#1 spot on google is an EMD .com can I beat it?

[mec64]

First of all, thank you for taking the time to glance at this thread.

I'm brand new to this whole keyword research game and I had a quick question. The keyword I'm thinking about pursuing has a local search volume of 880 and a CPC of about $4. That being said the number one spot in google is an EMD .com with a PR 0 and 0 BL to the page. The ranked page is a root domain and the total BL's to the entire site is at 18 currently.

With all this information do you think this is worth pursuing? Most of the other top 10's are ehow, wiki and government information pages. Also as a side note Traffic Travis gave the analysis a relatively easy. Any feedback would be extremely helpful, and if you have any pointers for a newbie like me please don't hesitate to add them!

Thanks again for taking a look.

[lovboa]

While traffic travis a fantastic tool for seo analysis, i found its opinion on whether a keyword is difficult or easy to beunreliable. This keyword seems like it would be relatively difficult. Not so much because of the emd site, but the wikis and gvt. sites.
With a fairly high cpc, it would be worth pursuing this kw if it had more search volume. But given that its less than a thousand, i dont think it will be worth the work and effort, of which you will need a lot of to outrank the wikis and gvt sites.

[JSProjects]

Hard to tell without getting a good look at the other sites. That said, EMD's are usually moderately easy to beat if they're not well-optimized. EMD's help, but they're not a magic pill. If the owner isn't doing a good job of optimizing it & creating backlinks then you should be able to outrank it.

[dtang4]

Are you sure the site has 0 BLs?

My feeling is if this EMD is #1, beating out Wikis and other high authority site, the site owner is an Internet Marketer who knows what he's doing. He is probably tough competition to take head on.

[mec64]

Originally Posted by JSProjects

Hard to tell without getting a good look at the other sites. That said, EMD's are usually moderately easy to beat if they're not well-optimized. EMD's help, but they're not a magic pill. If the owner isn't doing a good job of optimizing it & creating backlinks then you should be able to outrank it.

Thank you for your input. The EMD seems to be optimized with their title, h1 and description according to Traffic Travis. The site layout is somewhat ugly though. Not sure how that factors into it.

[mec64]

Thank you all for your replies, so far it seems as though it's not worth it. Keyword research is a pain. I feel like I just wasted an afternoon, haha. I'm sure that's the case for a lot of people though. Any other input would be much appreciated.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by mec64

First of all, thank you for taking the time to glance at this thread.

I'm brand new to this whole keyword research game and I had a quick question. The keyword I'm thinking about pursuing has a local search volume of 880 and a CPC of about $4. That being said the number one spot in google is an EMD .com with a PR 0 and 0 BL to the page. The ranked page is a root domain and the total BL's to the entire site is at 18 currently.

With all this information do you think this is worth pursuing? Most of the other top 10's are ehow, wiki and government information pages. Also as a side note Traffic Travis gave the analysis a relatively easy. Any feedback would be extremely helpful, and if you have any pointers for a newbie like me please don't hesitate to add them!

Thanks again for taking a look.

Sounds like a weak site IMO.

That's zero backlinks on the ranked page is that correct?

Sure EMDs will help for a single keyword, but that by itself is nothing as far as SEO goes.

If he is really ranking #1 then the rest of the competition must care less about that keyword & only rank because nobody is targeting the exact keyword.

What's the highest PR on the 18 links?

[MaverickUK]

EMD's are absolutely worthless IMO. Never use EMD as a ranking factor, they're just as susceptible to being outranked as any other website. As long as keywords ate contained within a URL, that is all anyone should care about.

[Charley Brown]

EMD once worked wonders in terms of SEO, but that time has long since passed. You should be able to pass the site with proper on-site SEO, and strong backlinks. I say to go for it!

[yukon]

For the record.

Not only can you beat it... Yes... you can beat it.

- Bobby Boucher

[outwest]

EMDs are not necessarily worthless but they have to stand on their own as far as onpage SEO, and backlinks strength also, just like any other site

if the site is weakly backlinked, yes you can beat it, EMDs are not god
what are the total number of backlinks to the page? what are the PR values of the backlinks

if they are weak, then you can trounce the guy

[xnice]

Yes, you can beat it, with a condition: this website will do nothing with backlinks. IF they build backlinks with your speed, you may lose.

[sovereignn]

Once they notice they aren't ranking #1 they might start building backlinks

[easyrider7]

Excuse my ignorance, but what does EMD stand for?

[ChartTraderZ]

Sorry for the ignorance, what is an EMD?

Generally it's easy to beat the rest of the sites in rankings ...

[outwest]

EMD Exact Match Domain

you are targeting
Forex Trading?
EMD would Be Forextrading.com, net, org. etc (99 percent of the time on decent kws with normal to good traffic the EMDs are all gone long ago, many are just parked though, by domain squatters)

yourkeyword.com, .net or .org
these are the usual ones talked about and most sought after

I see sites regularly rank top 5 that are yourkeyword.co.uk, .info, .me. .biz, .whatever

[easyrider7]

Oh okay. In August a brand new EMD (without any backlinks, very few indexed pages on site, crap content, and only 10 days old) beat my PR2 page with a number of backlinks. This has conclusively shown me that having an EMD is still a huge Google ranking booster.

[cashcow]

It sounds easy to beat IMHO, but I'd take another look at the keyword to determine if it is worth it because it if there is not much competiton (as it sounds) there could be a reason for that.

Oh okay. In August a brand new EMD (without any backlinks, very few indexed pages on site, crap content, and only 10 days old) beat my PR2 page with a number of backlinks. This has conclusively shown me that having an EMD is still a huge Google ranking booster.

Is it still outranking you? Maybe it got a temporary boost due to "freshness". Is your site frequently updated, is your on page SEO better than theirs?

Lee

[outwest]

I would be interested in knowing how old the original site is, how many backlinks, whats the onsite SEO of that site, is it SILO structured? (thats more important than many people think)

[mec64]

Apparently Yahoo site explorer blocked my IP due to SEOQuake so I cannot check the PR of the sites backlinks (is there another method to check the PR of backlinks?), but I checked TT again just now and it says there are no backlinks to the root domain, and only 18 to the entire site. Mostly all of the sites ranking in the top ten have very few backlinks. As far as the age of the site TT is telling me 0. I'm not quite sure what SILO structure is, would you mind explaining that to me?

[mejohn]

Anything can be beat with a little knowledge and a lot of hard work. If you really want it, go for it!

[easyrider7]

Originally Posted by cashcow

Is it still outranking you? Maybe it got a temporary boost due to "freshness". Is your site frequently updated, is your on page SEO better than theirs?

No, I am now #4 and it is #7.

[cashcow]

Originally Posted by easyrider7

No, I am now #4 and it is #7.

Cool! Sounds like you will be at #1 in no time then!