This is a guest post by Joshua Spaulding. Learn how you can guest post on Christian Web Trends.
Remember the days when you could get thousands of backlinks, all using your primary keyword, and jump to the top 10 in Google? Back then SEO was simple. You could outsource it all for cheap, getting low-quality, manual links and sit back and enjoy the top 10 rankings. But since Google’s “Panda” and “Penguin” updates, those days are long gone.
Exact-Match Domains
Some things are still the same though. Back then, if you were trying to rank for “red widgets” you could register redwidgets.com and you would get up to a 30% boost in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS). Many SEO’s will tell you that this “boost” is gone, but I beg to differ!
We’ve been seeing that not only can EMD’s rank with fewer, and less authoritative links, EMD’s can have higher anchor text saturation of their keywords. We’re seeing that EMD’s can have up to 7% exact match anchor text in their backlink profile, where non-EMD’s should not have more than 1%.
This data is significant because it means that exact match anchor text still helps, but once you get over a certain threshold, the opposite is true — it hurts. But with EMD’s, that threshold is much higher!
Partial-Match Domains
We’ve also been seeing that partial match domains (PMD’s) enjoy a slightly higher threshold than domains that do not have any of the primary keywords in the domain. I define a PMD as a domain that contains the exact keyword with the addition of another word or phrase. So, for example, if you were targeting “red widgets” then “cheapredwidgets.com” would be a PMD. In our analysis and experience, PMD’s are currently able to have up to 3% exact match anchor text in the backlinks pointing to the sites, as opposed to no more than 1% permitted for non-EMD/non-PMD.
For churches this data is of little importance, as you will likely use your church name as your domain (as you should). But if you’re like me and you’re always building new sites in order to spread the gospel, I hope you’ll consider this information when choosing future domains, as it can help get more exposure to your ministry sites!
When registering EMD’s, be sure to be realistic with the keywords you choose. Though SEO is certainly not “dead,” it isn’t as easy as it once was to rank. So if you’re going after a keyword that gets 10’s of thousands of monthly searches, it is going to be tough to rank for. Using an EMD will help get you there faster though!
Just remember, EMD’s help, you still need to be careful not to go overboard with the keyword saturation of your backlink anchor text. Getting much higher than 7%, even with an EMD, is likeyl to evoke Google’s dreaded over-optimization penalty, which will end up preventing you from ranking at all.
5 Comments
Hey Joshua, thanks for the post and for sharing your insight. Selecting a domain name is a big decision. I agree that whenever possible it's good to get keywords in the domain. A lot of organizations like to acronyms in their domain names because their shorter (like FBC for First Baptist Church), but as you pointed out there are SEO benefits from using the full words.
good one.
Domain name have great effect in Modern SEO. Everyone have some reqriement like new domain provide faster access and greater stability. I like to suggest you that http://www.0net.me/ help you to get your desire domain to keep in mind your requriements. If Domain is perfect and according to the SEO point of view then its good for website.
I think SEO will disappear as soon google can fully control on sites
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Hi Joshua, sure that the exact match domain or target keywords seo days has gone, nowadays, SEO become more and more diffcult and hard 🙂 thank’s for your great article, amazing!