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

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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...
#case #domain #exact #google #live #match #names #net #org #study #taking #worth
  • Profile picture of the author EA
    Daniel Brock is awesome!

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

    Dan, Good luck with this.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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...
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
      Originally Posted by JackBenson View Post


      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!
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      • Profile picture of the author 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.
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        • Profile picture of the author 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.
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          • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
            Originally Posted by 4morereferrals View Post

            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
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  • Profile picture of the author Biggy Fat
    I remember you telling me about this, Dan. If you pull this off, are you going to keep it to yourself haha?
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  • Profile picture of the author NewbiesDiary
    Kewl bananas! I love case studies. Will most def be keeping an eye on this one - cheers!
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  • Profile picture of the author bat55w
    Daniel,

    This looks like a really cool test. Can't wait to see the results.
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    • Profile picture of the author CatherineMay
      Daniel, I presume these are self-hosted wordpress sites.

      Is there a particular theme you are using?


      CatherineMay
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    • Profile picture of the author manwalksintoabar
      Daniel, very interesting case study. I assume you will be posting periodically with updates?

      mwiab
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  • Profile picture of the author Bicycle Cat
    Would love to see the results!
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author The Copy Nazi
    Banned
    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

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    • Profile picture of the author 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.
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      • Profile picture of the author 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 View Post

        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.
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        • Profile picture of the author manwalksintoabar
          It may just be a matter of supply and demand. .us, .info and others will eventually become mainstream.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheDebtEliminator
    Greetings Daniel,

    Thanks for sharing your experiment with us.

    Wishing you great success and I will stay tuned-in

    Best Wishes ... Ron
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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    • Profile picture of the author 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.
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      • Profile picture of the author 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?
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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!
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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    • Profile picture of the author 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
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      • Profile picture of the author 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.
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        • Profile picture of the author stevecl
          Originally Posted by jasonl70 View Post

          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.
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          • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
            Originally Posted by stevecl View Post

            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.
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        • Profile picture of the author 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!
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          • Profile picture of the author 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
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            • Profile picture of the author 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
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              • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
                Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

                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...
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              • Profile picture of the author adam westrop
                Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

                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.
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              • Profile picture of the author Mike Grant
                Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

                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.
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                • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
                  Banned
                  Originally Posted by mgtarheels View Post

                  Do a search for "golf", I dare you.
                  Or car insurance. Or health insurance. Or credit report. Or credit card. Or bad credit. Or debt consolidation. Or home business. Or internet marketing. Etc, etc, etc.
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              • Profile picture of the author misterkailo
                Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

                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
                Up to this date, I still cannot find anything from Paul that is worth paying attention to.

                #1 has nothing to do with backlinks? What kind of good green stuff do you smoke?

                Copy a sentence out of this thread and it comes up #1? Yea so what? Am I going to build a site around "Copy a sentence out of this thread and it comes up #1"? Maybe I should make a domain: copyasentenceoutofthisthreadanditcomesup1.com
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                • Profile picture of the author Mike Grant
                  Originally Posted by misterkailo View Post

                  Up to this date, I still cannot find anything from Paul that is worth paying attention to.

                  #1 has nothing to do with backlinks? What kind of good green stuff do you smoke?

                  Copy a sentence out of this thread and it comes up #1? Yea so what? Am I going to build a site around "Copy a sentence out of this thread and it comes up #1"? Maybe I should make a domain: copyasentenceoutofthisthreadanditcomesup1.com
                  He is always talking out of his ass thinking he knows everything about SEO, but if you read his replies it's obvious he is completely oblivious.
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                  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
                    Originally Posted by mgtarheels View Post

                    He is always talking out of his ass thinking he knows everything about SEO, but if you read his replies it's obvious he is completely oblivious.
                    That's hilarious. The truth must hurt. This forum is filled with knuckleheads doing
                    voodoo SEO, then coming back complaining of failures, even though they
                    followed some clown's X,Y,Z steps. Stay away from the circus.

                    Paul
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                    • Profile picture of the author Mike Grant
                      Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

                      That's hilarious. The truth must hurt. This forum is filled with knuckleheads doing
                      voodoo SEO, then coming back complaining of failures, even though they
                      followed some clown's X,Y,Z steps. Stay away from the circus.

                      Paul
                      Truth must hurt? What the hell are you talking about?

                      You were already made to look the fool on the first page, let's not do it again on this page.
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                    • Profile picture of the author misterkailo
                      Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

                      That's hilarious. The truth must hurt. This forum is filled with knuckleheads doing
                      voodoo SEO, then coming back complaining of failures, even though they
                      followed some clown's X,Y,Z steps. Stay away from the circus.

                      Paul
                      Yes... voodoo SEO. I have a EMD with just a few low quality spammy backlinks, but guess what? It sits on #1 on Google with PR 0, and over 100 hits per day.

                      100 hits per day a lot? Nope, but I didn't have to put in any effort except buying the EMD and a few drops of spammy links in Drupal blogs that are filled with Uggs, Links of London, and Viagra links.

                      While you are wasting your time writing your own SEO version 8.0 here, I am actually making money.
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                • Profile picture of the author paulgl
                  Originally Posted by misterkailo View Post

                  Up to this date, I still cannot find anything from Paul that is worth paying attention to.

                  #1 has nothing to do with backlinks? What kind of good green stuff do you smoke?

                  Copy a sentence out of this thread and it comes up #1? Yea so what? Am I going to build a site around "Copy a sentence out of this thread and it comes up #1"? Maybe I should make a domain: copyasentenceoutofthisthreadanditcomesup1.com
                  I can't find a single thing that you've said that makes sense.

                  Obviously, you are smoking something and falling under the spell of voodoo
                  SEO. But, alas, this forum is filled with failing people complaining and giving
                  out BAD advice. Knuckleheads, I think we called them in another thread.
                  *sigh*

                  You can rank #1 without a single backlink.

                  You can rank #1000 with a 1,000 backlinks.

                  If those 2 statements are true (hint: they are *gasp*) then what, pray
                  tell can you tell me all the trouble you think you are going to building backlinks
                  as if they will magically take you to the top?

                  I suggest you read this forum from top to bottom before posting nonsense.

                  Now I explained quite well (in another thread that you missed) how backlinks
                  are related to SERPS. Dig it up and learn something. But a PR1 can indeed
                  beat a PR6. Why is that possible when PR is based on backlinks?
                  I'll let you do the research. I have.

