Exact match domains refer to domain names that precisely match some of the main keywords you aim to rank for in Google or other search engines.
These kinds of domains include all types of keywords in all niches and website types. So if you are a kneeling chair store then kneelingchair(.)com is an example of exact match domains.
Or if your store is local you could use kneelingchaircalifornia(.)com or kneelingchairnewyork(.)com as your domain name.
And the same goes for different types of Ecommerce Stores, SaaS businesses, Local businesses, Service providers, Blogs, etc. One could does after emailwarmup(.)com bestplumber(.)com, etc
Types of Exact Match Domains (EMDs)
Exact match refers to any domain name that includes a keyword with high (preferably high) monthly organic search volume. And it can be classified into 3 main types of Exact match domains as follows:
Near Me Domains (e.g. pizzanearme.com, restaurantnearme.com, etc)
Does Top-level Domain Matter For EMDs in SEO?
The top-level-domain (or shortly tld) is the section that follows the “Dot” in the domain. Which would be .Com, .Net. .Org. Xyz, etc.
The question is does TLD matter?
Well for SEO it doesn’t matter anyway; whether you choose .com, .net. or org it doesn’t have any impact on your ranking or your SEO results but from the User Experience point of view does it matter? The answer is It depends!
Let me explain…
If you are a local business for example in which exact match domains are the norm for all your competitors and the .com tld of a keyword-rich exact match domain is taken then the .net/.org/.top won’t be any different.
Whether in if you are building a brand or going after emailmarketing.xyz, it would look a bit strange for your users as the .com TLD is the most famous one on the internet today but still, picking the .xyz, in this case, would be also a smart choice that would yield tremendous leads and excellent SEO results in a friction of time because it is not necessarily to have .com TLD to be a legit business.
To Help You Make the Decision Let’s Put Some Rules for This:
If the exact match keyword in the domain name is a bargain for you which means it’s very valuable for your business in terms of the transactional intent it has and it has a high search volume that would be very hard for you to get without EMDs then go for it. Because even if it turned some potential customers off the closed leads and customers will be much higher.
If you are in an SEO niche with aggressive competition and a high entrance barrier threshold like real estate for example then a good EMD is leverage for you that could accelerate your results and save your budget even if the TLD is not .com.
One important point to remember is that the internet today is different than before. Today a lot of different TLDs are booming and a lot of authentic businesses are using new TLDs that we didn’t see before. think about .io, .ai, .bot, .club, and the list goes on.
So if you want a definitive answer here, it would be “Who Cares About TLDs!”
Do Exact Match Domains (EDMs) Still Work Today?
The question that you have in mind is do EMDs still work today in 2024?!
Interestingly enough, the answer is YES!
Gone are the days when SEO was about Keyword stuffing and repeating the keywords to you want to rank for in your content. Now Google algorithms are much smarter thanks to the AI & ML revolution. But the theory or the reason why EDMs still work today is totally different for EMDs than for stuffing keywords.
How do EMDs Work? (from the perspective of a search engine)
To explain the logic behind EMDs lets look put ourselves in the shoes of a search engine in both cases: when there is no exact match domain & when there is one.
If some user typed a keyword like “professional lawyer NY” what the search engine will understand using its state of the art AI algorithms is that “this user is looking for a professional lawyer that exist or serve NewYork city”. And then the search engine will use its AI complex algorithms again to serve the best results for that user.
Now lets look at the prospective of the search engine when there is an EMD called for example “professionallawyerny.com”.
If their is a website called “professionallawyerny.com” that has a reasonable traffic and performance to be known to Google, then a user typed a search query like “professional lawyer NY”, then the search engine will think “well, I am a bit confused now! Either this user wants a professional lawyer that is located in New York City OR he is looking for a brand called Professional Lawyer NY. So to get over this problem, the search engine will serve the best results as it did before, but this time it will include this possible domain among the results on the first page as well. And thats how EMDs work.
If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of how EMDs work you can refer to this article written by Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR.
Examples Of Ranking Exact Match Domains In Various Niches!
