I've seen a ton of newbies think that you must get an exact match domain for your keyword to rank. That is really not necessary, I tried to explain in another thread but they didn't understand so I decided to find some proof. Yes, an exact match TLD does help a lot but something like:
buy{keyword}.com/net/org
{keyword}reviews.com/net/org
cheap{keyword}.com/net/org
{keyword}.com/net/org
the{keyword}.com/net/org



All I want to point out is the first result is:
buy{keyword}.com

And it ranks fine.

No more arguing! :)

Yep.. or adding on things like HQ or whatever at the end also works.

Good point, cool photoshopping and spinning of your example domains too.

Happy New years!

Yes this is a great post and makes perfect since. I really think that people could find much more paying keywords if they were not just looking for exact match. Don't get me wrong the exact match domain is great, but there is nothing wrong with throwing the word review to the end of your exact match.

The only thing I think is that it is more important to add the word to the end of the domain instead of before the keyword. This though is only my personal choice, as shown above you can do it either way.

Thanks + rep given, this is solid and I really believe people should think this way a little more because it would cause them to be able to create more sites and make more money.

Happy new years boys!

Yeah, placing the word after instead of before is certainly a personal belief that some people have. I think both are great and if I could choose, yes probably I would use the word after but I wouldn't get too upset if I had the word before.

Macdonjo3

Nobody said you couldn't rank non Exact match domains but the truth is that having an Exact Match Domain gives you a huge boost in Google.

If you do the same exact linkbuilding to a site with a EMD and a non-EMD, the EMD site will rank higher than the non-EMD almost every time.

It all comes down to how much time, effort, and money you want to spend trying to rank a website. If you want the easy way out, finding an exact match domain is the way to go.

I know what your site is good job. You give us noobs hope. How are your affiliate sales/comissions going?

If you want the easy way out, finding an exact match domain is the way to go.

Exactly. The whole reason to get the exact match domain is to rank a site quicker. Of course you can rank yourkeywordsomething.com or even randomwords.com for the same keyword as well, but why bother with something that might require additional effort.

This is all just most basic SEO and literally everyone here should know this. Unfortunately, the general knowledge and skill level of people in this forum seems to be drastically lowered by immigrants from DP and the like.

Simple stuffs.
We should have a tag for all the simple things like this that are efficient.
And most of them are logical.

Originally Posted by Tartaros

Exactly. The whole reason to get the exact match domain is to rank a site quicker. Of course you can rank yourkeywordsomething.com or even randomwords.com for the same keyword as well, but why bother with something that might require additional effort.

This is all just most basic SEO and literally everyone here should know this. Unfortunately, the general knowledge and skill level of people in this forum seems to be drastically lowered by immigrants from DP and the like.

Great contribution, specially coming from a 14 post holder with a 1 month old account.

Could not agree more with the rest of the post.

Thanks, but I have been here for about 2 years now, sharing one account with my business partner. I just recently created another account solely for me.

Besides, I could have been into this for numerous years already. Being a member on an online forum for a certain amount of time alone does not say a thing about your qualification. I'm sure there are people lurking around for years on this forum who have bought all sorts of fancy ClickBank ebooks and still don't know a thing.

On topic:

Availability of exact match domains can also be one (!) good indicator for the level of competition. If com/net/org/info are all free, nobody might have optimized a site for that particular keyword yet.

Keyword order seems to play a role but a reverse order match domain can also be beneficial, e.g. 'ComputersCheap.com' instead of 'CheapComputers.com' when targeting the phrase 'cheap computers'.

Fuck! *echo* So you mean those 50 domains that I just blitzkrieged at namecheap were completely unnecessary?!

An article by SEOmoz.org on october of 2010 stated that "Just by itself, exact match is remarkably high in correlation to rankings. No other on-site/on-page factor we examined even came close."

seomoz . org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited

This means not even the number of backlinks or anchor text had a higher correlation with ranking than exact match domains.

Originally Posted by Condorr

An article by SEOmoz.org on october of 2010 stated that "Just by itself, exact match is remarkably high in correlation to rankings. No other on-site/on-page factor we examined even came close."

seomoz . org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited

This means not even the number of backlinks or anchor text had a higher correlation with ranking than exact match domains.

I don't think so. There is definitely a break even point for backlinks.

You are right, but as today an Exact Match Domain make everything way easier, especially if you are not dealing with competitive keywords.

Of course backlinks have the potential to outrank anything and anybody. But you will have to get them, they are not "free".

An Exact Domain Match gives you a bonus over your competitors from the start, without having to put any extra effort in it.

But this may change in the future, who knows.

If I remember correctly there was an ebook by Kim Roach that had a huge list of buying keywords. Also she was giving examples of which additional words to add for your domain name if you couldn't get an exact match domain for your keyword. One thing that I remember was to try for something like lose-fat-now.com if losefatnow.com was not available.

PS: I know where you live

Happy New Year!

I have also found from my experience that keyword rich domains are not necessary. I have 2 sites that compete in the same niche which is very competitive. My non-kw domain is out ranking my kw domain. Both are constantly fighting for number 1 position.

thx alot.. it very helpfull for newbi like me..

jason mckormic or whatever (google it) "seo 2010" author says he worked on googles algorythm and that you serp higher if the words are in the same sequential order as the search/url/title/head/intext: and i also learned that domains expiring within a year will have lower serps, while those that do not expire within 2 years will have better serps. he said this was split-tested fairly regularly.

cant say whether its true, but just an fyi. i have a hundred domains expiring within a year

Hi Barry,

If I could get an Exact Match Domain for your keyword, your site would be #2.

