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Domain Name Value in SE Ranking, a Head Scratcher

by mastergrocer
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I mange the website for this company and I have been scratching my head for the some time trying to figure out why for the love of Sergey and Larry their search engine will not list this website on the first page when searching for the domain root term.
Domain = grocery.com
Term = grocery
Bing/Yahoo rank #1
Google rank is somewhere between pages 4-8

The website contains plenty to really good information about the grocery industry, it has hundreds of completely natural back links, it was even naturally cited by Wikipedia. To no avail.

I never really trusted SEO companies and so I advised them patience; just keep publishing your already relevant information and the reward will come. But I am sorry to report that the reward is not coming and rightly so, they are losing their patience.

Any ideas?:confused:
Dave
#domain #head #ranking #scratcher
  • Profile picture of the author rahmanpaidar
    Grocery is a broad name not a brand name.
    What is your reason to expect Google lists your site as in the first place over
    all other related sites in that niche?

    I could accept your complain if your site was sonyericsson.com and someone
    else was listed in the first place upon your brand name site in brand name query.
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    طراحی سایت، طراحی وب سایت
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  • Profile picture of the author DNAWRealm
    Banned
    EMD's aren't guaranteed good results anymore!
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    • Profile picture of the author mastergrocer
      Thanks DNAWRealm, I learned a new concept from you and I even read this article ...seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline. Recommended reading for those who are interested in the topic. I completely expected that a term so generic as "grocery" could face challenges ranking high, but we were hoping that with the vast amount of relevant content, our prospect would improve.

      Look at the terms "drugs" and drugs.com. It ranks in the first position. The model is very similar. Drugs.com writes about drugs, it does not make them or sell them. Still, not Pfizer, Glaxo, Bristol, not even Walgreens rank first. But for the term grocery, Google chooses to display grocery stores (indeed Walmart) and corner bodega such as juniorgrocery.com, first rather than a site that profiles grocery stores and manufacturers. It is peculiar to say the least, it is not strictly the "exact match domains" discussion, but it is related.
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      • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
        Originally Posted by mastergrocer View Post

        Thanks DNAWRealm, I learned a new concept from you and I even read this article ...seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline. Recommended reading for those who are interested in the topic. I completely expected that a term so generic as "grocery" could face challenges ranking high, but we were hoping that with the vast amount of relevant content, our prospect would improve.

        Look at the terms "drugs" and drugs.com. It ranks in the first position. The model is very similar. Drugs.com writes about drugs, it does not make them or sell them. Still, not Pfizer, Glaxo, Bristol, not even Walgreens rank first. But for the term grocery, Google chooses to display grocery stores (indeed Walmart) and corner bodega such as juniorgrocery.com, first rather than a site that profiles grocery stores and manufacturers. It is peculiar to say the least, it is not strictly the "exact match domains" discussion, but it is related.
        The main term is over-optimized. It likely appears too often in the site. That includes the content and backlinks and domain. If you have the tools, analyze the anchor text. I would reduce the amount of exact anchor to less than 20%. The "EMD boost" has been removed and too many links with the same anchor text have been hurting sites since Panda in February.
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  • Profile picture of the author BKKBound
    Exact Match Domains or EMD's used to be pretty usefuly in getting a boost to the front page based on the appearance of the keyword in the domain. Their main factor seemed to be the added ability to overuse the keyword in links...inn other words you could get away with less anchor diversity.

    unfortunately, this has changed and Google has somewhat devalued EMD's that they deem to be low quality. Unfortunately, just having the EMD for a particular keyword term is no guarantee of anything anymore. The reality is that the keyword "grocery" is broad match and as such is going to be very difficult to rank for without a significant amount of off-page seo...in other words links...and massive amounts of them. You would be much better served chasing a phrase match term that is more longer tail in nature.
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  • Profile picture of the author intergen
    The latest post from SEOMoz about the EMD Google Algo update
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  • Profile picture of the author sleeperz
    I'm no expert at this, but you also repeat the word 'grocery' three times in your title tag, and it's possible that that may trigger a slight penalty in google's algorithm. Repeating the word so many times might be like saying please please please rank me for this word. Apparantly, google doesn't want to rank sites that try too hard.
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