[Live Case Study] Taking Google #1 Using $3000 Worth of .net, .org, .us Exact Match Domain Names

[Daniel Brock]

Hello Warriors!

The hype around this whole 'exact match domain' craze is wild, so I thought I'd give it a little test by buying up some premium names.

If you don't know already, exact match domain names are supposedly a lot easier to rank than other domains.

For example, if you are trying to rank for the term 'golf clubs for sale', you would try and get the domain golfclubsforsale.com, .net, .org.

And not something like bestgolfclubsforsale.com <-- (not exact at this point)

Problem is, domains like that are VERY expensive. If I recall correctly, they wanted something like $4,000 for the above domain name.

So as part of my case study, I also want to test .us exact match domains. If you haven't noticed already, normally when the .com, .net, or .org is taken, usually the .us is still available.

Here is how I am doing a semi-controlled test

I went out and spent $3000 on some exact match names related to particular buyer keywords with anywhere between 20k-40k exact match searches per month.

Yeah, $3000 is a lot to spend on a test...I know...

I got a little bit carried away with buying names. It's definitely like crack...so be careful!

For those of you that don't know how to return exact match results, go to your google adword keyword tool and select this option:



Most of these names are going to promote Amazon products, so I picked names like:

golfclubs.net
bedheater.net
joggingtreadmill.org

(I don't own these particular domains, just giving you an example of the type of names I purchased)

All in all, I have 7-8 exact match TLDS.

As I said earlier, I also wanted to test out .us exact match names, so I also purchased 7 of those.

Most of those terms have around 15k-20k US exact match traffic.

Let's talk about competition.

Out of the 15 or so domains that I have right now, here is the SEO competition breakdown:

1 - High <-- this is going to be a very long term website, so I don't expect this to product anything significant for at least a year.
5 - Medium
9 - Low

Here is what I am doing for promotion

I want to keep this experiment as controlled as possible, so I am going to do my best to keep everything I do even on every site.

I will start out by social bookmarking each domain.

After the first week is over, I will instruct one of my VAs to start building low quality backlinks to each of the domain names.

After a couple weeks have passed, I will start adding more pages to each website.

After the first month has passed, I will then start to go out and find some high quality links for each domain name.

My goal for these 15 websites

What I want from these 15 sites after 3 months of being indexed is around $2000 in commissions each month.

At 6 months, I want to be taking position number 1 for all of my medium competition sites.

One of these sites can easily produce $2000/m once I reach number one for the term(term is very niche hobby oriented). So my plan is to take these sites more seriously than my other Amazon sites as these ones have more potential.

By serious, I mean I'm going to make a genuine attempt at creating a valuable site, rather than just relying on search engine optimization tricks.

I will still be doing the general product review for content, but I will also be including things like news related to the niche, might add a forum for discussion and to help create related content, product showdowns, etc. For some of these sites I am even going to consider actually buying the products I review so that I can create really good content. I'll do in person video for those ones.

That's really it.

I'm just now building the sites - hope to have all 15 up and indexed by this Friday. I'll be sure to keep the case study updated when I do specific work, and reach specific results.

Feel free to ask me any questions, I'm always willing to help

And if you have experience with EMDs already, please share with us how they are working for you...

[EA]

Daniel Brock is awesome!

How do I know. Because he is always willing to help others out.

Dan, Good luck with this.

[JackBenson]

I predict success here, it sounds like you know what you are doing in the first place and the EMD will just give a big boost to what you are doing.

The only risk with EMD is google eventually devaluing their ranking value, but if you build quality sites on them in the first place by the time that happens maybe it won't matter.

I'll be watching...

[Daniel Brock]

Originally Posted by JackBenson

The only risk with EMD is google eventually devaluing their ranking value, but if you build quality sites on them in the first place by the time that happens maybe it won't matter.

Yeah, that's one worry I had on my mind which stopped me from buying a $15,000 EMD.

I highly doubt they will ever devalue EMD. It's been like this for awhile now, and even if they do, yahoo and MSN both seem to be EMD fans at the moment, so it will be worth it even if G drops the factor in their algo.

Great point!

[Steven Wagenheim]

I give you a lot of credit doing something like this.

Me? I wouldn't attempt this with a gun to my head.

