Exact keyword in domain - does it work
-
Hi,
a hypothetical question:
let's say there is a fresh domain travelnorway.com (of course there is already domain like that, I am using it just as a example)
Will it rank first on googe for "travel norway" query on google?( I mean in situation where 30 other companies are trying to rank for the same phrase)
Thanks!
-
Yes, they have keywords in Meta Title, but to me it looks more like keyword stuffing - it just repeating keywords in different language.
When you look on the other competitors they usually do much better content wise and social media wise.
It seems that age of the website is an important ranking factor here. Pioneer privilege?
-
If you search for this keyword in Google you will see that www.campericeland.is has done one thing right! Their meta-title is:
Camper Iceland, Iceland Camper Tours, Island, Wohnmobile, Camper ...
Meaning they start with the words: Camper Iceland
which all the below website (except one) do not use in the same context!
Their domain authority is low: 28 /100 but atleast they have a link from a very popular website:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/iceland/transport/getting-around/car-and-motorcycle
If you judge the authority of the other websites and especially the one who has the same keywords in the meta-title you will see that:
Domain Authority is less: 16 /100
Also: https://www.campericeland.is is a four year old website according to the Wayback Machine!
-
I would like to continue this discussion by giving an example of Icelandic company: www.campericeland.is
(I could come up with more in this country like this)
They lack almost everything when it comes to SEO (on page optimisation,inbound links, content, the website has poor usability), yet they rank first for phrase "camper iceland"
How come? ? Is it just the lack of other websites and competitors (although there are plenty behind, who do much better job) that makes this possible ?
-
your are most welcome! if you like you can mark the answer as a "good answer" in order to show this topic as Answered!
I wish you all the best!
-
Thanks Matt for your answer!
-
Thank you for your answer!
-
Hi Leszek!
To answer your question directly—no, having the exact match keyword in the domain name will not, on its own, result in a first-page ranking. It certainly doesn't hurt (unless it's part of a pattern of spammy keyword stuffing), but the impact it will have is vanishingly small.
-
You can write a book on the subjec. Exact Match Domains or EMD work but not as much as what they used to. Google has reduced their strenght over the passed years or so, and most likely today are in their worst. So to anwser your question EMDs would maybe be a small benefit when used to target a keyword which is very competitive, but a greater benefit when used to target a non competitive keyword, but nonetheless valuable to you.
you can read more here: https://moz.com/blog/the-exact-match-domain-playbook-a-guide-and-best-practices-for-emds
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
-
Rel Canonicals not working properly.
We recently implemented rel=canonicals on a few of our pages to prevent query parameters from showing up in the SERPs. The two pages we added the tags to are no longer ranking. The pages used to rank very well for branded terms such as "morningstar direct" and "morningstar sustainability", but now don't show up at all. When you search for the urls specifically, for example "products/direct morningstar" the query parameter is still indexing. Does anyone know why this might be or what we can do to fix this issue? The two pages are www.morningstar.com/products/direct and https://www.morningstar.com/company/sustainability
Technical SEO | | jmigdal0 -
Redirect Chain Domain
MozPro is highlighting some redirect chain issues with our domain that I do not recall ever setting up in our redirect list. In our Moz Pro Campaign I see the Site Crawl has flagged 36 Redirect Chain Issues. I understand how the redirect chain errors can happen but I do not recall ever manually redirecting our domain, yet I have http://stickylife.com, https://stickylife.com & https://www.stickylife.com all associated in one of our redirect chain errors. When looking at our redirect files I do not see any of these domain redirects and wonder how this has happened and how to fix it. It appears as though our HTTP and HTTPS is causing some redirection. I wonder if this is coming from our DNS settings?
Technical SEO | | StickyLife0 -
Sudden ranking Hike For domain
Hello there, I have domain Which got penalized By google Before 2 nd half years & all First Page Ranking Gone Down by 7-8 pages, But Now It got Sudden up after 3 years, So my Question is Will I need Worry or that Can Be Positive Sign For My efforts Given to Website? Will It stay Up?? As i have Updated My website As Told by Moz experts. Thanx, in advance
Technical SEO | | innovative10030 -
Domain Authority
Hello everyone, My question is: is there any manual way to increase domain authority, rather than link building to domain (homepage) ? Thanks Eugenio
Technical SEO | | socialengaged0 -
Old domain vs. New keyword domain - Thoughts?
Okay. I'd like to get opinions as to what everyone thinks about domains lately. Here is any example: The current domain is general in nature, in fact, it's a persons name because they are a real estate agent. So the domain is something like JohnDoe.com. Current stats: Has approx. 130 linking domains pointing to it. Has over 300 incoming links from these linking domains. The link profile is clean and not spammy (not to say there are not a few that might be here and there) Was bough in 1994 The new domain would have very little value except it would be keyword rich such as PortlandHomesForSale.com (just an example). What are your thoughts. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | JordanRussell0 -
Is my non-www domain working
I believe we may have an issue with out domains and links which is causing our seo to suffer. As far as I'm aware, our non-www domain is being treated as a different domain name. Open Site explorer returns different information for each one. However, when I go to the non-www domain in my browser (I have to force it using the http as otherwise the browser auto inserts the www) my browser returns a page cannot be found. But there may be a chance this is actually an issue with the server we access the internet via at work. I need to establish 100% beyond all doubt that our non-www domain is not working. This is the www: http://www.jetbookingdirect.com/ This is the non-www: http://jetbookingdirect.com/ If it is definitely not working, is the right thing to do to ask my web host to setup a 301 redirect? Further, I thought redirects could only point to one address. If we 301 redirect, if someone accesses a specific page via the non-www domain, does it then take them to the correct page? Also, is it safe to say that our non-www domain not working has affected our SEO, and if we fix it, will it improve things for us? Thank you so much for clarification on this issue.
Technical SEO | | JetBookMike0 -
Using hyphenated sub-domains or non-hyphenated sub-domains? What is the question! I Any takers?
For our corporate business level domain, we are exploring using a hyphenated sub-domain foir a project. Something like www.go-figure.extreme.com I thought from a user perspective it seems cluttered. The domain length might also be an issue with the new Algorithm big G has launched in recent past. I know with past experience, hyphenated domains usually take longer to index, as they are used by spammers more frequently and can take longer to get out of the supplementary index. Our company site has over 90 million viewers / year, so our brand is well established and traffic isn't an issue. This is for a corporate level project and I didn't have the answer! Will this work? anyone have any experience testing this. Any thoughts will help! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | | RobMay0 -
Moving domain.com to subdomain.domain.com
Hi, I like to do something, but first like to take some opinions from seomoz. My question is: 1. I have a domain: brandtrends.com and i like to move this from brandtrends.com to trends.brand.com because: brandtrends.com is on the position #15 on the second page of SERP for my "brand" keyword. I like to move it under trends.brand.com but all inbound-links are @brandtrends.com What do you thing, if i move permanently 301 from brandtrends.com to trends.brand.com does it rank under brand.com on the 1st page of SERP..? like to rank trends.brand.com under brand.com on results page...!!! I have the backlinks of brandtrends.com on my hands too, should i leave the inbound links @brandtrends.com and the new ones i build with trends.brand.com or should i change the inbound links from brandtrends.com to trends.brand.com Hope you got it! THanks
Technical SEO | | leadsprofi0