Exact Match Domains - Who is feeling the pain?
- Thread starter webgeek
- Start date
I was predicting this would happen before the end of 2012 and have mentioned this numerous times on this very forum. It is such a welcome update in my opinion.
Think how much money has been spent on securing EMD's, mostly by SEO agencies - heh. I'm expecting to notice a considerable difference to the search engine indexes now, I've been using many tools to block such domains of low quality and now this should make a much fresher, pleasanter place in the search results.
Read more on this update here.
For those unfortunate legitimate businesses that have been previously misguided that are affected by this update, just simply secure a more 'branded' domain name which is how it should have always been... I wouldn't expect it to be particularly troublesome to re-rank for any of your targets with decent, unique, valued content.
Think how much money has been spent on securing EMD's, mostly by SEO agencies - heh. I'm expecting to notice a considerable difference to the search engine indexes now, I've been using many tools to block such domains of low quality and now this should make a much fresher, pleasanter place in the search results.
Read more on this update here.
For those unfortunate legitimate businesses that have been previously misguided that are affected by this update, just simply secure a more 'branded' domain name which is how it should have always been... I wouldn't expect it to be particularly troublesome to re-rank for any of your targets with decent, unique, valued content.
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EMDs and those with keywords in the domain name still work. As long as they are backed up with great content, navigation, inbounds links and all the other yada yada.
In other words nothing has changed. All google has done is tweak their algo so that less weight it attributed to keywords in the domain name. Everyone has gone into a tailspin instead of waiting while the indexes all realign.
In other words nothing has changed. All google has done is tweak their algo so that less weight it attributed to keywords in the domain name. Everyone has gone into a tailspin instead of waiting while the indexes all realign.
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Claps.. well done but everyone in SEO has been predicting this since 2004 and just shows how out of touch Google are with whats going on.
1st it's not even an emd update, its just targeting keyworded domains..
2nd any domain with a good percentage of URL anchor text has survived. So basically all these payday loan spammers working towards 33% url, 33% click here type anchor text and 33% keyworded anchor text has survived.
So how comes the head of Googles webspam team doesn't know what an EMD is??? And why has it taken them almost a decade to do anything about it?? And why wait until now when it's not as big a problem as it used to be??
How the hell does a "branded" domain name help? Googles a clumsy machine, if you have brand123.com and build your brand with "brand 123" links then it will likely get hit because its over optimised for the brand.
Valued content... It's very unlikely this update has anything to do with onpage as demonstrated by the many sites with good content being hit and burner sites surviving.
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Clearly, which is why so much $billion has been spent on ridiculous keyword stuffed domains over the past 6 years.
Of which EMD's fall into this category, in most cases...
I disagree, there is a ton more factors looked at before it weighs up the overall balance of a domain's link profile. One of which, will now be the domain name itself.
Unsure as to why it took so long, sure, this should have been implemented a long time ago. But the fact remains, up until recently, it was still possible to purely piggyback of the back of keywords in the domain name with far poorer, less worthy onsite content. And this, will no longer be the case.
Yes, the algorithm has flaws, it always has done, probably always will - often though, these are identified and improved/resolved eventually. Of course having a branded domain name will help, with any business, it should be about brand, value and usability/customer experience. Anyone, trying to run a business from a keyword stuffed domain is not thinking of the end user but attempting to have an advantage of ranking for those keywords.
Over-optimisation isn't going to be an issue if anchor text contains the domain name. It's natural that would happen...
I didn't suggest it was, valued content was only mentioned to reinforce my view that if a business has low quality content on a "keyworded domain", that simply moving into to another non keyworded domain such as a branded one is not going to resolve the issue due to the quality of content, hence the mention of "with decent, unique, valued content".
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EMDs do fall into the keyworded domain criteria but the lord almightly specifically mention EMDs as being the main target. This is either PR, trying to get SEOMOZ idiots on their side or they can't actually target just EMD's.
If your brand name contains a keyword start looking for a job.