I'm pulling for you to score big with this one, so let us know how it goes.

[Biggy Fat]

I remember you telling me about this, Dan. If you pull this off, are you going to keep it to yourself haha?

[4morereferrals]

After the first week is over, I will instruct one of my VAs to start building profile backlinks to each of the domain names.

I think you should be able to discuss any methods of serp promotions and rankings you want - BUT I believe we shan't even be discussing these or promoting these methods as acceptable here now that the rules have come down from on high.

Cant link to pages discussing them - selling them or promoting them nor run a wso about them. Why can we have ad nauseum discussions glorifying their useage?

Again, I think you should be able to build links however you want - we all make our choices and pay the consequences for them - so I cast no aspersions on your methods ... however - there;s rules about promoting or glorifying certain tactics around here that have now been deemed "pure evil".

This looks like a great test - and seems to belong more on the seo ppc forum anyhow.

or ... on the backlinksforum.com - where there is less restrictions on all this evil BH activities.

[Daniel Brock]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

I think you should be able to discuss any methods of serp promotions and rankings you want - BUT I believe we shan't even be discussing these or promoting these methods as acceptable here now that the rules have come down from on high.

Cant link to pages discussing them - selling them or promoting them nor run a wso about them. Why can we have ad nauseum discussions glorifying their useage?

Again, I think you should be able to build links however you want - we all make our choices and pay the consequences for them - so I cast no aspersions on your methods ... however - there;s rules about promoting or glorifying certain tactics around here that have now been deemed "pure evil".

This looks like a great test - and seems to belong more on the seo ppc forum anyhow.

or ... on the backlinksforum.com - where there is less restrictions on all this evil BH activities.

Yikes forgot about that! Fixed

[discrat]

Cool Daniel !! You really have added alot to the Warrior Forum and I want to Thank you for that !!

This is a great experiment and I look forward to your Results and expect GREAT things from you !!

[vicone]

It's good to see quality websites being developed. Personally, I find these to be far more enjoyable to work with than the throwaway sites. I'll keep an eye on how this test develops.

Ivan

[NewbiesDiary]

Kewl bananas! I love case studies. Will most def be keeping an eye on this one - cheers!

[bat55w]

Daniel,

This looks like a really cool test. Can't wait to see the results.

[CatherineMay]

Daniel, I presume these are self-hosted wordpress sites.

Is there a particular theme you are using?


CatherineMay

[Bicycle Cat]

Would love to see the results!

[manwalksintoabar]

Daniel, very interesting case study. I assume you will be posting periodically with updates?

mwiab

[faridaziz]

Daniel, this is doable.

O know it because I've done it.

And the target of $2000 per month is also possible,
but this depends on the niche you target and the domain
names you own.

Good luck

Cheers,
Farid

[The Copy Nazi]

Gee Dan...I had a .us I would have sold you before I let it go. I bought it to use in an article I wrote on Hippies/The Sixties/pot-smoking - http://www.bongsR.us

Come to think of it...I should have offered it to Tommy Chong. http://www.post-gazette.com/localnew...hong0912p5.asp

[nasssi]

I am curious how the .us ones will work - the placed I learned from say NO to those - only .com .net and .org can get high rankings on any competition keyword - and I can say I have not seen a .us on the front page. I wil try to bookmark this thread so I can follow.

[kess]

From my experience, .com, .net and .org will perform better than anything else, UNLESS you are targeting local markets, whereby the local TLDs will perform better.

Overall, you should see good results (better than non exact domains). As far as G devaluing these at any time in the future, i wouldn't see the logic why any search engine would ever want to do that. A domain that has the keywords in it deserves to be higher because it is specifically catering for that keyphrase.

cheers

Originally Posted by nasssi

I am curious how the .us ones will work - the placed I learned from say NO to those - only .com .net and .org can get high rankings on any competition keyword - and I can say I have not seen a .us on the front page. I wil try to bookmark this thread so I can follow.

[manwalksintoabar]

It may just be a matter of supply and demand. .us, .info and others will eventually become mainstream.

[lisaweyn]

Wish you the best of luck. But don't forget to come back to the warrior forum and update
us on how you are getting on with your sites.

