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

by 134 replies
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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.



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



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.



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...
#search engine optimization #case #domain #exact #google #live #match #names #net #org #study #taking #worth
  • Daniel Brock is awesome!

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

    Dan, Good luck with this.
  • 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...
    • [1] reply
    • 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!
      • [1] reply
  • I remember you telling me about this, Dan. If you pull this off, are you going to keep it to yourself haha?
  • Kewl bananas! I love case studies. Will most def be keeping an eye on this one - cheers!
  • Daniel,

    This looks like a really cool test. Can't wait to see the results.
    • [2] replies
    • Daniel, I presume these are self-hosted wordpress sites.

      Is there a particular theme you are using?


      CatherineMay
    • Daniel, very interesting case study. I assume you will be posting periodically with updates?

      mwiab
  • Would love to see the results!
  • 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
  • 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

    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [1] reply
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Greetings Daniel,

    Thanks for sharing your experiment with us.

    Wishing you great success and I will stay tuned-in

    Best Wishes ... Ron
  • 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.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • 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
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [1] reply
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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!
  • 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
    • [1] reply
    • 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
      • [1] reply
  • Would love to see the results!
  • 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
  • Very interesting thread. Thanks for starting it. Should be interesting to keep watch of what happens in the future!
  • 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...
    • [2] replies

    • 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
    • Are those links made no follow on your site? Sure ive read that pisses matt cutts off a little.
      • [1] reply
  • I'm very much interested in this experiment and will follow it closely. Thanks for taking the risk, learning, and sharing it with us!
    • [1] reply
    • This is great, I can't wait to see what happens!
      • [1] reply
  • Daniel Brock just a great informations.. thanks for it.. i just love this case study
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • 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
  • FWIW, SEOmoz has already done a test comparing .com, .net, and .org.


    .org came out on top of the 3 by a large margin.
    • [2] replies

    • You got a link to that article?
      • [1] reply
    • This is from the article:

      Our interpretation and conclusions:
      • If you're aiming for exact match, a .com extension is the way to go. Others aren't nearly as well correlated.
      • Bing does seem to appreciate non-dot-com exact matches more than Google, though not tremendously (especially in the case of .org)
  • 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.
  • Very interesting "experiment". I look forward to seeing the longer-term results.
  • 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.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [1] reply
  • Daniel,

    What's the latest scoop on your tests mate? Looking forward to find out if .us domains can do well...
  • 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
  • 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
  • Very interesting thread. Thanks for starting it. Should be interesting to keep watch of what happens in the future!
  • 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.)



    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.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
  • Sounds like a plan DAN!

    Great contribution, fair plays.

    JP
  • 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?
    • [3] replies
    • 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
    • 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...
    • 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!


      • [1] reply
  • 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
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [2] replies
  • Dan is THE MAN!
  • 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
    • [2] replies
    • 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.
      • [1] reply
    • 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
  • 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
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
  • Case study! I love these threads
    Subscribing.
  • looks cool! can't wait to see how it turns out!
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [1] reply
  • 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
    • [2] replies
    • 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.
    • 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.
      • [1] reply
  • dan, do we have an update on how you are progressing?
    thanks my
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • can't wait to see the results
  • Good luck with th op mate!

    Zaheer
  • Nice, thanks for keeping us posted.. and good luck. $3000 is a fairly big investment!
    • [1] reply
    • Love this whole thread...A lot of great info...

      Thanks Daniel you are always doing stuff to help out!!!!
  • I do not have anything particularly interesting to say here, I just wanted to bookmark this thread
  • From my tests, us domains are really difficult to rank. Side by side with others they need so much more effort than others.
  • 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
  • Thanks a lot for the time and effort in sharing this
  • 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?
  • What happened?
  • Any new updates?
    • [1] reply
    • 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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    • albertleader22 - are you spamming the forum? Your posts read like they were created using a bad article spinner!
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  • 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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