You can disagree with me as much as you like, doesn't mean you are correct. You're over complicating things. I've looked at a lot of crap sites which haven't been hit and good sites which have been hit. The major correlation is URL anchor text percentage. Link type and link velocity don't matter, neither does content in this case.
Brand building is the wrong direction to be taking with SEO. You can spend year building a reputation, getting reviews and trust, slowly building rankings but eventually G will probably demote your site. The only real option is to 301 to another tld of the same brand or get a 9 to 5.
Because so many strong legit sites have been getting caught in the net it has made spamming much easier, much faster and much cheaper. It's also a good long term strategy to be able to rebuild quickly.
Finally content. Have very clear calls to action, focus on conversions and then hide spun keyworded non sense in a dropdown.
If your brand name contains a keyword start looking for a job.
You can disagree with me as much as you like, doesn't mean you are correct. You're over complicating things. I've looked at a lot of crap sites which haven't been hit and good sites which have been hit. The major correlation is URL anchor text percentage. Link type and link velocity don't matter, neither does content in this case.
Brand building is the wrong direction to be taking with SEO. You can spend year building a reputation, getting reviews and trust, slowly building rankings but eventually G will probably demote your site. The only real option is to 301 to another tld of the same brand or get a 9 to 5.
Because so many strong legit sites have been getting caught in the net it has made spamming much easier, much faster and much cheaper. It's also a good long term strategy to be able to rebuild quickly.
Finally content. Have very clear calls to action, focus on conversions and then hide spun keyworded non sense in a dropdown.
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But the difference is, I care about quality, usability focused websites and want to see cleaner, better quality search results yet all you care about is how to continue gaming the system and encourage ways to manipulate the algorithm so that its possible to rank crap for minimal effort.
Even if were to agree to disagree, for now; it's my views that are going to come out on top in the long run, not yours. And businesses with an online presence are going to do far better following guidelines and advice that isn't going to harm or damage their authority, reputation, branding and websites in the long-run.
What you might get to temporarily work for the next 3 months is going to change, most likely within the following 9 months. Yes it's beneficial to be able to build re-quickly, but its certainly no business model to rely on spam, spinning content, blasting micro-site drivel all over the web... And suchlike.
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It's the name of a product... One of which most people probably have never heard of - it's unlikely to fall into the same category as 'steelcarbonhydraulicpowersystems.com' or 'realhumanhairextensions.com' for example.
I also don't expect we are seeing the full affects of this update yet either, especially in the UK.
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i agree with what you are saying - but the point is peoples' websites with good quality content - on topic are being put in the same pile...you cannot explain the logic of that apart from google have screwed up big time IMHO.
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See my last post.
Google has not screwed anything up. They have changed THEIR ranking signals for THEIR results pages for sites THEY think will will benefit people searching for products and services.
You may not like what they have done but it's their trainset and they can do whatever they want with it.
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Except many businesses following the clean strategy are getting hit with every update too. It's unreliable and a waste of time. The risk is too high to sit and wait having all income coming from 1 site with 1 strategy.
A website is there to make money. IT will only make money with targeted traffic and conversions. Who cares how it got there, how many pages in it's blog it has etc. ROI is key. Google is apparently trying to fight spam but spamming is now easier and more effective than ever, why do you think that won't work in 9 months? And actually who cares? Ranking for the next 9 months will produce enough profit to start again with a new strategy with **** hits the fan.
The ONLY thing that has changed lately is anchor text keyword % and velocity. Get them right and even http://loansbadcredit24h.co.uk/ rubbish like that will rank and make £10k per month for about £200 invested.
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so a site like this (okay appears 9th):
http://firstclassbusiness.org/wiki/pig-farming-business-plan
for the term pig farming business plan...how can that be above this page for instance:
http://interstellar-solutions.co.uk/Pig_Farming_Business_Plan.html
which page is more likely to give you what you want..a page which doesn't even mention the word pig or...you decide!
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The second one is trying to sell something 100% targetted to the search term so I don't see an issue with it but obviously Google do.