[lefty359]

I put up an exact match domain and it hasn't been indexed by Google yet. My other 2 non exact match domains were indexed in a week, I blve.

[artgirl]

I'm cheering for you Daniel! I'll definitely be following you!

I, too, am curious how the .us and .info domains will perform. Personally, I stay away from these because that is what we all been taught from Day 1.

So it would be good to see actual proof.

[TheDebtEliminator]

Greetings Daniel,

Thanks for sharing your experiment with us.

Wishing you great success and I will stay tuned-in

Best Wishes ... Ron

[hitesh93]

A great test Dan -- I can tell you from 5 years and 300 sites of experience that EMD does make a HUGE difference in lower competition keywords. As you increase the competition, and the 'broader' nature of the keywords, the value drops significantly.
You could almost draw an inverse proportion chart between Avg. PR of the top 10 results and the value of EMD.

Which makes sense of course.

and regarding tGoogle potentially devaluing EMD -- not gonna happen. For the very simple reason that it is a GREAT indicator of relevance (which is what Google is all about!). In Google's eyes, if you have a domain name 'Golf Clubs', then the chances are high that it is relevant for 'Gold Clubs' and not 'Banana Sundae'.
It would only hurt their algo to devalue domain names and will actually end up hurting a lot of legitimate businesses and sites as well.

[nubchai]

Sounds like a great case study Dan. Thanks for sharing the process.

As far as Google devaluing the sites I'd be somewhat surprised. It sounds like Dan is planning on building these sites out more than what you'd see in other EMD strategies.

I was also curious about the theme you're planning to use. With your experience with Amazon site building have you found particular themes to work better than others?

Thanks!
Sandy

[Domainate]

You will for sure succeed because I've seen with my own eyes time and time again what exact keyword domains do for rankings and well...I make a living selling exact match keyword domains among other things. Selling domains wouldn't be my career if I didn't think getting a premium domain vs. regging the crap that's available was the single best move a business or entrepreneur can make.

Good luck with your test but you surely won't need it. If it goes well, hit me up if you want to get some more exact match domains.

[FredJones]

Let me add here - I use my login which is my pen name (although my favorite one) here - but when I use my real name, I rank #1 for myname.com without a single backlink that I have built, among not-many sites. In other words, myname.com ranks #1 without any backlink just because of the exact domain name. Lol, that is the least number of backlinks I have ever used to rank #1.

In other cases, domainname.com is a reliable indicator to Google - and does appear to rank easily from whatever I have seen.

I wish this was not the case. When it comes to ecommerce, it significantly twists the story towards the owner of the domain name. Just because I had purchased the exact domain name once upon a time does in no way mean that I provide the best information for the domain, and there are more likely to be more people who provide good information an possibly better information too.

So personally I am not a fan of the fact that G! appears to love exact domain name matches. And it becomes worse when it comes to the likes of Bing etc.

[rhinocl]

Perhaps one of the moderators can clarify. I thought the prohibition on promoting backlinkling services here was because services don't face the penalties if they are careless and don't offer meaningful contributions to the discussions on forums. The idea stated above that we shouldn't be discussing backlink building at all implies that the forum owner considers the process improper even if it is done carefully by site owners themselves?

[Daniel Tan]

Hi Dan,

Good job! Interesting experiment. Exact Domain match is easy to rank for sure and it is NOT expensive considering you have a better chance of ranking. You could have spent much more doing SEO or not getting the ranking you want by not having exact keyword in domain.

My clients are peeling out their high trafficked keywords and build sites purposely for that keyword. It is like, they have a business selling sandals and they have 10 to 15 sites selling the same sandals, each targeting different sets of high traffic keywords that they peel and develop overtime.

Somewhat like adwords where you peel and stick, now with domains, you can do the same too.

Daniel

[tmauto]

Lately I've joined in the EMD race and I think it really helps to get good rankings fast. so I think you will do well.

[stevecl]

Goodluck with your experiment Dan,

I have an exact match domain name - bookmarked it got article links pointing to it, yet not even on the radar on google. I am sat at number 1 in yahoo.com though although the traffic is rubbish.

[Anjine]

Dan,

I really look forward to following your progress.

And a (belated) thank you for the detailed Amazon affiliate post you did a while back. It was a HUGE help to me!