                  Paul
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                  • Profile picture of the author 4morereferrals
                    If those 2 statements are true (hint: they are *gasp*) then what, pray
                    tell can you tell me all the trouble you think you are going to building backlinks
                    as if they will magically take you to the top?
                    Im not sure this was the point of the thread / experiment / topic but ...


                    What it tells me is that if Im an established business, that cant just go "pick another niche thats less competitive" - like 99% of the worlds commerce and "real" offline businesses .... and i have competitors that understand search marketing - I probably wont get much organic search traffic to my web page / offers from google without a better seo strategy than my competitors. AND ... a significant amount of that strategy will likely rely on backlinks.

                    However - if you have an seo strategy that allows you to rank atop google for highly traffic'd terms with competition - with no backlinks - please put hte ebook in wso - i think we're ready to buy.

                    Or maybe I missed the point? if so - sorry.
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                    • Profile picture of the author Mike Grant
                      Originally Posted by 4morereferrals View Post

                      Im not sure this was the point of the thread / experiment / topic but ...


                      What it tells me is that if Im an established business, that cant just go "pick another niche thats less competitive" - like 99% of the worlds commerce and "real" offline businesses .... and i have competitors that understand search marketing - I probably wont get much organic search traffic to my web page / offers from google without a better seo strategy than my competitors. AND ... a significant amount of that strategy will likely rely on backlinks.

                      However - if you have an seo strategy that allows you to rank atop google for highly traffic'd terms with competition - with no backlinks - please put hte ebook in wso - i think we're ready to buy.

                      Or maybe I missed the point? if so - sorry.
                      If he did, he'd be an info millionaire. I mean, the guy thinks exact match domains aren't worth a crap anymore. That's laughable.
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  • Profile picture of the author TuKeN
    Would love to see the results!
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author examineseo
    Very interesting thread. Thanks for starting it. Should be interesting to keep watch of what happens in the future!
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  • Profile picture of the author 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...
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    • Profile picture of the author Colin Klinkert
      Originally Posted by dlmartin View Post

      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
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    • Profile picture of the author 4morereferrals
      Originally Posted by dlmartin View Post

      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...
      Are those links made no follow on your site? Sure ive read that pisses matt cutts off a little.
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      • Profile picture of the author 4morereferrals
        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.
        Paulg,

        I track with a high % of stuff you post - but this paragraph has me baffled.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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!
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    • Profile picture of the author mpx305
      This is great, I can't wait to see what happens!
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      I'm unique, just like everybody else

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      • Profile picture of the author thecableguy
        I've been using exact match domains for several years now ever since the Info Product Killer hit the Clickbank marketplace several years back. I got started using product numbers for EMD (KDL-40XBR9), and while it worked very well for some smaller niches and less competitive keywords a few years back it doesn't seem to work quite as well on Google these days.

        (Please note on product number domains some items will have a very limited "shelf life", as the newer models come out the search numbers really drop)

        It's not magic, but it does work somewhat. A few years back I registered a product number domain name, and while waiting for it to propagate I created an account for it. Then forgot about for over a week. Well much to my surprise while Googling the term I was on page two, but all that showed in the SERP's were "index of....", in other words I forgot completely about the domain and didn't add ANY pages. A "blank" domain. I doubt very much if abc.com would have ranked for the keyword with absolutely no pages.

        JMO but some people mention a minimum of 2,000 searches a month for an EMD, but there better be a really, really high CPC AND plenty of advertisers. But that 2,000 searches only matter IF you reach the first page of Google. I forget the exact numbers, but I think only about 17% of the visitors actually clicked through to the second page, so if you're not on page one you can throw those figures out the window.

        MarketSamurai "Guesstimates" a 40+ click thru rate for the number one listing (log out of your Google account before checking), but you'll probably average about 5% for a first page listing other than #1 (rare).

        So here's the math:

        2,000 searches per month = 100 visitors clicking on your listing (5%).

        Out of that 100 if you have Adsense you'll probably get around a 5%-10% click through rate = 5-10 clicks per month

        ---

        If you're selling a Clickbank product or something else the conversions go down even further (even more for physical products), now the visitor has to click twice and they need to buy something. While the click through rate may or may not be higher the conversions for the sale will probably be lower (2-3%) because now they have to take out their wallets and buy something.

        2,000 searches per month = 100 visitors clicking on your listing.
        Out of that 100 visitors 5-10% (guesstimate) click through to the salespage = 5-10 visitors
        Out of those 10 visitors 2-3% actually makes a purchase (about 3 months per sale)


        Granted you probably will add other longtail keyword articles to the domain, and it could eventually add up to serious numbers, but when targeting a keyword and expecting traffic in the beginning will be tough if you go to low with the search numbers for an EMD. For the additional pages 2,000 searches a month may be okay, but for the EMD there should be a high CPC at least AND plenty of advertisers, at least you'll know if the keywords are profitable. But keep in mind that these people are paying for traffic and isn't costing them very much time, but if you're relying on organic traffic these pages take time or cost money.

        JMO
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        • Profile picture of the author paulgl
          Originally Posted by alanfukuda View Post

          I've been using exact match domains for several years now ever since the Info Product Killer hit the Clickbank marketplace several years back. I got started using product numbers for EMD (KDL-40XBR9), and while it worked very well for some smaller niches and less competitive keywords a few years back it doesn't seem to work quite as well on Google these days.
          Spot on! Proof that as the number of your posts goes up, the more trustworthiness
          you have.

          Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author jeffhard
    Daniel Brock just a great informations.. thanks for it.. i just love this case study
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  • Profile picture of the author Rocketguy
    It will be interesting to see your results. I know from my testing that exact match domains are a lot more important in yahoo and bing. A lot less important in Google, but still holds a lot of weight. You can see these trends just by cross referencing the results on the first couple pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author Wi
      Originally Posted by Rocketguy View Post

      It will be interesting to see your results. I know from my testing that exact match domains are a lot more important in yahoo and bing. A lot less important in Google, but still holds a lot of weight. You can see these trends just by cross referencing the results on the first couple pages.
      A lot of weight? A mega weight - at least in Denmark!

      When my EMD's are getting indexed - backlinks or not - low competition or high competition - I have only ONCE experienced that my BRAND NEW EMD is not in the first 30 results! It takes VERY little effort to get a pretty good position here - but that's just my experience

      I own over 100 .dk-domains, so thats okay
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Grant
    FWIW, SEOmoz has already done a test comparing .com, .net, and .org.