I have a website where somebody may search for "blue large widgets" and I have unique text about said widgets and then a few offers on blue large widgets where it effectively says "this is what you wanted, here, take a look at EXACTLY what you want" but that isn't good enough either.
All of this "write decent content and everything will be ok" is silly too, a few people I know have spent thousands on content and hours of their own time but have been penalised and are now outranked by spammy sites or eBay / Amazon longtails which don't have any products related to the search term.
Yes, Google may be a free service and many shouldn't rely just on Google but when you have an online business there aren't that many other options for some unless you have massive budgets.
I have a website where somebody may search for "blue large widgets" and I have unique text about said widgets and then a few offers on blue large widgets where it effectively says "this is what you wanted, here, take a look at EXACTLY what you want" but that isn't good enough either.
All of this "write decent content and everything will be ok" is silly too, a few people I know have spent thousands on content and hours of their own time but have been penalised and are now outranked by spammy sites or eBay / Amazon longtails which don't have any products related to the search term.
Yes, Google may be a free service and many shouldn't rely just on Google but when you have an online business there aren't that many other options for some unless you have massive budgets.
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spot on - so much for don't be evil or we're not evil!!
<<<Removed by Mod>>>
I can seriously see people committing suicide over this stuff - i've read in so many forums people writing great original content - spending thousands on a domain name because it says exactly what their product or service is they have to offer only for big G to pull the rug under them. Hiring people to write good copy on descriptions of their products etc. etc. - if you've been hit you are probably reduced by 95% of your previosu traffic - in other words you have no business - no doubt you'll turn to adwords like after penguin...and if everyone does that google will rake it in!
of course we could all switch to a better search engine...Bing anyone?
The previous site was number one on their for pig farming by the way!
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There are no doubt a lot of proper businesses (as in, not just websites with affiliate ads) out there that have suffered. Many were probably advised by web development firms to use a keyword rich domain name instead of a brand name, simply because it was easier for the web development firm to SEO that domain for them. Some may have made that choice based on what people were saying at the time in the SEO forums etc.
Thing is, just because something worked for a company in the past does not mean it will, or should, continue to work forever. It is a royal PITA when it happens to you (I got hit by Panda and a bit by Penguin) but you have to work around it, make changes and move on.
Also, no company should rely solely on one source of new business. Work on social media, get more active in forums like this (without spamming) and work hard at promoting your business. Harder said than done (I know from personal (in)experience!), but a must.
And yes, mistakes are made. But Google's algo update affected millions of sites (0.6% affected according to Cutts, there are around 215 million domains globally, so possibly 1,290,000 domains have been affected by this update). My point is - there will be some business hard done by. Others will prosper. Look at what your competitors are doing and start rebuilding.
Thing is, just because something worked for a company in the past does not mean it will, or should, continue to work forever. It is a royal PITA when it happens to you (I got hit by Panda and a bit by Penguin) but you have to work around it, make changes and move on.
Also, no company should rely solely on one source of new business. Work on social media, get more active in forums like this (without spamming) and work hard at promoting your business. Harder said than done (I know from personal (in)experience!), but a must.
And yes, mistakes are made. But Google's algo update affected millions of sites (0.6% affected according to Cutts, there are around 215 million domains globally, so possibly 1,290,000 domains have been affected by this update). My point is - there will be some business hard done by. Others will prosper. Look at what your competitors are doing and start rebuilding.
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Yes but the page that article excerpt links through to does, via the 'incoming search terms' plugin purely only built to manipulate search engines to distributing more weight for the keywords it is targeting (expect this to be the next thing devalued by Google). But even without this, the content is far more substantial than that of the page selling a business plan.
There is a mammoth amount of other factors considered before placing those two pages at #X and #X though so without deep analysis of both, it's not possible to put this down to a flaw with the algorithm or a legitimate reasons as to why that second page doesn't rank higher than #9 currently. My guess is, it would be the latter.
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If the penalty is only for the domain name, then setting up a new domain, transferring the whole site and doing a Redirect 301 (which I think mostly conserves pagerank) may be a solution.
