New TLD .solution .company with exact keyword match - will it be a viable proposition for SEO

[artdivision]

Agree with Robert that it is not a good SEO approach, however disagree on the 1% factor. EMDs (especially .com and .net) still DO work but it comes down to keyword competitiveness and keyword research. Its an awful approach but the easiest way to rank products with low competition hence you see them everywhere when it comes to location marketing (for example pest control XYZ) or Micro Niche sites (bestknifeguide.com etc). I ranked 2 web sites with EMD this year as part of my annual SEO tests which help me understand Google better and to my surprirse they do the job just fine. People will say "yes but not for long" but I;ve been hearing "not for long" for lots of techniques similar to EMD since 2006 so in general I lost my faith a bit when it comes to articles from people who replicate all day what Matt Cutts says. To me the biggest advantage of an EMD is that you can do anchor text link building by simply using the domain name, keeping yourself away from penalties since the url serves as an exact anchor.

Apologies if the article I shared was not clear but in sort NO there is no SEO benefit in using the new domain over a .com EMD nor a disadvantage. At the moment 40-60% is related to your link building so it doesnt really matter if the industry you are going after is hard compettitive industry.  However if you do want to do it and buy the exactkeyword.company domain and want to redirect it allow me to suggest to set an iframe to the new domain than redirect. it works better with rankings at the moment and I can prove it as I set an iframe and a micro niche page of the same product with the same content and EMD on both and the iframe destroyed the proper page by 20+ rankings.

[BLIT]

Robert,

I tend to agree with you, but experience show me otherwise.

the actual site on ExactKeywordMatch.com had very little valuable content about 18 months ago, yet it ranked in top 4 places, few links (less than a dozen) and perhaps 4 web pages with content. Not a hugely competitive keyword like weight loss, but certainly not a niche market. The ranking was definitely because of the exact match.

When the site became unresponsive (went offline) for over 4 weeks, I contacted the owner and wanted to purchase it. The requested price was $10,000, which was way out of our budget. Although I explained to the customer the MANY benefits he could get from the purchase, they were not in a position to do so.

A competitor bought the domain, placed new content which was a spun version of their money site and within a week he jumped to number one and stayed there for over 12 months.

I haven't done any real analysis on that site since, but when i noticed the new TLDs i figured, maybe I can try it with this new ones. For the exact keyword match, the competitor now dominates the top 6 spots on google page 1, with their various domains.

Surely there will be benefit for a highly optimized website with a targeted exact match domain name?

[BLIT]

Yes Chris, that helps.

The exact match keyword is more like scifibooks, as opposed to your two example.

that's what people will search for when they want to buy the exact match keyword. It's a service opposed to a product. The best covnersations we get are from "scifi books" searches. And if we put a good site on the .company or .solution domain, and use similar approach for conversion, we should be able to convert them, just like we do on the money site.

I guess the main question is: will exact match keyword with a new "unknown" tld have the same SEO benefits as an exact match keyword with a .com tld?

[GPainter]

if you ignore the extension (.company / .com etc.) the new tlds work the same as .com SEO wise however users may treat them different which is the main problem with them so that's the change the user not the search engine.

DJ123 brought up an excellent point as well that a user may mistype your domain if going direct and you could loos traffic but it it's not a direct money site this may not be a problem.

I also just wanted to give Robert Fisher a nod for an excellent reply too!

[GPainter]

Not that I condone it I've seen some people get away with  www.example.com/the-search-term

[RobertFisher]

Alfredo,

You state "experience show me otherwise," and I can appreciate that. Then you state, "A competitor bought the domain, placed new content which was a spun version of their money site and within a week he jumped to number one and stayed there for over 12 months."

From this information you are drawing this conclusion:  If you have an EMD, even one with poor content, EMD's are so powerful the site with poor content will be able to outrank sites with great content, well done structured markup, killer on page SEO. I simply disagree. My disagreement is based on my experience.

Before you can draw a conclusion that having the EMD is what caused the site to rank so well for 12 months, you have to test all the other factors that influence the site's ranking.

If you can share the site that is ranking so well with spun content and the one that isn't, we can likely point out many differences in the sites. You have to look at everything in SEO or it is too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion in my opinion. But, if it is true that EMD does it, simply buy a .company, redirect your site with appropriate 301 rules and let us know 2 weeks from now when it is number one. I have no problem admitting when I am wrong and I am here to learn.

