Top SEO's are recommending brandables not EMDs

[DomainVP]

If you want to learn SEO I recommend dropping into the channel of josh bachynski. His SEO show is underrated, and has some excellent advice when it comes to how to execute great white-hat SEO.

One of the things he is recommending to his viewers is to go with short brandables within any extension, yes even the new gTLD's.

In his intro video he is advising to pass on the 'expensive' exact match $5k - $50k domain names and go brandable. Then start advertising via social etc...

This does come from an SEO expert an not so much a branding expert, but I thought that it was interesting to hear for recommended SEO practice for 2016.

Your thoughts?

 

[Domain Galleria]

I have mini site (.online) currently ranking 2nd, 3rd and 6th and 7th on google's first page. EMD is an added advantage in my opinion

 

[enlytend]

From a branding perspective, especially my perspective, owning the exact match of your service or product is a must if you can afford it and it's not taken by an operating brand.

Yes and no.
If you can grab a "category killer" domain that's relevant to your business, go for it. You can't go wrong there.But if its a longer phrase? You actually confuse and dilute your branding.

Let's say you're a lawyer and you get "PodunkInjuryLawyer." The lawyer across the street gets "PodunkInjuryAttorney." Someone across town has "PodunkPersonalInjuryAttorney." See the potential for consumers to get them mixed up? But if you focus on marketing your actual practice name to build awareness, people will remember your brand.

(If that's actually a term that pays the bills and it helps you rank, it may be worth it, but I've seen companies brand or build minisites on emd's that get little to no traffic or get non-converting traffic.)

I'm listening to the whole thing now and one thing in particular irked me at the start. "EMDs are risky", wait what!?

I'm guessing his point is that you're at risk of over optimizing on page SEO, but I mean if you're over optimizing on page SEO then you're doing just that and you'll get a smack down from Google regardless. On page SEO has and always will be about just enough but not too much.

Not just on page - anchor text in links to your site. Too high a percentage of exact match anchor text can set off red penalty flags. Easier to overdo it and look like you're spamming.

However if you're not in a spammy hiche and you have strong brand signals on your site (like if this is a genuine business), you have a lot more leeway. They won't slap someone for using their brand name, but they need to be convinced it's really your brand name. They get suspicious if your "name" is "BuyDietPills" "PaydayLoansHere" or "BestHostingCoupons."

From an seo point of view before anyone could build out an emd, get some traffic from google and make some money.

The quick money grab sites were precisely why Google dialed back the importance of EMD's. Brands and businesses were complaining loudly and repeatedly directly to the webspam team.

It's still a ranking factor, just not like it was. For those of you who don't remember the web pre 2010, you could put up a site on an emd and outrank big brands for that keyword - even for fairly competitive terms, without a lot of links.

 

[iAchilles]

Not just on page - anchor text in links to your site. Too high a percentage of exact match anchor text can set off red penalty flags. Easier to overdo it and look like you're spamming.

However if you're not in a spammy hiche and you have strong brand signals on your site (like if this is a genuine business), you have a lot more leeway. They won't slap someone for using their brand name, but they need to be convinced it's really your brand name. They get suspicious if your "name" is "BuyDietPills" "PaydayLoansHere" or "BestHostingCoupons.

Good point. But as you alluded to, if you're generally doing whitehat seo and building a genuine site you'll normally end up with a wide variety of traffic sources and anchor text. You've little to be concerned about in this sense and I feel he is overstating the risk. Once you stray into grey and darker territory then I'd agree with him.

 

[iowadawg]

Remember those days of seo contests?
Where one would try to get on page one of google and stay there for some new and foolish term?
Like "green balls on purple grass near the yellow printers"?
So easy to take any new term (phrase) and get google to rank it.
Like within 24 hours and it would stay number one!
People would pay big bucks to rank so they could win the contest.
I mean like thousands of those good USD bucks...to me.

 

[HotKey]

What do you guys think would happen if you have an EMD with quality content?

A new acronym would have to be invented.

 

[techname]

For serious business, you need a brand, not a set of words. I thought it's clear to everyone. Facebook is called FaceBook and not TheBestSocialNetwork. Apple is called Apple and not TheBestGadgetsAndComputerFirm.

What about Lawn.com ; )

 

[Recons.Com]

For serious business, you need a brand, not a set of words. I thought it's clear to everyone. Facebook is called FaceBook and not TheBestSocialNetwork. Apple is called Apple and not TheBestGadgetsAndComputerFirm.

What about Coupons.com? Escrow.com? Diapers.com? Blogger.com? Booking.com? SlideShare.net? Weather.com? SpeedTest.net? ExpiredDomains.Net? MultiPageRank.com? BulkSeoTools.com?