If I was badly impacted I would try that, after waiting for the dust to settle.
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Certainly, a lot of people have their lives ruined by Google changes and it wouldn't surprise me if there had been suicides already.
I guess the black hatters have many sites and just do a rinse / repeat so once a Google Update happens they just move on to the next site but it is the people who have worked hard and do run legit businesses that are being hit too and with no notice at all, they just wake up one morning to see that they no longer have a business and will have to lay people off and start looking for work.
A lot of people keep saying "Play by the rules and you will be fine" but I had a site with lots of unique content, the domain name was "bigbluewidgets.com" and was ranking for a few keywords but woke up and found out that no, I won't be getting that 500 - 600 a month from sales on that site any more.
I hadn't built ANY backlinks to it, let alone dodgy ones. It had backlinks from forums and social media where it was getting link bait because it WAS helpful so I am stumped as to what can be done with it now?
I guess the black hatters have many sites and just do a rinse / repeat so once a Google Update happens they just move on to the next site but it is the people who have worked hard and do run legit businesses that are being hit too and with no notice at all, they just wake up one morning to see that they no longer have a business and will have to lay people off and start looking for work.
A lot of people keep saying "Play by the rules and you will be fine" but I had a site with lots of unique content, the domain name was "bigbluewidgets.com" and was ranking for a few keywords but woke up and found out that no, I won't be getting that 500 - 600 a month from sales on that site any more.
I hadn't built ANY backlinks to it, let alone dodgy ones. It had backlinks from forums and social media where it was getting link bait because it WAS helpful so I am stumped as to what can be done with it now?
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I'm sure you can find hundreds of discrepancies in the index. But my mum (who is google's target) is quite happy with the results she gets.
The first site has inbound links with the keywords so that helps along with the page title. The second site is American so would probably ranked lower than anyway.
If they relied on a single source of traffic form a service who regularly shakes things up then their business plan was flawed. If they commit suicide then that's sad but they were daft to expect to live forever from the FREE service Google provides
Google is not evil. Google just does what google does: which is to make lots of money. Just because you are suffering is of no concern to Google. It never has been.
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maybe the article should of talked about football to get to the top of the term pig farming business plan..after all footballers kick the proverbial pig's bladder around a football field don't they? Clearly that's where they went wrong!
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I also know many many people that have spent thousands of pounds on developing trust, authority and business exposure online and they are doing just great.
Part of the biggest issue here is perception of what is deemed correct / 'natural'. Why does your domain name need to say what the exact product / service you offer is? There are meta descriptions or similar ways of explaining this. The only reason of purchasing a domain name with the keywords in was purely to rank for those keywords. Again, with "great original content" - how do you perceive this? Just because content is manually wrote with, is original and an keyword frequency of above 15% of target keyword doesn't make this great content - and even most of the ('SEO') copywriters you'll find online and that these people you know probably paid, are just churning out tons of this exact type of copy.
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Not really, if I had "bluewidgets.com" and I sold Blue Widgets and gave out my url to people it does sound a lot better to say that it is the domain name, it also sticks in memory.
Also, the CTR from google listings would probably be a lot better if the domain name was related like that. Yes the Title and Meta Desc count to make people want to click but the domain name / URL makes a difference too.
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The type of SEO that enhances those elements of which ethically improve your rankings, whilst within the search engine guidelines.
Anything that:-
Decreases bounce rate
Increases visitor stay
Increases conversions
Contains popular and shareable content
etc etc
SEO does not have to be a case of manipulation to make a search engine think you are better than another site. Just make sure you are the better site!
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But aimed at the US market (prices were in dollars). Ergo - no need for google to rank the site in the UK.
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You mean like ebay, amazon and a zillion other websites.
I'd rather go to 'admiral' than 'cheapcarinsurance4'
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Yes, but half the time they haven't been running legit businesses online though. Not necessarily to their knowledge. We've picked up tons of clients who have been adamant they have never done anything dodgy or hired a company that has damaged their presence - but time and time again, we find instances that they have and have proved this - even if the client had no recollection or awareness of what was going on.
