Exact Domain Match

13 years ago

EMD's can definitely be very useful, but certainly not critical.

In your example, dogtraining2011.com is not an EMD (unless you were specifically targeting "Dog Training 2011".

Hyphenated domain names are claimed to not be as effective as those without (you'll get different opinions on this, of course)

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alcymart

13 years ago

Originally Posted by UMS

EMD's can definitely be very useful, but certainly not critical.

In your example, dogtraining2011.com is not an EMD (unless you were specifically targeting "Dog Training 2011".

Hyphenated domain names are claimed to not be as effective as those without (you'll get different opinions on this, of course)

I can inform you that I have a hyphenated exact match domain and #1 on Yahoo and #2 on Bing for my precise keyword plus It's an info TLD

If we are talking about the Big G, there is a possibility that hyphens or TLD are not as welcomed as I stand #11. Each SE has its own algo.

For the rest, I agree with you.

Bernard St-Pierre

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ARVolund 13 years ago

Originally Posted by UMS

........

Hyphenated domain names are claimed to not be as effective as those without (you'll get different opinions on this, of course)

Hyphenated domains names are not any harder to rank so from an seo standpoint there is no difference. From a customer standpoint there is though especially if you have more than one hyphen in the domain name.

I have found that a well ranked domain with more than one hyphen gets less clicks for its position than one with either one or no hyphens. I have not seen enough difference to measure with just having one. People seem to see multiple hyphens as spammy or something and will skip over them.

The other thing is anyone remembering your domain later one, chances are they will not remember to type in that hyphen and end up going elsewhere if they have not bookmarked your site. So for any kind of branding purposes hyphens are at a distinct disadvantage.
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alcymart

13 years ago

As long as you have the keyword within your Domain, you would be ok.

dog-training is as good as dogtraining. dog-training-course would do also and not only would you have dog-training keyword at the beginning but also get into the dog training course niche.

Try to put the keyword at the beginning when possible.

Seperate pages for each breed has more to do with optimizing on a specific breed in your body text for more relevancy quite simply. If you put different breeds on the same page, relevancy is not as good anymore.

Bernard St-Pierre

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ARVolund

13 years ago

While having an edm is helpful it is not critical. I have lots of sites that rank well without the keyword in the domain at all. Does it help? Yes but not enough to make yourself crazy trying to come up with some kind of crazy match.

It does help a lot if you have your keyword somewhere in the url. So while

keyword.com

is best

somedomain.com/keyword

is almost as good

and in a lot of cases better from a longterm standpoint for marketing. It allows you to have a shorter more easily remembered domain and still get your keyword in the url.

Originally Posted by sasglobal

Noob to SEO here so forgive me if it is a dumb question. It is definitely NOT an attempt to spam or anything like that. I have been reading that Exact Domain Match (EDM) is critical to SEO. That being said, what is considered an EDM? For example, if I had a site about dog training (yeah I know that is a well used example) and the domain dogtraining.com was not available, would Google see dog-training.com or dogtraining2011.com as an EDM? And from what I have read, if I were targeting specified breeds for training, I should have a separate page for each breed. Something like dogtraining.com/poodle. Do I have a grip on the concept or am I totally missing something here.

TIA,
Steve

Thanks

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strategic seo services

13 years ago

Originally Posted by sasglobal

Noob to SEO here so forgive me if it is a dumb question. It is definitely NOT an attempt to spam or anything like that. I have been reading that Exact Domain Match (EDM) is critical to SEO. That being said, what is considered an EDM? For example, if I had a site about dog training (yeah I know that is a well used example) and the domain dogtraining.com was not available, would Google see dog-training.com or dogtraining2011.com as an EDM? And from what I have read, if I were targeting specified breeds for training, I should have a separate page for each breed. Something like dogtraining.com/poodle. Do I have a grip on the concept or am I totally missing something here.

TIA,
Steve

Exact match domains do help your website's rankings. However, high quality, dofollow backlinks (using your targeted keyword as anchor text) are more important than on page optimization factors such as domain name. Check out my sig. for more information.

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Isaiah Jackson

13 years ago

Dogtraining.com would be the better domain name to get because it is keyword based but you don't always have to use .com you can also use .net .org or .info

Originally Posted by sasglobal

Noob to SEO here so forgive me if it is a dumb question. It is definitely NOT an attempt to spam or anything like that. I have been reading that Exact Domain Match (EDM) is critical to SEO. That being said, what is considered an EDM? For example, if I had a site about dog training (yeah I know that is a well used example) and the domain dogtraining.com was not available, would Google see dog-training.com or dogtraining2011.com as an EDM? And from what I have read, if I were targeting specified breeds for training, I should have a separate page for each breed. Something like dogtraining.com/poodle. Do I have a grip on the concept or am I totally missing something here.

TIA,
Steve

Thanks
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Jeremy Banks 13 years ago
Quick tips
- An EMD is the EXACT keyword you are targeting
- Adding a word at the end will give you a keyword rich domain which is still good (I have outranked many EMD just by adding site, or blog after the keyword in the URL
- ONLY go for .net, org, com and I have found .co's are ranking well (see my case study in the sig)
- Do some research first about your competition. If the first page of google is dominated by domains with high PR and lots of backlinks it will be hard to rank for
- Adding seperate pages to target different and related keywords is a great idea
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RevSEO

13 years ago

Some feedback about EMD.

I have an EMD.com for a popular niche. I bought it the minute I was able to buy the domains for this new upcoming niche. At the time I didn't have the time or resources to build out the domain.

After a few months I decided to check out the domain, looked at backlinks, etc. Sure enough, I had over 100 links ALREADY built to my website. A dominate .NET guy had created a website in the meantime and people naturally linked to my website assuming my site was the other guys. I already had amazing backlinks (PR4 - PR6 domains) without lifting a finger.

Needless to say, that really opened my eyes to the world of EMD.coms vs .nets/orgs/infos and even hyphens.

If you can get the .COM, by all means pick it up immediately. People naturally assume that you are the authoritative source and will link to you.

In regards to SEO, I am a firm believer that .COM's are the best, followed by .NET/.ORG (depending on niche). I'd avoid hyphens unless they are your last resort as I've had a harder time in the past ranking hyphens.