Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks to all for your responses.

@VZ Pro The domain in question was not londonfootball.com , this was just an example.

I personally have made a domain rank 2 years ago constantly for about 1.5 years on the top of Google, until the most recent Google update, with very little links, just by being an EMD, it was just a simple brochure site. Nothing spammy, and the business I was involved with made substantial amount of money through just this one domain. To make matters worse, this was a org.uk domain, which, for those in the UK, are often considered low value domains, and I think Google gives it far less weight then co.uk. So this proved to my that EMD's can be well worth it. This was also in a very small geographic niche, which probably made it easier to rank. I only paid around £6 ($10) for 2 years registration. The site stopped ranking because we made the mistake of using someone who got us some bad links, so the Google update hit it badly. But since disavow, it still continues to bring in some business.

Now currently I am negotiating with someone on a domain broking site for an EMD for a niche. I am hoping to I can negotiate him to $1,000. I was just debating in my head if there is still potential in the domains. Based on what you guys are saying, it seems like there is still quite a lot of potential. Especially if you make the site good, and make sure it has quality content and is not spammy.

I realise that there has probably been a lot said about Exact Match Domains, however, I want to know 2 things:

1. Is this two exact match domains or one EMD: "londonfootball.com" and "footballlondon.com" so is "London Football" one EMD, and "Football London" another?

2. Does having an EMD add a big advantage in getting ranked? Is it worth paying 2 months SEO expense to buy an EMD? To me if it still has an advantage then it probably is. However, I would like to hear the opinion of the experts.

I would specially like to hear from anyone who owns or bought an EMD to rank.

Thank you.

Thanks Gregory. Yes I thought of the domain with just the number. However, I think "GetBirminghamTaxi" works for me without the "a" and even as a name because when we say it verbally, we will often say let's get a London taxi or let's get a Birmingham taxi. So I have been leaning towards that from the beginning. I posted this question, in case someone points out something obvious that I may have missed. Sometimes people view things differently and can point things out that could be valuable to your business.

I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much..

The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere.

As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on.

I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence.

I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so  between $5,000-$20,000) for it.

I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD.

I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number.

This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up.

So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated.

Thank you.

@Claudio and Chris, thank you.

Claudio, yes you've cleared it up for me. Although I was going into the second option for search volume, I wasn't for some stupid reason clicking on the keywords to separate them from the groups to get results for each keywords. That's the bit that was frustrating me. Your response made me look further. So thank you.

It's helped me make a decision on a domain.

I assume this questions has probably been covered many times, if so I am sorry for asking it again, for whatever reason, I am not finding the answer I require, so I would appreciate some help.

I would like to know the search volume for a keyword. I remember I used to get this information on Google Adwords account, it no longer displays it the same. I want to know if Moz or even Google for that matter provide this tool in a simple way. So if I entered a keyword, I would get the volume of searches Globally as well as locally either on a per month or a per day basis and it would be broken down as exact match or broad etc.

This was a great feature before. I would love to access the same thing again.

Thanks you.

Hi Vahe, thanks for your response.

I was actually deciding towards SEM Rush after I saw what data they could provide. Also, I was initially a bit thrown by SEMRush because it didn't have any data on the domain I was searching although it was a 4 year old domain. However, on my second search it showed some good information, so it showed me the potential of it. However, it still did seem to lack information. For example, it could only give me data on Jan, Feb March 2013 of the number of visitors for the domain I was looking at, but nothing for last 10 months, which was a bit disappointing and shocking. I couldn't make sense of that!

Regarding compete.com , I am assuming you are talking about the product they call Compete Pro: https://www.compete.com/plans/

It's shockingly expensive. However, the data would have been really beneficial for us. But I sense that the Compete Pro doesn't include the product or features for "Online Conversion Insight", https://www.compete.com/products/online-conversion-insights/ , if it was all one product, I could see how this could be really useful for us. But paying for so much seperately is just very expensive. I assume it's a product mainly used by agencies.

Thanks guys. I will check all of those that you mentioned. Someone also recommended that I try semrush.com

I heard of the name before, but don't know too much.

I am new to Moz (as a member), so I am not sure if Moz has a tool that I need. I don't want this post to be about self promotion, so I will keep it short. Our business helps increase conversions and sales for online businesses. Our ideal prospects belongs to some key categories of businesses like ecommerce, saas etc. However, I would like to know the estimated volume of traffic for a website before approaching them and introducing our service.

So if there was a tool I could use to estimate the volume of visitors a specific website receives on average a day or month, it would be hugely beneficial.Obviously, these are prospective clients, so we do not have access to their system or their analytics. I just want to get an estimate. So for example, if I entered the domain abc.com into the system, I would hope it could tell me, that abc.com gets an average of 900 unique visitors a day. I don't need too much detail like geographic locations etc, but it would be a bonus having that additional information.

I also don't mind paying for a tool that's quality. So it doesn't have to be free.