 

[golan]

By the way, EMD stands for: “Exact Match Domain”
It is a filter Google launched in September 2012 to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well simply because they had words that match search terms in their domain names. When a fresh EMD Update happens, sites that have improved their content may regain good rankings

And like 10 years before Google launched this filter, SEOers were already using EMD's. And call them EMD. And the meaning was - keyword match.

And why do you shout. We hear you well bro.

 

[golan]

What about Coupons.com? Escrow.com? Diapers.com? Blogger.com? Booking.com? SlideShare.net? Weather.com? SpeedTest.net? ExpiredDomains.Net? MultiPageRank.com? BulkSeoTools.com?

These - yes. I can't disagree.

BUT: they all are pure online businesses.
You can't open a shop on Oxford Street and name it "Men Shirts". Or "Best Books". This is no name, you will lose to your brand competitors.
That's what i was trying to say.
Well maybe Diapers is the only one from your list which fits also for offline biz.

 

[enlytend]

What about Coupons.com? Escrow.com? Diapers.com? Blogger.com? Booking.com? SlideShare.net? Weather.com? SpeedTest.net? ExpiredDomains.Net? MultiPageRank.com? BulkSeoTools.com?

I wasn't the one who wrote that (and I'm not familiar with the last two.) but as I said earlier...

If you can grab a "category killer" domain that's relevant to your business, go for it. You can't go wrong there.

This conversation is turning into apples and oranges - I think we all agree there's a market for emds, and they still have some value as a ranking factor. The original topic was whether an EMD increases risk from an SEO standpoint and whether that means someone building a site should go with a brandable instead. Depending on what it is and what you do with it, it can, but like anything else in life you have to weigh the risks vs the benefits and look at both in terms of your goals.

And, contrary to the thread title, "Top SEOs" I know of are not running around telling people to use brandable domains - for most clients the domain is the least of their problems.

 

[frank-germany]

apple having their brand as domain

and EMD
those are 2 different stories

 

[iowadawg]

Best Books sounds like a darn good name for a physical bookstore!

 

[Recons.Com]

I strongly believe top and not so top seo experts are doing disservice to business owners.

Many of those are clueless that domain names and websites are not just about search engines.

One of my clients wanted an exact match domain for her next niche activity, her seo told her she does not need to spend around $1500 for the name, because the search engines don't put that much weight on it.

Those limited minded people don't understand that coupons.com name goes much beyond search engines and if business starts with exact match like that it is hard for mycoupons.com greatcoupons.com couponistic.com etc. compete with them because of instant authority, memorability, natural traffic etc. that comes with it.

In financial world, there is a belief that if someone started with retail banking it is hard to retrain that person for investment banking, financial analysis etc., because of the narrow tunnel vision that job develops. I see seo experts developing the same "professional sickness"....

 

[frank-germany]

if you listen carefully
he switches from seo to ppc
and mixing it

 

[GoKaizen]

Brokers don't like EMDs!

https://www.namepros.com/threads/an...ing-justification-for-premium-domains.930258/

 

[enlytend]

One of my clients wanted an exact match domain for her next niche activity, her seo told her she does not need to spend around $1500 for the name, because the search engines don't put that much weight on it.

Those limited minded people don't understand that coupons.com name goes much beyond search engines and if business starts with exact match like that it is hard for mycoupons.com greatcoupons.com couponistic.com etc. compete with them because of instant authority, memorability, natural traffic etc. that comes with it.

Not knowing the domain or the client's business it's hard to say what factors their seo consultant did or did not take into consideration. EMD's like my "lawyers" examples earlier in this thread do NOT help with memorability. Even with distinctive EMD's that get typeins, not all of them give you useful traffic. Type-ins from short EMD's for example are generally "top of funnel" traffic (often with vague or ambiguous intent), not "credit card in hand ready to buy" traffic, so there's that much more marketing that has to be done to retain and convert a prospect. A no-brainer for a big company with a big budget, not always a win for a small company with more limited resources. As for branding, there's a big difference between "coupons dot com" and your average EMD.

If your client already has a site, adding a site / domain for a new line of business increases your workload. Microsites are usually more trouble than they're worth.

But again, I don't know the domain or your client or what their seo consultant communicated to them (because sometimes what we tell a client, what they think we said, and how they explain it to someone else are 3 different things), so I can only speak in generalities.

if you listen carefully
he switches from seo to ppc
and mixing it

Interesting - because for PPC (search, that is) there are very real benefits to having an important keyword (or parts thereof) in a domain:

• Increases ad relevancy for the keyword and for phrases containing it, which can increase quality score, which lowers bid cost on those kwds.
  
• Words in the display URL that match the search query are bolded, which improves CTR

 

[Jeeps]

Knowledge, get your knowledge here!