    .org came out on top of the 3 by a large margin.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rocketguy
    Exact domains are great, but I would rather build a big site with laser targeted and optimized pages then creating 100's of sites. Not saying one way is better then the other, but just how I work.
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  • Profile picture of the author CliveG
    Very interesting "experiment". I look forward to seeing the longer-term results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fraggler
    I have been skeptical of the whole exact match domain craze that has swept the forums of late but have given it a try since my hosting was out for a week (lost my large sites rankings so need new results fast).

    They certainly do get a site ranked high very quickly - in the low competition region. BUT I could get a similar keyword ranked as a sub-page on a domain with only relevance, not keywords in the name ranked in only a little longer. I am talking 2 weeks instead of one.

    In the long term I found it no different for pages that were aggressively promoted off-site. Keywords not in the domain could still be used just as easily as those in the domain.

    I am interested to see what you come up with from this experiment but I don't think people should get discouraged from tackling a word just because it isn't the domain name. The further people get away from the micro-site habit the better, in my opinion.
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    • Profile picture of the author Domainate
      Originally Posted by Fraggler View Post

      I have been skeptical of the whole exact match domain craze that has swept the forums of late but have given it a try since my hosting was out for a week (lost my large sites rankings so need new results fast).
      FYI, while it may be a craze on the internet marketing forums and in some products/webinars/blogs/etc. lately, we in the domain industry have known of this for many years. We're surprised it's taken you all so long to catch up.
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      • Profile picture of the author jstover77
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Nametrader.com View Post

        FYI, while it may be a craze on the internet marketing forums and in some products/webinars/blogs/etc. lately, we in the domain industry have known of this for many years. We're surprised it's taken you all so long to catch up.
        I agree. This is a big dah to some of us. Many different factors that go into this though. If it is a highly competitive term and you are just throwing up a garbage landing page many times you won't see any results. But if you build out a website with lots of content, and all your on page is highly targeted to that particular term, you should rank well. Long tialed non competitive keywords...this will work almost every time if you know what you are doing.

        This is what I do and it almost always works for me.

        First I will build out a master site. I will target an abundance of terms, but will have 2-5 main keyword that I will target. Next I will will buy 3-5 exact match domains, and duplicate the site multiple times. I will make sure that they are hosted on different IP addys. I will then go in and completely change or spin the content, and html of the site, so that in Google's eyes it is completely a different site. I then do some social bookmarking or Backpage.com ads to get the site indexed fast, throw up some search engine friendly submission directories, and that usually does the trick. If that doesn't work, well then I just start with some article syndication, or press releases. If that doesn't work then I give a bit more love on the off page opt.

        I also put a link on all of my satellite sites back to master site so in essence you are creating a linkwheel of sort, thus increasing the authority of my master site.

        Little bit more to it, but this is the jist of it.

        I think this will last a bit longer, but it's only a matter of time before Google squashes it. They have to know this is a sort of loophole in their algo.
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        • Profile picture of the author Domainate
          Originally Posted by jstover77 View Post

          First I will build out a master site. I will target an abundance of terms, but will have 2-5 main keyword that I will target. Next I will will buy 3-5 exact match domains, and duplicate the site multiple times. I will make sure that they are hosted on different IP addys. I will then go in and completely change or spin the content, and html of the site, so that in Google's eyes it is completely a different site. I then do some social bookmarking or Backpage.com ads to get the site indexed fast, throw up some search engine friendly submission directories, and that usually does the trick. If that doesn't work, well then I just start with some article syndication, or press releases. If that doesn't work then I give a bit more love on the off page opt.
          I've been considering delving heavily into development with a strategy similar to that. As it is, I have over 2,000 domains already and in many niches already have the 3-5 exact match domains more or less. It's tough since I make plenty on selling the domains as it is and haven't had much success with development in the past, but it seems like exact match domains only get better and better preferential treatment in search algorithms over time.

          Looking forward to the results of this experiment.
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        • Profile picture of the author BruceN
          Originally Posted by jstover77 View Post

          I agree. This is a big dah to some of us. Many different factors that go into this though. If it is a highly competitive term and you are just throwing up a garbage landing page many times you won't see any results. But if you build out a website with lots of content, and all your on page is highly targeted to that particular term, you should rank well. Long tialed non competitive keywords...this will work almost every time if you know what you are doing.

          This is what I do and it almost always works for me.

          First I will build out a master site. I will target an abundance of terms, but will have 2-5 main keyword that I will target. Next I will will buy 3-5 exact match domains, and duplicate the site multiple times. I will make sure that they are hosted on different IP addys. I will then go in and completely change or spin the content, and html of the site, so that in Google's eyes it is completely a different site. I then do some social bookmarking or Backpage.com ads to get the site indexed fast, throw up some search engine friendly submission directories, and that usually does the trick. If that doesn't work, well then I just start with some article syndication, or press releases. If that doesn't work then I give a bit more love on the off page opt.

          I also put a link on all of my satellite sites back to master site so in essence you are creating a linkwheel of sort, thus increasing the authority of my master site.

          Little bit more to it, but this is the jist of it.

          I think this will last a bit longer, but it's only a matter of time before Google squashes it. They have to know this is a sort of loophole in their algo.
          Is there an easy/affordable way to host on multiple IP addresses? Do you use multiple accounts with different hosts (in different countries) or a multi IP hosting account like seohosting.com?
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          • Profile picture of the author Rolliesworld
            Originally Posted by BruceN View Post

            Is there an easy/affordable way to host on multiple IP addresses? Do you use multiple accounts with different hosts (in different countries) or a multi IP hosting account like seohosting.com?
            I would also like to know this. I am in Australia and would like to target different audience markets...i.e. Australia, USA, UK, Germany etc.
            Apart from latency issues (speed of access from the user's point of view), I am still unclear and undecided whether I should host my websites in each respective country for SEO purposes? Opinions seem to be plenty on whether or not geographical host location has a direct influence on whether or not your site turns up on Google's local SERPs, or whether it would be the same if you used ccTLD's and pointed at the location in Google Webmaster Tools (and hosting anywhere in the world)?
            And with .com's it would be a different story altogether, as there is no indication for target country.
            So yes, I have also been wondering IP's / dedicated IP's and where to host...I would prefer to host in the US but I may have to host in three locations..??
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          • Profile picture of the author Lothar Evers
            Originally Posted by BruceN View Post

            Is there an easy/affordable way to host on multiple IP addresses? Do you use multiple accounts with different hosts (in different countries) or a multi IP hosting account like seohosting.com?
            I was quite astonished to see how many different IP Classes I had build over three years on my Dreamhost hosting. One month ago I got a reseller account by another hosting company. They offer to choose from 5 different lokations with several servers (three in the US, one in the UK and one in Asia) for every domain that I want to host. Some web 2.0 properties and free hosting and I get quite an IP mix.
            Of course it is important to split up Google analytics and webmaster tools too.
            If you need more details, just send me a pm.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zeb
    Daniel,

    What's the latest scoop on your tests mate? Looking forward to find out if .us domains can do well...
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  • Profile picture of the author Aira Bongco
    Interesting Daniel.