[4thstreet]

Daniel,

I always enjoy the contributions that you make in this forum & you are one of the few marketers that I actually look forward to receiving emails from.

Always enjoy your openness and willingness to share your info as things happen. Most only share after the information is old and out dated.

Will enjoy following this tread

[TimG]

Dan,
You are one of the marketers I have been following for Amazon advice and tips as I build my own Amazon affiliate virtual real estate empire. Looking forward to see/hear about the results from this experiment and wishing you the best of luck.

I've personally seen some of my domains that were built around spcific phrases rank extrmely well with little to no backlinks based on the keyword phrase used.

Examples might include domain s such as:

howtopreventlice.com
howtopreventfleas.com
howtopreventbedbugs.com

The product domain names is where I run in to some issues because some companies are not thrilled when you have a domian name with their product in it. For those I've gone to using a strong theme based domain name and then just use the product name as a page on the website - I am seeing those pages rank extremely high for the product names.

Hope that made snese -

Respectfully,
TIm

[jasonl70]

I'm surprised people are just catching on to this

I've had great success with exact match domains.. particularly with local businesses going after localized search phrases. I've outranked tons of sites that had 5-10 years age, pr2 - pr4, backlinks from decent sites like the BBB, dmoz listed, etc - just by throwing up a blog on an exact match domain name (with zero backlinks). Add a few backlinks to it, and it jumps from the middle of page 1 to the top.

[stevecl]

Originally Posted by jasonl70

just by throwing up a blog on an exact match domain name (with zero backlinks). Add a few backlinks to it, and it jumps from the middle of page 1 to the top.

Thats what i thought, not even in the top 100 for the keyword.

[Daniel Brock]

Thanks for the comments everyone! Provides me the encouragement to keep this case study going

Progess report

I spent some time building the first 5 out of 15 sites.
Most of these so far have been the .us EMDs.

(these are what I am most interested in for this test)

I have noticed one problem with the .US domains over the traditional TLDs.

The problem with .us is that it seems my ISP is VERY slow at updating local DNS for .us domains. Some of these names I bought last week and updated my name servers as soon as I bought them.

7+ days later, my local DNS was still showing the old server the domains were pointing to.

I verified with a couple of my friends to make sure that it wasn't just a local problem, and most of them were seeing the old page like I was.

This leads me to believe that it will take longer for .us names to become indexed because of the slow rate at which ISPs update local cache for .us domains.

While the DNS irons out, I'm going to start building the sites for the other exact match TLDs that I own.

As these sites start to get indexed, I'm going to add them to market samurai so that I can track their ranking progress for the main term I'm trying to rank for.

I'll update the progress once the majority of the sites are indexed.

Stay tuned!

[jasonl70]

Originally Posted by stevecl

Thats what i thought, not even in the top 100 for the keyword.

it can take some time still.. but they very often will float right up through the serps.

[vicone]

For those I've gone to using a strong theme based domain name and then just use the product name as a page on the website

That's what I've been doing also. Some of the internationally known brands are extremely protective of their name.

Ivan

[paulgl]

I know it was for examples, but do a search for golf clubs.
I dare you. Not a single domain in the top ten has golf clubs
in the name. So, the challenge would be to take a domain with
golf clubs in it, and rank #1 for golf clubs. But that aint gonna
happen. You couldn't do it, so it has to morph into a parlor trick
using something else.

When people do real searches for real things in real time,
these parlor tricks fall through.

Complete waste of time and money. #1 has nothing to do
with backlinks. Copy a sentence out of this thread, and
do a search. it comes up #1. No backlinks. Big deal.
The #1 spot is worthless.

Why not take one cool domain, and rank it for something that
people will actually search for? Why try and fool google?

Paul

[Daniel Brock]

Originally Posted by paulgl

I know it was for examples, but do a search for golf clubs.
I dare you. Not a single domain in the top ten has golf clubs
in the name. So, the challenge would be to take a domain with
golf clubs in it, and rank #1 for golf clubs. But that aint gonna
happen. You couldn't do it, so it has to morph into a parlor trick
using something else.

When people do real searches for real things in real time,
these parlor tricks fall through.