Best,

Robert

EDIT: Let me add: If the domain had been up for 18 months, was down for 4 weeks and went up a week after, it would have had some inherent domain authority that must be factored in.

[RobertFisher]

Yiannis,

From reading what you have written, you are likely an accomplished SEO. I think, for this discussion we cannot be laser focused on examples where an EMD works well. We both can also show people EMD sites that do not rank well. My issue is with those who are less experienced that come to Moz; it is easy for them to latch onto something and believe it is an end all in SEO. You and I both know that people have been saying for years EMD's have lost their strength in SEO and, like in my first example, if I can use one I will. But, if I have a site that is producing revenue for a client of $100K per year and 50% profit, I would never suggest they buy a $10K EMD and that will change their outcomes (I really doubt you would either). But, we have to be very clear with others that they have to measure the whole and not get locked into EMD's, link-building, anchor text, Schema, etc. as "the answer."

For you and I, we do the additional research naturally; others get locked into an issue, say "X," and "prove" to themselves that "X" is what caused the improvement and rush out to make other sites have "X." We have to look at these issues when answering questions in my opinion. An example is how many people say: the other site has poor content, spun content, etc. That is their opinion in looking at a competitor. When you and I look at competitive sites, there is nothing emotional in it as the sites are for clients. That allows us to be more detached and more thorough.

Best, thanks for your well thought out answers,

Robert

[RobertFisher]

Chris,

When you qualify with "not that I condone it," I don't understand why you would not? Using the example of AllSpray, there is nothing wrong with using the keyword in the URL. So, AllSpray.com/bug-spray 
If I am doing the page for AllSpray this is my likely URL.

Best

[GPainter]

Hi Robert,

It depends your example is fine as its somewhat broad but what I'm not keen on is www.exsample.com/really-long-tail-keyword

it's not natural looking at least your example is more acceptable. So when I say it I'm more referring to an unnatural reference that's long and horrible looking compared to say a more general term like bug-spray or books.com/scifi etc.

Hope that clears it up a bit better.

[RobertFisher]

I must agree with the yourdomain.com/new-age-sediment-recovery-systems-by-mice

Long tails would be a bit of overkill

Best

[JaneCopland]

Hi Alfredo,

Some interesting discussion here. Coming back to the root of the question, Matt's response of "Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD)" is very important. It cancels out a lot of the question about the new TLDs.

I would definitely not class this as one of the statements he makes in order to spin a line for Google either - this should be taken as their stance, in my view.

So with that said, the question is largely down to EMDs.

Google targeted low quality EMDs a couple of years ago: http://searchengineland.com/low-quality-exact-match-domains-are-googles-next-target-134889. Low quality is the key point here; this doesn't really address whether a high quality site called SciFiBooks.company (or .com) has inherently more chance of ranking for [scifi books] than a very similar website (in terms of backlinks and content quality) with a different name. Debate about that is ongoing, as you can see here.

[artdivision]

Robert you are absolutely right and you nailed it really, only my boss knows me that well. Got carried away by my passion.

I keep this "But, if I have a site that is producing revenue for a client of $100K per year and 50% profit, I would never suggest they buy a $10K EMD and that will change their outcomes (I really doubt you would either). " and you are right, I wouldn't 100%.

One case is different to the other! +1

[RobertFisher]

Thanks, let's stay in touch.

Robert

[artdivision]

Hi Jane,

I can argue this article with more than 100 examples & proofs but that will be off-topic. All I can say is: Don;t have that much faith in what Google or Search Engine Land says, instead run your own tests.

What is low quality EMD? Who defines low quality?

Once you realise that the answers to the above 2 questions are subjective (mainly based on individual POV of what "quality" is) then you realise that google must have some sort metrics that judge that and those aint similar to mine or yours. Once you realise how they do it or what those metrics are, you will be one step closer in making your clients' rankings happy.

So as you already pointed out correctly, the debate is ongoing...since 2006

[BLIT]

I'd like to thank you all for the input. As it happens, it seems the last google update has completely changed the rankings for most of the EMD we were tracking. So either they really had crappy "other" optimization techniques, or google changes the importance of EMD.

Here's what I can take from this conversation:

1. EMD with good quality content and a descent back link will most probably rank higher then a domain without EMD in the domain name, but with similar/same content & backlink structure.

2. EMD with descent content and good backlink structure are probable a good place to have a link to the money site, but certainly not an option to replace the money site domain (which was never the intention)

Thank you all for your input.