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Thanks for your response Francisco,

Do you have any comment on removing the keyword from the homepage content?

Also, I highly doubt that its an over 8 million exact search keyword. One or two competitors I would probably side with your argument, but everyone on the top page can't be wrong.

We would be 301'ing from domain.com to domain.com, not to a subdomain. That was just reference to the competitors on first page serps.

Assuming all the following websites content is of the same value to google's eyes (or assume duplicate content isnt penalized and they are all the same) and they all go to the same landing page (assuming the above rules) in what order do you think these would rank in a US google search for 'shoes'.

A)www.sho.es

B)www.sho.es/shoes

C)brand.com/shoes

D)shoes.brand.com

E) (if you have the time) Repeat B),C) and D) for .net

Hi Moz Community!

My website gets just over 50% of its traffic from ranking in the top 3 in over 10 countries for my exact match keyword domain. 80% + from keywords related to the exact match domain.

We are now looking at doing a to 301 re-direct to a new domain to start a fresh branding to the site to increase scope and expand. This would involve removing the keyword from the homepage and domain entirely . However. Considering all competitors ranking for our main keyword, have the keyword in their domain as either a subdomain to or in their root domain and in their homepage content, would this make ranking without the keyword in domain & content hard? I have found a very similar example that has done so, so I guess the answer to that question is no its not.

about 65-70% of our anchor text on our backlinks is for our domain keyword.

Can anyone advise how best to go about maintaining rankings after 301ing or how best to go about 301ing to make sure that we can maintain the rankings for our main keyword!

Any advise at all would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks.