can you beat a keyworded domain?

[outwest]

I am willing to concede that teh EMD.com
has some benefit, albeit small

When you guys talk about EMDs you are talking
.COM, .NET, .ORG. .INFO, .CO.UK. etc etc etc and NOI am not willing to concede that all those domain extensions are given boosts by google , even with the EMD.

Only the .COM and I willing to concede any small boost
however any benefit, of any EMD.something, can easily be overcome with high PR backlinks of a competitor

you guys who rely on EMDs
IMO
are having a case of tunnel vision

First of all , Any normal kw , with any decent amount of search traffic, MOST of the time the EMDs are all gone. What do you EMD worshippers do then? go to the next kw? or do you have the courage to actually TRY TO RANK on SEO, Backlinks etc?

you think that the EMD will get you a boost that you dont have to backlink the site as much.
if the competition is so low that an EMD alone, gives you that much of a boost

you could most likely rank the same with ANY domain name

what about my example of creditcards.com?
you guys SCREECHED that this site was number one while mastercard and visa etc were not

Creditcards.com has 250,000 backlinks

The number 2 site has 5000 backlinks

Gosh, the EMD ....MUST be why Creditcards.com is number one then right? isnt that proof?

haha
Backlinks Rule
EMDs have very little benefit
the sooner you learn that the better

[MikeFriedman]

I never said that an EMD or keyword rich domain was more important than backlinks. I don't focus on domains much at all myself. I think I own maybe 3 EMD's and maybe another 4-5 keyword rich domains.

I simply said that keywords in the URL do boost rankings. Does it guarantee a number 1 ranking or is it unbeatable? Of course not.

Originally Posted by outwest

what about my example of creditcards.com?
you guys SCREECHED that this site was number one while mastercard and visa etc were not

Creditcards.com has 250,000 backlinks

The number 2 site has 5000 backlinks

Gosh, the EMD ....MUST be why Creditcards.com is number one then right? isnt that proof?

Once again, you only read what you want to read. MasterCard has about 38 million backlinks. Still not #1.

Originally Posted by outwest

When you guys talk about EMDs you are talking
.COM, .NET, .ORG. .INFO, .CO.UK. etc etc etc and NOI am not willing to concede that all those domain extensions are given boosts by google , even with the EMD.

Only the .COM and I willing to concede any small boost

So I guess now you are going to try arguing that .com's rank better than anything else...

[outwest]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

I never said that an EMD or keyword rich domain was more important than backlinks. I don't focus on domains much at all myself. I think I own maybe 3 EMD's and maybe another 4-5 keyword rich domains.

I simply said that keywords in the URL do boost rankings. Does it guarantee a number 1 ranking or is it unbeatable? Of course not.



Once again, you only read what you want to read. MasterCard has about 38 million backlinks. Still not #1.




So I guess now you are going to try arguing that .com's rank better than anything else...

Go back and look at mastercard

first of all 38 million backlinks? that could be part of the problem, spammy backlinks

second go look at them in Market Samurai
Onpage SEO for the kw Credit Cards is N N N N (this is for Mastercard) #3

While the number one site(creditcards.com ) is Y Y Y Y

Are you saying you dont know ONPAGE SEO carries a lot of weight?

[MikeFriedman]

Both cardratings.com and Capital One have about the same or more backlinks and even better onpage factors than creditcards.com, yet they are both ranked farther back.

Go look at the 'penny stocks' SERP again.

The site that is #2, which is wikipedia, will be all N's too. Yet the site that is #9, timothysykes.com is all Y's, has far more backlinks, but is barely on the first page.

You can nitpick a single SERP to draw any conclusion you want.

[outwest]

u cant outrank wikipedia very easily
I have that problem on one of my main kws for my new brick and mortar offline buss

the first site is wikipedia
16000 backlinks
no way

but
thats ok its avg 100 bucks per order profit and being number 2 would be fine with me
but that wont be easy either

[awddude]

When I do my keyword research I often see look at the domain age of the top 10

It's usually a bunch of 10 year old sites, with 1 or 2 very new sites. When I look at the new sites, I notice it's because they have better optimization.

[Alexis Barnabe]

Open Site Explorer

AS a matter of fast its hard to beat a keyword domain name. I can tell you that!

[itsHERO]

Originally Posted by seoweb2000

You need aged backlinks, so as your backlinks get older you will move up.
Try doing social bookmarking your site from many different accts, dont spam and book mark internal pages too.
Build blogs on blogger.com and wordpress.com, plus other Wp Mu sites and build backlinks to your site.
Make sure to link out from your site to some high pr site in your niche
Over time you will see results. gl

Thanks for the method!

[mosthost]

Originally Posted by Alexis Barnabe

Open Site Explorer

AS a matter of fast its hard to beat a keyword domain name. I can tell you that!

It looks like the links outgunned the EMD in your example.