    I think you will be successful with this one but don't take my word for it. We will see. Seems like you have put down a very good plan.

    Best of luck,

    Aira
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  • Profile picture of the author stella lr
    Hi daniel,

    I would like to purchase your Profitzon course,however before I do that ,I need to ask some questions:

    1. Will you help/guide me if I ask you some questions? Sometimes people understanding is different.
    2. Does yr course teach how to find buyer's keyword and select the profitable one?

    thanks,stella
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  • Profile picture of the author battery4laptop
    Very interesting thread. Thanks for starting it. Should be interesting to keep watch of what happens in the future!
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
    OK! We're back!

    I finally was able to get those 15 sites built and indexed. Took me a little while as I got side tracked with working on my products and doing webinars.

    So right now the case study officially begins.

    Here is what I have done so far:

    For each site I wrote one post at 400 words each(some I wrote myself, some I outsourced).

    I outsource the topics I don't care about, and wrote the articles for the topics I am interested in.

    Out of my 15 sites, 5 of them are covering topics I am passionate about. I think because of that, those 5 sites are most likely going to be my highest performers simply because I have real knowledge I can contribute.

    (Im even planning to create some in person videos for those sites once my ACL tear is fixed - yes, they are sites in the martial arts niches.

    I know the whole video creation thing seems like a lot of work, but it really isn't. I can easily make months worth of videos for all 5 of those sites in a few hours. Hell, I could make the training vids faster than I could write about it in an article.)

    The name of the game is creating REAL websites that Google actually likes

    What I plan to do is keep affiliate links off of my websites for at least a month while I add content to my new batch of sites.

    The reason for this is because I want to make my sites look as natural as possible. I am testing out my theory that it is not good to load up your sites with affiliate links too early on. I want at least 5 pieces of content on these sites before I start adding product reviews and what not.

    I am also making a real effort to properly social book mark my posts. In the past I have been really lazy and have only been using one anchor text for all of my social bookmarks for the particular page.

    So all of my inbound links from SB sites were like: 'What you need to know about gas grilling'.

    Luckily I found a program called SocialBot that makes varying the anchor text links really easy. Here is how you do that:



    I also made 3 variants of the description text to put as much unique content out there as possible. It's important to keep in mind that not all of these submissions are going to make it through, so 5 variants of the submission title, and 3 variants of the description is good enough for now.

    Like I said, everything is going to be done as slowly as organic and natural as possible.

    I am going to resist the urge to blast my site with too many links and too much content early on.
    So recap of what has been done so far:
    • Bought 15 exact match domains - a mix between TLDs and .us extentions.
    • Installed WP blogs using different themes for each.
    • Had 1 article written from each site - 10 outsourced, 5 written by me
    • Submitted each TLD and .US to about 25 social bookmarking sites using varied anchor text and submission descriptions
    That's it so far.

    Next week I plan to add more content and then will start tracking rankings and what not.

    Stay tuned!

    And as always, if you have any questions feel free to ask.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alan Mc Donald
      is that screenshot from big mikes socialbot dan?
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  • Profile picture of the author Big JP
    Sounds like a plan DAN!

    Great contribution, fair plays.

    JP
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  • Profile picture of the author Spencer Haws
    Daniel:

    I love case studies! I have no doubt that with all the work you will be doing that your sites will rank well and your $2,000/mth is achievable. However, if you are really running an "experiment", where is your control site? You said that you are testing to see if the exact match domain name really makes a difference. So, you should also be creating a few sites that DO NOT have the exact match domains and then compare the results.

    Don't get me wrong, I am a STRONG believer in exact match domains; however, you are only doing half the experiment here. From my personal experience, exact match does make a difference. Anyway, it would be nice to see you create a site or 2 with as much energy that doesn't have the exact match just to compare results.

    Worth considering?
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    • Profile picture of the author thecableguy
      Hey Daniel

      I'm also a believer in exact match domains, but IMO they're not the magic it used to be. I just bought a few dozen a few days ago, product number domains and got a bit sidetracked with building my site out like you are. But I'd be interested to know the percent of visitors that are searching for the EMD keyword and not finding you through other pages. And if you're backlinking (not SocialBot), what pages are you backlinking to, the homepage or inner pages?

      Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
      Originally Posted by The Redfox View Post

      Daniel:

      I love case studies! I have no doubt that with all the work you will be doing that your sites will rank well and your $2,000/mth is achievable. However, if you are really running an "experiment", where is your control site? You said that you are testing to see if the exact match domain name really makes a difference. So, you should also be creating a few sites that DO NOT have the exact match domains and then compare the results.

      Don't get me wrong, I am a STRONG believer in exact match domains; however, you are only doing half the experiment here. From my personal experience, exact match does make a difference. Anyway, it would be nice to see you create a site or 2 with as much energy that doesn't have the exact match just to compare results.

      Worth considering?
      Red Fox,

      Yeah, I was considering adding a couple of those into the experiment, however I have made quite a few non EMD sites in my day so I know what to expect as far as rankings are concerned.

      While it won't be 100% accurate, it will be pretty damn close.

      I don't want to spread myself out too thin by creating too many sites too fast either.

      Want to focus on ranking my EMDs mainly...
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    • Profile picture of the author saulyd
      Along those same lines, will you have 1 or 2 with affiliate links from the get go, to test the difference?

      Thanks for the case study!


      Originally Posted by The Redfox View Post

      Daniel:

      I love case studies! I have no doubt that with all the work you will be doing that your sites will rank well and your $2,000/mth is achievable. However, if you are really running an "experiment", where is your control site? You said that you are testing to see if the exact match domain name really makes a difference. So, you should also be creating a few sites that DO NOT have the exact match domains and then compare the results.

      Don't get me wrong, I am a STRONG believer in exact match domains; however, you are only doing half the experiment here. From my personal experience, exact match does make a difference. Anyway, it would be nice to see you create a site or 2 with as much energy that doesn't have the exact match just to compare results.