I'm pretty sure there would have been an issue somewhere that was flagging alarm bells. Niche? Affiliates? Ads? Association?[/QUOTE]
What's the address?
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Would love to see some case studies where these improved rankings!
BTW on a site for loans they guarantee anyone a loan, this improves their conversions etc then they charge them a £50-500 admin fee. Is that SEO?
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You probably would as it is a huge brand that has probably had millions pumped into advertising.
How would Big Dave round the corner ever compete?
Obviously when it comes between these big brands and smaller sites the big brands will get the clicks but what if it was "porscheparts.com" ranking next to "davescarspares.com" when somebody was looking for porscheparts, if they were both unknowns with the same meta info then people would be inclined to click on the one with the keyword in.
It all comes down to what users trust.
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Yep it was an affiliate website with some adsense on it but it wasn't spammy at all. It actually give information about each product and genuine reviews.
Does that mean affiliate sites should be banned too? Why would it flag alarm bells?
What do you define as a "legit" business online?
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Completely disagree.
One of our recent clients which we're in the process of rebranding has a current domain with keywords in. I've really struggled to remember it because after looking at so many similar sites and competitors with tons of variations of the same keyword, it doesn't stand out - just like any keyword in the dictionary now because someone, somewhere is doing something with all these keyword stuffed domains.
Give me a branded domain name any day and there is more chance of me coming to the site.
I also don't feel it sounds better at all - it just sounds spammy, almost like the business couldn't be bothered to think of a business name or brand - and if the business can't be bothered, why should their customer?[/QUOTE]
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- Original Poster
- #76
Bounce rate as a factor in rankings since circa 2008...
Or the contrary, where it's debunked.
Perhaps you'd like to settle it by reading from the Google blog where SERP bounce is stated to be a factor in rankings.
Google knows who bounces, not from tapping into your analytics, but from seeing you immediately back and clicking in the search results, unsatisfied with what you got from the previous site.
It's a known factor in PPC and a probable factor in organic. That alone is reason enough for me to believe that it is most probably indeed an organic factor, and should be treated accordingly, rather than ignored and/or doubted.
Or the contrary, where it's debunked.
Perhaps you'd like to settle it by reading from the Google blog where SERP bounce is stated to be a factor in rankings.
Google knows who bounces, not from tapping into your analytics, but from seeing you immediately back and clicking in the search results, unsatisfied with what you got from the previous site.
It's a known factor in PPC and a probable factor in organic. That alone is reason enough for me to believe that it is most probably indeed an organic factor, and should be treated accordingly, rather than ignored and/or doubted.
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[/QUOTE]
I do agree about some sounding spammy but if Dave round the corner wants to start a garage in Manchester and knows how to fix cars and doesn't have a marketing degree he might call his garage "Manchester Garage" and then get the domain to match.
I am not saying that keyword stuffing domains is right but it isn't always the case that people have bought them just for that.
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Whilst there may be factual research that proves that CTR is slightly higher on results that contain a domain name with keywords in, I for one will only glance at the URL to determine whether it is spam or not - because 9.9 times out of 10, a domain name only consisting of keywords - often EMD's, will be exactly that, low quality spam. After confirming this, I then block the domain from appearing in my search results ever again.
CTR based on this criteria will hopefully change now anyway and encourage Google's target (Fisicx's mum) not to base their viewing preference on the name of a domain.
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I would never trust a website that had a domain like:-
electricalapplianceswinchester.co.uk
Would you?
It's only a matter of time before the masses - the real users, will not either.
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Like I said it depends on the instance. Obviously things like viagra4u.com is nothing but spam but what happens if it is something like:
Newcastlecargarage.co.uk
Coventryplumber.co.uk
Maidstonecarrental.co.uk
They could and probably are genuine business names that could have been hit.
Alternatively viagra4u.com might be more helpful if I needed Viagra and could buy it from there rather than an amazon link or Ebay search that doesn't have any :redface:
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