Complete waste of time and money. #1 has nothing to do
with backlinks. Copy a sentence out of this thread, and
do a search. it comes up #1. No backlinks. Big deal.
The #1 spot is worthless.

Why not take one cool domain, and rank it for something that
people will actually search for? Why try and fool google?

Paul

I don't get what you are talking about...

the term 'Golf Clubs' gets almost 2,000,000 searches per month. Exact match....people DO type in golf clubs into google all the time.

The reason why no golfclubs TLDs exist in the SERPs is for two reasons:

Most of the TLDs are owned by domain squatters who aren't actively promoting their sites and have no real content on them.

The only site that is a real site is golfclubs.com, which has maybe 20 words of text on it and is poorly SEOed.

The other reason is that golf clubs is a VERY competitive search term. With competition like this, a EMD will give you an edge over the rest of the sites, however you need the back link structure in place to support it...

[adam westrop]

Originally Posted by paulgl

I know it was for examples, but do a search for golf clubs.
I dare you. Not a single domain in the top ten has golf clubs
in the name. So, the challenge would be to take a domain with
golf clubs in it, and rank #1 for golf clubs. But that aint gonna
happen. You couldn't do it, so it has to morph into a parlor trick
using something else.

When people do real searches for real things in real time,
these parlor tricks fall through.

Complete waste of time and money. #1 has nothing to do
with backlinks. Copy a sentence out of this thread, and
do a search. it comes up #1. No backlinks. Big deal.
The #1 spot is worthless.

Why not take one cool domain, and rank it for something that
people will actually search for? Why try and fool google?

Paul

I agree, exact domain matches and TLD differences may be there.. There may not... Everyone would have to see proof of a scientific experiment to believe the evidence, however we all know the 3 big areas which you can affect in a big way to have a major effect on your rankings and they are (1) backlinks (2) site authority (3) domain age.... By putting these 3, I have already assumed that you have the correct title tags, and relevant content on page etc etc.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by paulgl

I know it was for examples, but do a search for golf clubs.
I dare you. Not a single domain in the top ten has golf clubs
in the name. So, the challenge would be to take a domain with
golf clubs in it, and rank #1 for golf clubs. But that aint gonna
happen. You couldn't do it, so it has to morph into a parlor trick
using something else.

When people do real searches for real things in real time,
these parlor tricks fall through.

Complete waste of time and money. #1 has nothing to do
with backlinks. Copy a sentence out of this thread, and
do a search. it comes up #1. No backlinks. Big deal.
The #1 spot is worthless.

Why not take one cool domain, and rank it for something that
people will actually search for? Why try and fool google?

Paul

Do a search for "golf", I dare you.

[TuKeN]

Would love to see the results!

[Colin Klinkert]

I am doing something along these lines too, I am now up to 50 domains...

I rank first page for a few of them already and started 5 weeks ago, of the 50, 27 are built, 14 are promoted and have led to over 5,000 visits this month from google. I wish you all the best Dan, you seem to know what you're doing

[examineseo]

Very interesting thread. Thanks for starting it. Should be interesting to keep watch of what happens in the future!

[Dean Martin]

I've purchased a bunch of EMT domains over the last 2 years and put a couple of unique articles up along with auto feeds from amazon on some and EPN on others. They all ranked front page of Google mostly pos. 2-6 up until about 6 months ago when I assume the Google bots devalued them due to all the outgoing affiliate links.

Profitability is now very low. I guess it's time to hire some content writers and cloak the affiliate links...

[Colin Klinkert]

Originally Posted by dlmartin

I've purchased a bunch of EMT domains over the last 2 years and put a couple of unique articles up along with auto feeds from amazon on some and EPN on others. They all ranked front page of Google mostly pos. 2-6 up until about 6 months ago when I assume the Google bots devalued them due to all the outgoing affiliate links.

Profitability is now very low. I guess it's time to hire some content writers and cloak the affiliate links...

Wow, thats very interesting to hear as I plan on really ramping it up... thanks for the heads up, will need to ensure that links out are:

* NoFollow
* To Valued sites
* Using a cloaker like wp-affiliate-pro

and that there are a lot of inbound links built

[thehobbster]

I'm very much interested in this experiment and will follow it closely. Thanks for taking the risk, learning, and sharing it with us!