      Worth considering?
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      • Profile picture of the author Cosmo Demopoulos
        Be interesting to see what you find Dan

        I've got about 20 EMDs I'll be launching in the next few months - it took some getting creative to find them all. I've found about 1/2 of them rank real easily, at least in the past.

        Who knows what'll happen now - I've had some EMDs with very good uniique content get whacked by Google in the last few months
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        • Profile picture of the author nubchai
          I love these case studies. Will be very interesting to watch over time.

          Thanks Dan

          Sandy
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  • Profile picture of the author Aaarrrggghhh
    Exact keyword domains are a beautiful thing...if you are not using it, you are missing out on easy $$. I love my keyword parked domains

    Thanks Dan for the great posts, no doubt you will reach your goals and thanks for sharing your progress.

    Leah
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  • Profile picture of the author kevinw1
    I can see why you'd want to test .us EMD's against .com etc EMD's, and this project will give you some useful information on that.

    But in order to test whether EMD's themselves make any difference, you'd need to compare them to non-EMD's which have been built and backlinked at the same time, in the same way - which you don't seem to be doing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
      Originally Posted by kevinw1 View Post

      I can see why you'd want to test .us EMD's against .com etc EMD's, and this project will give you some useful information on that.

      But in order to test whether EMD's themselves make any difference, you'd need to compare them to non-EMD's which have been built and backlinked at the same time, in the same way - which you don't seem to be doing.
      Kevin,

      I have a good number of non-EMD sites that I own right now so I have a good idea at what it takes to rank sites in the various niches. A lot of these EMD sites are in some of the same niches as my non-EMD sites, so I know what to expect as far as ranking progress and what it takes to rank a site highly.

      As I said, not 100% accurate, but I'll have a good idea whether or not it is worth it to pay extra money for EMDs.
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      • Profile picture of the author MCDavies
        Originally Posted by Daniel Brock View Post

        Kevin,

        I have a good number of non-EMD sites that I own right now so I have a good idea at what it takes to rank sites in the various niches. A lot of these EMD sites are in some of the same niches as my non-EMD sites, so I know what to expect as far as ranking progress and what it takes to rank a site highly.

        As I said, not 100% accurate, but I'll have a good idea whether or not it is worth it to pay extra money for EMDs.
        Okay guys, what in the heck does "EMD" stand for? Also what's "TLD"?

        Thanks,
        Michael
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        • Profile picture of the author adamv
          Originally Posted by MCDavies View Post

          Okay guys, what in the heck does "EMD" stand for? Also what's "TLD"?

          Thanks,
          Michael
          EMD = Exact Match Domain - ie. "yourkeyword.com"
          TLD = Top Level Domain
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          • Profile picture of the author Tyson Faulkner
            Hey Dan,

            I got your email about this a couple days ago. I just started a site that is using the EMD strategy, so I'm very interested in the process you are using to get your sites ranked.

            I'm a huge fan of case studies, love to see what other marketers are up to =).

            I'll be following this closely, and I'd recommend others to get on Dan's list so they don't miss any updates!
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      • Profile picture of the author 3dogs
        Originally Posted by Daniel Brock View Post

        As I said, not 100% accurate, but I'll have a good idea whether or not it is worth it to pay extra money for EMDs.
        I have to echo the objection a few other members have made - you really need a control group. Here's why: 1) You are adding content differently than you have in the past, 2) You are not adding affiliate links at the same stage of development as you have in the past, 3) You admitted the you did not bookmark properly before, and now you are bookmarking properly.

        All of these "new" strategies have the potential to really skew the results, especially since you are now using EMD TLD's (which I believe - could be wrong - may have a built in advantage to begin with). In the end, it will likely look like EMD's win by a landslide even though they actually started out with a head start.

        The other aspect of this that may skew results - do the EMD's have roughly the same search volume vs. competition as the non-EMD's you are comparing them against? The reason I ask is this - I have many EMD TLD niches. Some of them leap right to page 1 almost immediately. But, they also have less search volume compared to other niches. Other EMD's, in more crowded niches, seem to suffer the same fates as non-EMD domains. In my experience an EMD seems to have far greater power in small niches than it does in packed niches. It's almost like Google is desperate for "something" useful in that niche, so they give EMD's greater weight. But in crowded niches EMD's seem to be weighted the same as any other domain.

        Keep up the good work.
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  • Profile picture of the author MarcusEJC
    Dan is THE MAN!
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  • Profile picture of the author lisaann
    Daniel,

    You're going to get ranked easier and faster for whatever the exact keyphrase is for your EMD, but if you want to get top rankings for other related and very similar phrases, it won't be any easier than if you bought a non-EMD.

    I like to get lots of traffic, so building a site around one keyphrase isn't really worth it in my opinion, but since it sounds like you know how to research well, you might end up with a decent volume of traffic to your EMD's and I am sure enough to make whatever your goal is.

    $3,000 is a lot to spend on just the domain names. In my opinion, you would have been way better off spending that money on content and some link building without the EMD's, but that's just how I do things.

    I'm about 6 months ahead of you with a network of about 20 sites (all non-EMDs) that are bringing in over $4,000 a month now, but it would have been interesting to go toe to toe with you!

    All the best...

    Lisa
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    • Profile picture of the author Spot the Ball
      Call me an old cynic,

      I don't see what 3 grands worth of EMD names has that 30 dollars worth of EMD,s don't have.

      As long as the keyword research has been done to begin with then a 30 dollar domain is equal. I personaly do not like exact match domains, they look tacky to me unless you are lucky enough to uncover a completely new niche.

      Not trying to be picky here, just thought thread title could be misleading. There's plenty here who would get the impression a 3 grand domain buys them riches.

      Anyways, good luck with the project.
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      • Profile picture of the author Domainate
        Originally Posted by Spot the Ball View Post

        Call me an old cynic,

        I don't see what 3 grands worth of EMD names has that 30 dollars worth of EMD,s don't have.
        He bought 15 domains for $3k, so it's $200 per domain on average, which is NOT a lot per domain (I've lost could of the # of domains I've sold for $1,000+ apiece and have sold a handful at that level in the past month alone). Domains are on the rebound right now after the market cooled off, and that coupled with the internet marketing world finally understanding what exact match domains can do, you won't be finding worthwhile ones for $30 so easily in the near future.