... @enlytend has pwned this thread.

 

[disaac81]

When they say "SEO experts" it always makes you wonder...

I mean so many so called seo experts still do the same tactics from 10 years ago thinking they are somehow ground-breaking techniques.

Anyway, on to topic...

Brandables have nothing to do with seo. What does have an affect on seo is how powerful a brand name is in search, so if people get to you by searching your "brand name" \ "product name" it increases your credibility and so forth your sites ranking within part of the algo. Note that it does not mean emds ar edead, actually emds are alive and kicking.

Businesses all operate multiple urls these days, usually for products and services, so having an emd that is "relevant" is really the key to fulfiliment of the user experience.

The search engines are looking less and less at keywords and more and more at behaviours, although keywords will always have a part to play, since they are part of the natural model of how human look for things and link to content they like.

 

[arjun29]

Microsites are usually more trouble than they're worth.

Slightly off topic but I would love to hear few more words about the statement if you could.

 

[tomcarl]

SEO value of domains put aside, commercial branding advice from a Search Engine expert is like getting a cosmetic surgery consultation from a dentist.

Just another person speculating on what domain to use while the domain no longer plays a role in what you're paid to do. Kind of like asking an SEO guy which logo to go with.

There's more to an EMD than search engine optimization, it is a brand itself and the two words "dot com" are part of that brand, not just its web address.

Opt for a short dot-whatever Today where there's far less action, public awareness, and money circulating because it may be the future? And advertise it on Facebook? Okay.

Short, 1-2 word, exact-match dot coms will always hold an advantage with CTRs and instant credibility with consumers, not for what they're capable of on the backend, but the perception they give.

The average consumer who knows nothing about our industry searches "used textbooks for sale" and on page one finds TextBooks.com, Bookovo.com, and Textbooks.xyz, SEO matters aside, who would they instinctively be most comfortable giving their credit card information to?

Which site are you going to enter your social security number, CreditReport.com or Credit.report?

"Give it time, it will be the future" - Maybe, but are we doing business now or in the future?

The only EMDs that ever lost value were longtails that no longer rank.

 

[enlytend]

Slightly off topic but I would love to hear few more words about the statement if you could.

I think we've already wandered a little off-topic , so very briefly, and in context of microsites in addition to a primary business site:

1. Risk of being seen as "doorway sites" - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311?hl=en
2. To avoid #1, you're doubling up on content creation and promotional efforts (social media, linking ...) which ...
   
3. Splits up your link equity and site visit metrics. Unless it fully stands alone with a distinct purpose, you could just as easily be promoting the content on your primary site, in which case your entire site benefits from the traffic and links it acquires.
   
4. They RARELY drive significant traffic to the main site. My observations from auditing accounts with full access to their analytics data. They generally drive only a tiny handful of visits if that - fewer than 5/month, sometimes none. So maintenance, promotional effort and risk usually outweigh the benefits

Your mileage may vary.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

I think this has been a well documented trend for the past few years.
And yes single words can and do make great brands......

 

[Josytal]

Either way, the shorter the name, the better - if you can help it.

 

[interbuyer]

Interesting recent case study.

A company approached me to buy a category killer exact name domain.

It matched their current product exactly.

Their current website was the same EMD but in dot info.

They were well established but always on page 4-5 in Google serps.

My domain was currently on a one page landing page, offering a similar product via affiliate links. It received little very little serp traffic.

My website was not appearing in the serps in the first 20 or so pages.

They moved their main website to my domain immediately, after purchase and placed a notification on original website with a link to new website. No 301 redirect.

Three days later they were number 2 on page one in Google serps. They have remained there.

Website remained unchanged.

I spoke to the purchaser two weeks later out of curiosity.

They said it was the best investment ever, sales up 60% , would recoup initial purchase cost in less then 120 days. Purchase cost $38,000.00

Conclusion: EMD's work very well for established websites.

 

[Recons.Com]

Interesting recent case study.

A company approached me to buy a category killer exact name domain.

It matched their current product exactly.

Their current website was the same EMD but in dot info.

They were well established but always on page 4-5 in Google serps.

My domain was currently on a one page landing page, offering a similar product via affiliate links. It received little very little serp traffic.

My website was not appearing in the serps in the first 20 or so pages.

They moved their main website to my domain immediately, after purchase and placed a notification on original website with a link to new website. No 301 redirect.

Three days later they were number 2 on page one in Google serps. They have remained there.

Website remained unchanged.

I spoke to the purchaser two weeks later out of curiosity.

They said it was the best investment ever, sales up 60% , would recoup initial purchase cost in less then 120 days. Purchase cost $38,000.00

Conclusion: EMD's work very well for established websites.

How did google know it was "established website" without a 301 redirect?