[outwest]

Links always outgun domain name

[lovboa]

@ outwest, mike friedman

It seems you 2 are never going to come to an agreement...sigh
But thanks for the valuable info from both sides of the table

[outwest]

Well my emd for my resort still sits at number 12 on Google woooohoooo

while the other resorts without the kw even in their url much less their domain, continue to trounce the emd...........wohoooo go emd's

[michael scott]

outwest, you just don't seem to get it no matter how much people try to explain it to you. EMDs are not the most powerful thing to rank #1, it's how you utilize the benefit. It's no different than having an optimized page title, content, or anchor text - it's just one of the elements Google looks for when ranking a page. You seem to think just because someone owns an EMD they have an automatic entitlement to page 1 but this is obviously not true when your competition is full of high PR links and good on-page SEO. By having the EMD, it only gives you a bit of a head start. But since you're still #12 even with an EMD boost, then maybe your SEO just plain sucks.

You've gone back and forth claiming EMDs are useless and months later claiming how your competition is stomping you because they have a EMD.... but I think you're just frustrated. The correlation data that MikeFreedman pointed out is obvious. Those are real examples of SEOs who know what they're doing. I suggest you go back to learning SEO from the very basics first before you continue building more sites.

Also, if you're still thinking partial match keywords suck, check out page 2 for "car insurance" on google. Again, it's the difference between real knowledge vs. a pseudo intellect. Now stop complaining and start studying.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by michael scott

outwest, you just don't seem to get it no matter how much people try to explain it to you. EMDs are not the most powerful thing to rank #1, it's how you utilize the benefit. It's no different than having an optimized page title, content, or anchor text - it's just one of the elements Google looks for when ranking a page. You seem to think just because someone owns an EMD they have an automatic entitlement to page 1 but this is obviously not true when your competition is full of high PR links and good on-page SEO. By having the EMD, it only gives you a bit of a head start. But since you're still #12 even with an EMD boost, then maybe your SEO just plain sucks.

You've gone back and forth claiming EMDs are useless and months later claiming how your competition is stomping you because they have a EMD.... but I think you're just frustrated. The correlation data that MikeFreedman pointed out is obvious. Those are real examples of SEOs who know what they're doing. I suggest you go back to learning SEO from the very basics first before you continue building more sites.

Also, if you're still thinking partial match keywords suck, check out page 2 for "car insurance" on google. Again, it's the difference between real knowledge vs. a pseudo intellect. Now stop complaining and start studying.

Here is the bottom line
I USED to think EMDs mattered a lot and they USED TO

however presently so many of you guys focus so much on EMDs to the point of actively searching for kws based on whether the EMD Is available or not, which I think is nuts

I dont think Google values EMDs nearly as much as they used to. When I say EMDs mean nothing, Of course they give a little boost. I admit that.

What I dont agree with is searching for EMDs directly, because I know you guys who do this, if the EMD is not available, go on to the next kw, since you are so intent on the EMD

What if the EMD is not available, and the top 3 on google top 10 competition only have less than 30 backlinks. You could TROUNCE the competition with ANY domain name. But you guys would see right past that and say OH OPS EMD NOT AVAILABLE thats not a good one, Right?

Or do you have the courage to actually RANK a site and compete based on
1. backlinks
2. onpage SEO
etc etc etc etc etc

Thats my whole point, The slight advantage that EMDs may offer, is trumped very quickly by high PR backlinks and other factors

Your contention is
OOH NO NO NO, a good EMD is VERY DIFFICULT to outrank
(assuming I guess you are saying they have very thick backlinks etc etc etc)

Ok but then most of you guys who look for EMDs look for them specifically because you think you DONT have to backlink them as much, correct?

I dont know I just dont see EMDs being worth the trouble
I dont feel like buying a new domain for every kw that comes into my mind

And there is also the guys who go PAST the EMD concept and start bastardizing the EMDs by adding x's , 1s, etc etc, extra words, which I think is just totally useless

but hey so what if we disagree, does everyone have to agree with you?

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by outwest

Well my emd for my resort still sits at number 12 on Google woooohoooo

while the other resorts without the kw even in their url much less their domain, continue to trounce the emd...........wohoooo go emd's

That is a really bad example because your EMD resort site is awful. Last time I saw it you had a Wordpress site, but never even filled out the About page. It was still that silly About default page that comes with Wordpress.

It also was a PR 0 site with nowhere near the number of backlinks as the top sites.

The content was bad.

In fact, I would say the fact that it even got to #12 is a testament to the fact that EMDs do carry some ranking weight.

[Kris79]

Yes, you can outrank BMD but you must pay attention.
First of all it's more important how many and what quality backlinks they have.
If they have poor quality backlinks and you can have better, you will outrank them.

But there is a catch to it: if they have KW in domain name, they probably targeting that KW harder, meaning their backlinks have KW as anchor text.