        Besides, it's a matter of what keywords are being targeted...a combo of the # of searches on it, CPC/value of the search traffic, ability to convert on the traffic, the SEO competition on the term, etc. The actual value of his $200/domain lot of 15 could be much more per dollar spent than your $30 ones.
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        • Profile picture of the author Spot the Ball
          Originally Posted by Nametrader.com View Post

          He bought 15 domains for $3k, so it's $200 per domain on average, which is NOT a lot per domain (I've lost could of the # of domains I've sold for $1,000+ apiece and have sold a handful at that level in the past month alone). Domains are on the rebound right now after the market cooled off, and that coupled with the internet marketing world finally understanding what exact match domains can do, you won't be finding worthwhile ones for $30 so easily in the near future.

          Besides, it's a matter of what keywords are being targeted...a combo of the # of searches on it, CPC/value of the search traffic, ability to convert on the traffic, the SEO competition on the term, etc. The actual value of his $200/domain lot of 15 could be much more per dollar spent than your $30 ones.
          Now you put it like that, it adds a whole new slant.

          I guess I didnt weigh up the re-sell value and the fact that domain trading in itself can be another avenue for profit on the internet.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
      Originally Posted by lisaann View Post

      Daniel,

      You're going to get ranked easier and faster for whatever the exact keyphrase is for your EMD, but if you want to get top rankings for other related and very similar phrases, it won't be any easier than if you bought a non-EMD.

      I like to get lots of traffic, so building a site around one keyphrase isn't really worth it in my opinion, but since it sounds like you know how to research well, you might end up with a decent volume of traffic to your EMD's and I am sure enough to make whatever your goal is.

      $3,000 is a lot to spend on just the domain names. In my opinion, you would have been way better off spending that money on content and some link building without the EMD's, but that's just how I do things.

      I'm about 6 months ahead of you with a network of about 20 sites (all non-EMDs) that are bringing in over $4,000 a month now, but it would have been interesting to go toe to toe with you!

      All the best...

      Lisa
      Hi Lisa,

      Yeah, I realize I will only rank for the term my EMD is about. That is why a lot of these terms have 40K+/m local exact match traffic.

      Including global, some of them have 100k exact match.

      All of the terms are very buyer oriented - many of which I have a genuine interest in.

      $3000 was perhaps a big investment, but I honestly believe that one or two of these sites have the potential of making me that back each month once they are ranked highly.

      Also gives me an reason to commit myself to them...knowing that I dropped upwards of $750 each for two of them.

      Thanks!
      Dan
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  • Profile picture of the author pokerdawg
    Daniel,

    I've been doing domains for years... I actually started one of the first ICANN accredited registrars... but that's a whole other story...

    What I can tell you, in my opinion, is that this is a great strategy, both for SEO and "Type In Traffic" which no one has mentioned in this thread (unless I skimmed over it... if I did, I apologize)

    The ".com" version of a domain has value based on its brandability AND the type in traffic expected.

    What is "type in traffic"?

    A lot of people still don't know how to use the web, user their browsers, etc. I've dealt with CEO's who literally type in www.yahoo.com in the URL bar, hit ENTER, do a Yahoo search for their company and then click the link. It never dawns on them to just go to their site.

    on the flip side you have people who "search" by typing in www.IamLOOKINGforTHIS.com

    So people do go to the URL bar and type in www.GolfClubs.com if they're looking for Golf Clubs.

    Not trying to hijack your topic But keep track of type in traffic (no referrer) vs search ranks and search traffic. The results may surprise you

    I read a thread (I don't know if it was here or another forum) with someone who experimented with (gasp) a ".info" domain and he ranked those #1 as well with simple blogs.

    FWIW
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    • Profile picture of the author 52.ct
      Originally Posted by pokerdawg View Post

      Daniel,

      I've been doing domains for years... I actually started one of the first ICANN accredited registrars... but that's a whole other story...

      What I can tell you, in my opinion, is that this is a great strategy, both for SEO and "Type In Traffic" which no one has mentioned in this thread (unless I skimmed over it... if I did, I apologize)

      The ".com" version of a domain has value based on its brandability AND the type in traffic expected.

      What is "type in traffic"?

      A lot of people still don't know how to use the web, user their browsers, etc. I've dealt with CEO's who literally type in www.yahoo.com in the URL bar, hit ENTER, do a Yahoo search for their company and then click the link. It never dawns on them to just go to their site.

      on the flip side you have people who "search" by typing in www.IamLOOKINGforTHIS.com

      So people do go to the URL bar and type in www.GolfClubs.com if they're looking for Golf Clubs.

      Not trying to hijack your topic But keep track of type in traffic (no referrer) vs search ranks and search traffic. The results may surprise you

      I read a thread (I don't know if it was here or another forum) with someone who experimented with (gasp) a ".info" domain and he ranked those #1 as well with simple blogs.

      FWIW
      pokerdawg=>

      I looked into type in traffic a few weeks ago. Is there a good formula to calculate type in traffic based keyword search volume?

      For example, exact match keyword gets 100k/searches/month according to google's keyword tool. IIRC, you can expect 2% or in this case 2k visits from type in traffic.

      I also read that type in traffic can vary across markets.
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  • Profile picture of the author mrdomains
    Case study! I love these threads
    Subscribing.
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  • Profile picture of the author christomax
    looks cool! can't wait to see how it turns out!
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  • Profile picture of the author Fraggler
    I have found (by accident) that IP location makes a huge difference to appearing in local Google results. I use Host Nine and for one of my accounts I accidently selected a UK IP for that account. I was getting nothing but UK traffic while targeting US users. This turned out very well for me and use it to my advantage all the time now. I have swapped existing accounts over to UK servers too for nearly immediate increases in traffic after further investigation into the origin of the searches.
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    • Profile picture of the author Rolliesworld
      Originally Posted by Fraggler View Post

      I have found (by accident) that IP location makes a huge difference to appearing in local Google results. I use Host Nine and for one of my accounts I accidently selected a UK IP for that account. I was getting nothing but UK traffic while targeting US users. This turned out very well for me and use it to my advantage all the time now. I have swapped existing accounts over to UK servers too for nearly immediate increases in traffic after further investigation into the origin of the searches.
      That is very interesting. So I take it your sites are .com domains?
      When you were targeting US traffic, and now getting mainly UK traffic as a result of being hosted in the UK - are you not missing out on the US target audience? Have you given other 'indications' to Google as to your target market other than being hosted in the UK? (i.e. content; british english vs. american english; Google Webmaster Tools setting - target destination; etc)? I just wondered also what would happen if you had your site/s as .co.uk's but hosted in the US...? I have heard others saying that it is not the same result with the target country SERPs...i.e. someone here in this forum once said that they had a .com.au hosted in the US and as soon as they transferred that over to Australia, they appeared on the local (Australian) SERPs within days...which did not happen while hosted in the US.
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      • Profile picture of the author Fraggler
        Originally Posted by Rolliesworld View Post

