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
-
Duplicate content : domain alias issue
Hello there ! Let's say my client has 2 webshops (that exists since long time, so many backlinks & good authority on both) : individuals.nl : for individuals (has 200 backlinks, let's say) pros.nl : exact same products, exact same content, but with a different branding intended to professionnals (has 100 backlinks, let's say) So, both websites are 99% identical and it has to remain like that !!! Obviously, this creates duplicate content issues. Goal : I want "individuals.nl" to get all ranking value (while "pros.nl" should remain accessible through direct access & appear on it's own brand queries). Solution ? Implement canonical tags on "pros**.nl**" that goes to "individuals.nl". That way, "individuals.nl" will get all ranking value, while "pros.nl" will still be reachable through direct access. However, "individuals.nl" will then replace "pros.nl" from SERP in the long-term. The only thing I want is to keep "pros.nl" visible for its own brand queries -> it won't be possible through organic search result, so, I'm just gonna buy those "pros" queries through paid search ! Put links on all pages of pros.nl to individuals.nl (but not the other way around), so that "pros.nl" will pass some ranking value to "individuals.nl" (but only a small part of the ranking value -> ideally, I would like to pass all link value to this domain). Could someone advise me ??? (I know it sound a bit complicated... but I don't have much choice ^^)
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Updating Domain Yearly for Branding Purposes?
We host an event every year which updates it's branding to include the year (Ex. Acme 2013, Acme 2014, etc.). We used to use the branded domains (acme2012.com) to redirect to the event microsite on off of our main content site (ex. acme2012.acme.com). Just this year our event managers decided host the event on it's own domain, separating it from the content site. So it is now acme2013.com. Their strategy is to update the domain every year to include the current year, so next year the domain would be acme2014.com. I understand the use of the domain for marketing purposes but I feel like it could be hurting our SEO by doing this. Should we revert to our original strategy or is this okay with the proper setup? I should note that because this is an event promotion site, the site template and content updates every year.
Technical SEO | | accessintel0 -
Database Crash affecting our rankings
Here is one for you. We had a database crash, and was down for an hour and 15 minutes, on Dec 18th. During this time our system automatically sent out a 301 redirect to our product home page. (iboats.com/boat-parts-accessories/dm/) On Dec 24th I noticed a huge ranking drop on a lot of our keywords, and some keywords that were serving up the redirect page from our database crash, in place of its normally ranked page. So my assumption is that Google was crawling our site during the database crash and caching the redirect pages in place of our regularly ranked pages. So when a search query is made that would normally display our ranked page, it is now displaying the redirect page from the crawled cache. And on other keywords where we normally would rank for, Google no longer has that page cached, so it drops it from ranking. My question: Does this assumption sound accurate? If so, I'm assuming over time that our past ranked pages will show up once again after Google recrawls those pages and saves them in their cache. I have several sites that were affected with this: boatcovers.iboats.com boatpropellers.iboats.com iboats.com Thanks in advance for your input
Technical SEO | | tdawson090 -
Is it better for our Blog to be blog.domain.tld or domain.tld/blog ?
I'd dread the answer being the latter rather than the former as we've spent two years building it blog.domain... However I noticed SEOmoz are domian.tld/blog and it got me thinking.... Cheers. R.
Technical SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Duplicat content affecting SEO Rankings
We have one main site called buypropertyanywhere, it is a database it holds all the data for all our property websites. One of our most popular sites is housesalesbulgaria, which takes the data from buypropertyanywhere in regards to bulgarian property and display it. The same with housesalesturkey it takes the data in regards to turkish property and display it. We think because buypropertyanywhere and housesalesbulgaria has the same data it has high duplicate content . We think this is affecting the SEO rankings for housesalesbulgaria. Google is looking at housesalesbulgaria as if a copy of buypropertyanywhere. So therefore should we SEO buypropertyanywhere soley and link it to housesalesbulgaria through the articles and content we put on the site. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Feily0 -
Domain authority and rankings?
I have a site that sits in #1 position for its keywords right now. But it only got there about 1mth ago. The site is only about 6mths old with lots of link building. I check the domain authority and its only 37/100 with the #2, #3 sites having domain authority of 57 and 82 respectively. This site has like 800+ backlinks. While the #2 and #3 sites have 20,000+ backlinks. Does it mean that my site will LIKELY drop in rankings very soon? I know there is no certainty but wld you say that it is highly probable my site will drop?
Technical SEO | | jl2550 -
Migrating a better performing domain to a less well performing domain
I have a customer who has many domain names and assets but she's wanting to consolidate some of them to help her simplify things for her customers but mostly she wants to build up her website through which she sells products. Grief Reflection - www.griefreflection.com is a personal journal that she's keeping to process the impending death of her husband and it's also linked to her business website which sells healing from grief types of products. Storybooks for Healing - www.storybooksforhealing.com is the website through which she sells workbooks and memory books for people who want to keep the memory of their loved one alive after they've gone. I've setup both of these domains as campaigns and have been looking at the metrics for both. The grief reflection blog out performs the storybooks for healing website. If we merge the two then the Grief Reflection blog would likely become a subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com and be more fully integrated which she thinks will help her visitors not get confused while navigating her website. www.griefreflection.com has 12,637 links while www.storybooksforhealing.com has 1,462. Also, Google has indexed 380 pages of Grief Reflection and only 100 pages for Storybooks for Healing, though that may be because there are fewer pages to index. Grief reflection also has a 4.36 mozRank and 5.30 mozTrust, where Storybooks has 4.13 mozRank and 5.15 mozTrust. Should I counsel her to keep these domains separate? If not, would simply setting up 301 redirects from the www.griefreflection.com domain name to the new subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com be the way to go? Thank you ever so much for any wisdom anyone can provide.
Technical SEO | | ChristiMc0 -
How does robots.txt affect aliased domains?
Several of my sites are aliased (hosted in subdirectories off the root domain on a single hosting account, but visible at www.theSubDirectorySite.com) Not ideal, I know, but that's a different issue. I want to block bots from viewing those files that are accessible in subdirectories on the main hosting account, www.RootDomain.com/SubDirectorySite/, and force the bots to look at www.SubDirectorySite.com instead. I utilized the canonical meta tag to point bots away from the sub directory site, but I am wondering what will happen if I use robots.txt to block those files from within the root domain. Will the bots, specifically Google bot, still index the site at its own URL, www.AnotherSite.com even if I've blocked that directory with Disallow: /AnotherSite/ ? THANK YOU!!!
Technical SEO | | michaelj_me0