out.
-
When you say "I would not do it" are you meaning that you would not add "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" at the end of all titles?
Right... I used to have my domain at the end of the titles and removed it.
If you believe that your title tag becomes irrelevant without that, and could be confused with any dictionary or any other type of site, then leaving it in would be a good idea.
What I am advocating works for my sites, which are a mix of information and retail.
When you say "I would not do it" are you meaning that you would not add "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" at the end of all titles?
-
I'm sorry but I think I didn't describe my title issue properly.
I currently use "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" on all my 500,000+ pages at the end of the titles. My homepage title only contains my brand name "Free Scrabble Dictionary"
When you say "I would not do it" are you meaning that you would not add "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" at the end of all titles?
Also when you said "because your domain name will appear immediately below the title in the SERPs - thus it is redundant." are you referring to the example in the image?
-
If it was my site, I would not do it because your domain name will appear immediately below the title in the SERPs - thus it is redundant.
Leaving it out of the title tag also frees space there for more keywords, a value proposition, or empty space to emphasize the words on the left.
-
What about using my brand at the end of all my titles
Example: - Free Scrabble Dictionary
Because of "Scrabble Dictionary" in that title on all of my 500,000+ pages could that possible be seen as spamming that keyword even though its my brand?
Maybe change my titles to "- FSD"?
-
Hi Cesar!
I dont think it's a problem unless you were blatantly over optimizing the site or maybe just stopped working on it if it's dropping in the rankings.
I love my EMD's. It's not as favoured as before from my POV but its still pretty effective.
-
I will agree with EGOL! In my opinion Google does not discriminate EMDs but according to the latest Moz’s ranking survey it is believed that Google still favor EMD’s to an extent. If you are losing rankings with EMD there can be other issues which can be over optimization, under optimization, low quality links pointing back to the website and more.
Hope this helps!
-
Could you try make your domain name 'Free Scrabble Dictionary' look like a brand rather than just a URL?
I thought the EMD update was quite old, and if it was going to affect your domain it should have by now?
-
Do you see this domain as possibly being hit by the EMD?
All of the domains that are important to my business are EMDs. I know other people who use EMDs as important parts of their businesses. In my opinion, Google does not discriminate against these domains. In fact, I believe that Google still favors these domains. So, if you have an EMD with ranking issues it is likely caused by other factors such as Panda, Penguin, competitors, technical issues, low-quality SEO, among others.
And, if I was going to start another business, the first thing that I would to is go straight to the person who owns the appropriate EMD and try to get it from them - and be willing to pay good money.
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
-
Does the domain extension effect domain authority and ranking
We have produces a website on a .company domain extension. We have produced a good sized website with unique content. However the DA remains at 1. There are no high priority issues in the page crawl. We suspect that the domain extension may be causing a lower DA. Is this a ranking factor?
Technical SEO | | easydomains0 -
Will doing a 301 redirect for one domain to another give the latter domain the formers links?
I have some websites that I built a few years ago that are still in existence, but I no longer have access to the sites as they weren't hosted by myself. These sites all carry a "Designed by Me" text on the footer with a link to my (now old) website. I have since done 301 redirects on the domain names that are used in the footers of these sites so they link directly to my new site. However, will these websites now show up on Google Webmasters for example as external links to my site?
Technical SEO | | mickburkesnr0 -
Penalty for many domains pointing to the same URL?
I've searched around on the Google forums, and other sources (including the Q&A!), but haven't seen a solid answer on this one. I've recently discovered that throughout the years we've had several hundred domains pointed to our homepage. These are our domains and are related to our niche. I believe they were pointed for the purposes of attracting type-in traffic. Before last month I knew at least some existed, but I didn't realize the extent until last week. I know there isn't any positive SEO effect to doing this (except perhaps if any of the domains have links to them, and a few do), but is there any negative SEO effect? I realize that there are legitimate redirects for type-in traffic, like misspellings and such, but most of these are just exact-match-domains. It just screams unnatural to me, but perhaps I'm just a little paranoid. 🙂
Technical SEO | | tncomseo0 -
How to force a trailing slash after the domain name
My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it.. Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess
Technical SEO | | JollyBoy0 -
Buying new domains to help with SEO
Hi, Does buying new keyword related domains and 301 redirect them to my site have any seo benefit?
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Selecting a new domain name
If a two word domain is already taken (e.g. onetwo.com), which of the following is a better alternative? 1. one-two.com 2. onetwo.org Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0 -
Sub domain versus sub directory
Hey all, Has Google finally grown up to treat sub-domains as they would sub directory? i.e: http://blog.example.com as opposed to http://example.com/blog I desperately wanted example.com/blog but we were forced to launch with blog.example.com because of WordPress limitations and our DNS and load balancing set up on our end. All searches lead me to old documentation 2010 and earlier. Wondering if anyone has any up to date information around this. Cheers, Croozie,
Technical SEO | | sichristie0