[YOURKEYWORD].com/.org are parked pages and .net is an autoblog that hasn't figured out his settings yet.

Happy new year.

Nigel

You missed out the letter n when watermarking your image.

I've done a good bit of testing with domains and keyword rich domains and I have had good success using keyword411.com or keyword911.com

Both make sense depending on whether you want the feeling of "information" or "emergency" on the end of your keyword and they seem to perform extremely well in the SERPS.

macdonjo3
You should do your watermarking better, I figured out your domain name and keyword in 15sec.

btw his site is PR1 and #2 has PR4, talk about PR huh? Congrats on first spot.

How about a sub domain name? with exact match sub domain follow with a short domain, how much would that be penalized by G for ranking, would G take into account exact match sub domain or it will just totally ignores sub domain name factor, and no matter what you have in the sub domain name it won't add any marks for that particular keyword ranking?

Originally Posted by keytobestbuy

How about a sub domain name? with exact match sub domain follow with a short domain, how much would that be penalized by G for ranking, would G take into account exact match sub domain or it will just totally ignores sub domain name factor, and no matter what you have in the sub domain name it won't add any marks for that particular keyword ranking?

I am very curious about this myself

lol i cant believe you all thank him for that. This is just common sense that you can rank any domain. You still have a small advantage if you have the keyword in the domain with other letters. But you dont get the bonus a keyword domain is getting. All this hype about exakt domain is because they have a bigger bonus then normal domains. Often this exakt match bonus is enough to go straight to first page of google if it is a low competition key. They also require less backlinks and you can use the keyword more often without going into a keyword filter.

If I had to pull a number out of my ass, I'd say an exact match domain gives you roughly 50-75 quality back links of juice. If your building an authority site and will need 2,000 back links to rank "my left nut", then don't sweat the match - go with myleftnutreview.com.

my-left-nut.com doesn't count. Don't use dashes if you want the extra juice. (and ignore .info's too) What the fuck do I know, I just have 45 matching keyword domains that rank.

Originally Posted by keytobestbuy

How about a sub domain name? with exact match sub domain follow with a short domain, how much would that be penalized by G for ranking, would G take into account exact match sub domain or it will just totally ignores sub domain name factor, and no matter what you have in the sub domain name it won't add any marks for that particular keyword ranking?

Well there are 2 benefits of doing sub domains but they might not be worth the consequences.

1. Sub domains can have the keyword, but only in the sub domain, not the domain.
2. You will have backlinks to your domain, which may help you sub domain.

However, I've not tried this but I've herd that its not worth the time and your best off just getting a domain that contains your keyword and just build links with ScrapeBox lists.

Macdonjo3

You Don't Need An Exact Match Domain To Rank Micro Niche Sites!

True..you don't NEED any sort of keyword domain. It isn't a matter of need, you can rank it all, it is just a matter of ease, and as it is right now, Google places exact match's very high. I believe this will soon be leveled out with their updates, as it is a big issue for spammy niche sites in google.

When looking for domains, if i cant get the exact match, I'll simply add a V or an X to the end. Google ignores the random letter and treats the domain like an exact match Adding an S to the end of your domain is often a bad idea and will rank for say "dogs" Instead of "dog".. If you catch my drift.

What about subdomains?

Dude, I know your niche! bahaha I need some CRG!

Thanks for the post...up to this point I've only targeted exact match domains. I'm a changed man.

Originally Posted by plex_brahial

What about subdomains?

Nah, sub domains are not worth it.

Yes, you should remove the image.

Originally Posted by thewit

macdonjo3
You should do your watermarking better, I figured out your domain name and keyword in 15sec.

btw his site is PR1 and #2 has PR4, talk about PR huh? Congrats on first spot.

In my opinion having the keyword in your domain gives only a very small boost to your ranking for that keyword, as far as I'm concerned it's one the smallest factors you should be concerned with when trying to rank for something.

If you can't get exact domain, I have found this works very well as well:
[mysite]otherwords.com/mysite.html
I have had better luck ranking some of my keywords this way when exact domain isn't available. I had one site that I had thrown tons of anchor text BL's to, wasn't ranking well, but the minute I started throwing links to the article with exact title - bam! Rankings.

Nice post. But maybe you should remove the image. Because I discovered the keyword with ease

btw Yahoo shows only 2 incoming links. Nice.

The underlying site has around 20 articles. So if people think it is just a single page site, you'd be wrong.

Originally Posted by homenet

In my opinion having the keyword in your domain gives only a very small boost to your ranking for that keyword, as far as I'm concerned it's one the smallest factors you should be concerned with when trying to rank for something.

But when you are dealing with long tails, not popular niches, then most of the sites have no backlinks. Google gives more weight to keywords in domain and on page seo.

I have just as much lucky creating a subdomain using the exact keywords. You will also rank for many keywords you didnt foresee anyway.

I know EMD is always best however , If I missed the EMD, say learnkarate.com
/ learn-karate.com, and all .net, .org, .info gone. Can i use learnkarate-a.com and easily rank for the kw "learn karate" . The '-a' is just some random meaningless suffix (it can be anything)...as long as the keyword is there.

This is all good to know as I was racking my brain because .com were taken but its good to know .net or .org is good too or adding word works as well

I think with emd is more easy to rank..

Why did you bump this? This is such an old thread and Google's made many changes since I made this. Thread closed.