        That is very interesting. So I take it your sites are .com domains?
        When you were targeting US traffic, and now getting mainly UK traffic as a result of being hosted in the UK - are you not missing out on the US target audience? Have you given other 'indications' to Google as to your target market other than being hosted in the UK? (i.e. content; british english vs. american english; Google Webmaster Tools setting - target destination; etc)? I just wondered also what would happen if you had your site/s as .co.uk's but hosted in the US...? I have heard others saying that it is not the same result with the target country SERPs...i.e. someone here in this forum once said that they had a .com.au hosted in the US and as soon as they transferred that over to Australia, they appeared on the local (Australian) SERPs within days...which did not happen while hosted in the US.
        All content was written using US English (but there is probably some I missed from habit) and was heavily based on Amazon.com products - targeting US consumers. I have put no effort into finding UK based links - purely random. It may have made it harder to rank on Google.com from the UK server but when I saw the traffic coming in I never swapped it back. I just changed my approach to UK products.

        The site in question was a .com but I have repeated it with .org and .net.

        I didn't touch the GEO Settings in GWT because I don't want to lose the potential of ranking well in Google.com. For the sites that I moved over my rankings there never dropped in Google.com, I just wasn''t getting traffic because the keywords were searched elsewhere (UK). I wasn't ranking in Google.co.uk unti I moved the site.

        I also have a .com.au that is hosted in the USA and it ranks fine on Google.com.au. It is for an offline business so it has links with other Australian sites. I'd say a move to an Aussie server would make a difference though.
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  • Profile picture of the author zachary0611
    There is a guy who claims (offervault webinar) that onsite seo counts for about 60 percent ranking and backlinks are 40 percent He claims that he has recorded data of over 100,000 websites and weighs what high ranking websites do his information looks good too because he is number 1 for a highly competitive insurance term with no backlinks he is outranking allstate, progressive, geico, and other big compaines

    The free info on google seo he gave away was this:
    .org counts more than net and com
    exact domain match websites rank higher
    wordpress is bad for seo
    youtube videos on sites rank higher
    sites with keyword news feeds rank higher
    his sites dont even have privacy policies contact page and etc.

    go to offervault if you want to see the webinar
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    • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
      Originally Posted by zachary0611 View Post

      There is a guy who claims (offervault webinar) that onsite seo counts for about 60 percent ranking and backlinks are 40 percent He claims that he has recorded data of over 100,000 websites and weighs what high ranking websites do his information looks good too because he is number 1 for a highly competitive insurance term with no backlinks he is outranking allstate, progressive, geico, and other big compaines

      The free info on google seo he gave away was this:
      .org counts more than net and com
      exact domain match websites rank higher
      wordpress is bad for seo
      youtube videos on sites rank higher
      sites with keyword news feeds rank higher
      his sites dont even have privacy policies contact page and etc.

      go to offervault if you want to see the webinar
      Sounds like that guy is a liar to me. Anyone with any kind of real world SEO experience will tell you otherwise on many of those points. .org counts more??? WTF. Wordpress is bad for SEO? Again, WTF. On page SEO matters more than backlinks? A final WTF.
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    • Profile picture of the author Rolliesworld
      Originally Posted by zachary0611 View Post

      .org counts more than net and com
      exact domain match websites rank higher
      wordpress is bad for seo
      youtube videos on sites rank higher
      sites with keyword news feeds rank higher
      his sites dont even have privacy policies contact page and etc.

      go to offervault if you want to see the webinar
      What is the title of this webinar? And what's the presenter's name?
      It would help to include this info, there were multiple webinars with similar topics.

      Wordpress 'bad for SEO'? That surely must have been taken out of context in some way as WP is known to be good for SEO. Maybe he was referring to low quality, badly maintained themes? Similar to websites that were created with some cheap WYSIWYG editors where the source code looks awful...? That's the only thing I can think of.

      'youtube videos on sites rank higher' - Videos on sites cannot rank, it is the sites that rank due to various methodologies, one of which might be to have videos on the site. So what is it they are saying...that using Youtube videos embedded on your site is better than using any other video sharing site for the purpose of helping your site rank higher?
      My guess is that they meant that using videos in general helps as the stick rate of your visitors (time they spend on your site) may increase, which is one of many factors.
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      • Profile picture of the author evollusion
        I've started something similar a month or 2 ago with a single site and I'm seeing some immediate success with it, however I'm working it in reverse order to the way the OP is working.

        I found a good EMD .net that was getting about 1.2 million searches a day with about 4.5 million broad based matches. I started by creating a static (simple HTML/CSS) website around the target market (5 articles and 3 product reviews) that I wanted to target. I submitted it to G and for the first week it jumped from around the bottom of page 8 to "much further down" I would go 50 pages deep and couldn't find it sometimes. I have since been told that this is because the domain has to propagate between all of G's different data centers.

        The first week that I got the site up and running it was strictly content generation for the site itself. I continued writing on site content and updating my sitemap for that week and on the 10th day I added a storefront for amazon products. Due to unforeseen circumstances I had to stop at this point and work on some other issues. Last week I started hitting the content side again and writing some articles and building very few backlinks. I think I only have 3 or 4 from both article sites and link directories so far. Over the past week and a half I have moved from position 85 or so up to position 31.

        I'm working with the logic that I'm going to add more content to the website itself and slowly build some backlinks. As the site gets bigger I am going to start adding more and more backlinks to it. I'm working under the assumption that as a site ages so does G's expectation of the size and number of backlinks. Right now I'm attempting to do 1 article directory article, one forum post out on an authority board/forum, and one targetted link directory submission a day. Next week I'll move to two, the week after that to 3 and so on until either I drop from exhaustion/brain aneurysm or hit above position 5 on page 1 in big G. After that I'm assuming that if I can keep adding content backlinks (steadily and not increasing the number every week) that as my domain ages I'll get up to position 2 or 3. Right up there with amazon, nextag, and some manufacturers websites.

        The only reason that I think that this can be accomplished is because of the fact that the guy in position 3 is doing a wordpress site that's not even really that good, nor does it have a great amount of or quality content.

        As of right now here are my rankings as put out by Market Samurai
        G - broad position 31 - shop page ranked 85
        Y - broad position 69
        B - broad position 7

        G - phrase position 9 (shop is 26)
        Y - phrase position 45
        B - prhase positoin 6


        I've never seen results like this before on any of my websites previously and I'm sure it has something to do with the caffeine upgrade.
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        • Profile picture of the author mrdomains
          For me it´s not just about serp placement. I also have a number of EMD´s and while I´m not seeing a humungous difference in serp, I do tend to see better stats than expected based on where I rank.

          So, apart from serp results, the exact matching of the listed domain to what people are searching for is attracting a higher percentage of visits.

          Just looking at myself, if I do a search, I do tend to check out the EMD´s first, specially if I am doing a product related search.

          So here is a question not related just to serp ranking: are you experiencing any benefit from the EMD in matching peoples search and triggering visits to your site?

          .com and .net are working better for my product sites and the .org´s are doing better on broader terms and concepts.
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  • Profile picture of the author mybeech
    dan, do we have an update on how you are progressing?
    thanks my
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
      Originally Posted by mybeech View Post

      dan, do we have an update on how you are progressing?
      thanks my
      I'm back!

      Thought I would do one last update before my ACL surgery tomorrow because I'll be drugged up and most likely won't be able to work for at least a week.

      I have some pretty surprising results!

      So far, my TLDs are ranking way better than the .us domains. In fact, so far none of my .us names are ranking in the top 10 page results on Google.

      Here are my stats so far:

      page 1 rankings = 2 websites, both TLDs

      page 2 rankings = 3 websites, all TLD

      page 4 rankings = 2 websites, both TLD

      page 7 rankings = 1 website, a TLD

      page 10 rankings = 1 website, a TLD.

      For competition spread, some of my medium competition sites are actually ranking better than some of the ones with lower competition, which is really strange. Seeing how the same exact promotional efforts were done, I don't have a definitive answer as to why.

      As for the .us domains, none are placing anywhere yet. While I have no conclusive results yet, I suspect that .us domains don't get any sort of ranking bonuses.

      I'll know for sure in a month or so after some more work and time pass.

      So far all I have done was submitted articles to each of the sites along with applicable images. For back linking, all I have done so far is some minor social bookmarking and some RSS work.

      While I'm away recovering from my operation, I have instructed my VA to continue adding articles to the site.

      No affiliate links have been placed yet. I might hold off on that for a month or so until I have a really solid base of content laid out first.

      So far so good!

      Feel free to ask me any questions, but be warned it might take me some time to respond until after things start to heal up.
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      • Profile picture of the author Domainate
        Originally Posted by Daniel Brock View Post

        I'm back!

        Thought I would do one last update before my ACL surgery tomorrow because I'll be drugged up and most likely won't be able to work for at least a week.

        I have some pretty surprising results!

        So far, my TLDs are ranking way better than the .us domains. In fact, so far none of my .us names are ranking in the top 10 page results on Google.

        Here are my stats so far:

        page 1 rankings = 2 websites, both TLDs

        page 2 rankings = 3 websites, all TLD

        page 4 rankings = 2 websites, both TLD

        page 7 rankings = 1 website, a TLD

        page 10 rankings = 1 website, a TLD.

        For competition spread, some of my medium competition sites are actually ranking better than some of the ones with lower competition, which is really strange. Seeing how the same exact promotional efforts were done, I don't have a definitive answer as to why.

        As for the .us domains, none are placing anywhere yet. While I have no conclusive results yet, I suspect that .us domains don't get any sort of ranking bonuses.

        I'll know for sure in a month or so after some more work and time pass.

        So far all I have done was submitted articles to each of the sites along with applicable images. For back linking, all I have done so far is some minor social bookmarking and some RSS work.

        While I'm away recovering from my operation, I have instructed my VA to continue adding articles to the site.

        No affiliate links have been placed yet. I might hold off on that for a month or so until I have a really solid base of content laid out first.

        So far so good!

        Feel free to ask me any questions, but be warned it might take me some time to respond until after things start to heal up.
        Great to hear about the progression of it. How high of search/mo were the terms of the page 1 rankings out of curiosity?
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  • Profile picture of the author jijaybajay
    can't wait to see the results
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  • Profile picture of the author nettech
    Good luck with th op mate!

    Zaheer
    Signature

    Thanks
    Zaheer

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  • Profile picture of the author JamesF
    Nice, thanks for keeping us posted.. and good luck. $3000 is a fairly big investment!
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    • Profile picture of the author designerjack
      Love this whole thread...A lot of great info...

      Thanks Daniel you are always doing stuff to help out!!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Sparhawke
    I do not have anything particularly interesting to say here, I just wanted to bookmark this thread
    Signature
    “Thinking is easy, Acting is difficult
    And to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world ~ Goethe”
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  • Profile picture of the author tmauto
    From my tests, us domains are really difficult to rank. Side by side with others they need so much more effort than others.
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  • Profile picture of the author Aussie-Jim
    First post here and great thread! I'm impressed that you're sharing this with the community - I have obviously come to the right place.

    A question - how is it progressing? I see the OP was in June and we're now in August.

    Cheers!
    AJ
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  • Profile picture of the author VantageWealth
    Thanks a lot for the time and effort in sharing this
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  • Profile picture of the author deuxlai
    Hi Daniel,
    May I ask how many keywords are you targeting for each websites? Is it only the EMD keyword or also a few related keywords?
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  • Profile picture of the author Cash37
    What happened?
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  • Profile picture of the author Cash37
    Any new updates?
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    • Profile picture of the author Warren Tibbotts
      Originally Posted by VantageWealth View Post

      Thanks a lot for the time and effort in sharing this
      I'd be keen to hear the progress.
      I guess no news can mean - this exceed my expectations and I would prefer to not tell everyone just how go of this is,
      Or it could mean it was pretty much a waste of $3000.
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  • Profile picture of the author albertleader22
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author MarcusEJC
      albertleader22 - are you spamming the forum? Your posts read like they were created using a bad article spinner!
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  • Profile picture of the author Adam Roy
    You spent 3k on domain names to do an experiment...

    Why not buy a bunch of NOT exact match domains instead...would be a much cheaper test would it not?

    Even if your test proves successful, you already said yourself that everybody says 'exact match domains are the best to have', wouldn't you just be proving that statement correct?

    I don't understand the point of this experiment?
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