Below are some examples of exact-match domains holding first positions on Google SERPs on various industries and website types.
The first screenshot is for a UK-based e-commerce store that ranks for one of its most important keywords with a decent search volume using the power of exact match domains.
It is worth noting that the “Best Gym Equipment” store already generates not less than 60k visits/month so there is no bad effect on the brand value from the exact match domain.
The second example is for an affiliate website that is utilizing Exact Match Domains also and ranking in the 1st position for the keyword “Gaming Laptop Deals” which has a monthly search volume of 14,800!
The third example in the furniture niche the power of EMDs appears crystal clear.
The e-commerce store “Office Supply” is ranking 2 times in the same SERP. At position 1 just under the “Local Packs” and one more time 2 more positions down. But why 2 times in one SERP?!
Here comes the power of EMDs.
Also, it’s named “office supply”, the store is not only for supplies but sells all office equipment from furniture to devices and appliances and more. And that’s why it ranks 2 times. The first time it’s ranking with its “home page” thanks to the power of the Exact match domain and raking the second time with its “office supplies category”.
So, imagine if that store had a generic or a brandable domain name, it would have been ranking in position 4 (the position it holds with its “office supplies category”) but thanks to its EMD, now it’s ranking not only in position 1 but ranking 2 times in the same SERP!
Final Word
An EMD or an Exact Match Domain is an SEO Hack that would shortcut your SEO efforts and help you hit your business goals using organic traffic in a friction of time you would spend using a normal domain name.
Contact me now and let me help you get the right domain for your type of business and goals!
Does A Brand Name Matter? And How to Choose it? All You Need To Know
Your business is good as much as your brand name is. Think about all the famous businesses you deal with every day. Adidas, Nike, BMW, Google, IBM, Dell, etc.
All of these brands are from different industries, named in different ways and different forms, but what is common among all of them? They are easy to pronounce, unique, musical, and short.
Those are the criteria for picking a good brand name.
A question that may pop up in your mind right now is: Why should I care about the brand name anyway? I already have enough things to care about at that point in my business journey!
The Value Of A Brand Name
In fact, a company is as good as its brand name. As Jonas Sachs put it ”Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points”. But why?
Because your brand is more than just a name, it’s a combination of a lot of things called “Brand Equity” as we will see below.
What Is Brand Equity?
Brand equity according to David Aaker, is a set of assets associated with your brand that could contribute to the value delivered to your company and the value your company delivers to your customers. The components of brand equity are:
Brand Awareness
Brand Associations
Brand Perceived quality
Brand Loyalty
Other Proprietary Brand Assets
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness has many classifications and types but in the simplest form, it is the extent to which your customers remember your brand. And it’s considered an asset because your customers will only buy from you (or at least consider you for buying) when they remember your brand the moment when they are in the buying mode searching actively for a product/service to satisfy their needs.
And no doubt that your brand memorability and pronunciation are some factors that influence the level of awareness your brand has among your customers.
Brand Associations
Brand associations mean all the perceptions your customers have in their minds when they think about your brand. The information they know, the emotions they have towards the brand, the characteristics they think your brand has, the beliefs and values they know your brand stands for, and the qualities your brand would be famous for if it was a human.
Your brand meaning, sound, and the root your brand name is derived from are all among brand associations.
Brand Perceived Quality
Brand perceived quality refers to the quality of the company’s products and services in the eyes of the customers, not in the eyes of the company owners or employees. Do your customers treat the company products as Grade A or Grade-B? To what extent do they trust a new product release from your company before they try it themselves? To what extent does the quality from the point of view of the company match the quality from the point of view of the customers? Do your customers care about the features and benefits that you as a company think are important features to them? All these questions are determinators of the brand perceived quality.
Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is considered the most valuable asset among the brand equity assets and it is the hardest to achieve.
Loyal customers mean higher retention for the company users which is a multiplier for the profit of the company. Brand loyalty enables a company to cut its marketing costs without any effect on its sales or ROI. Loyalty is also considered a very impactful barrier to entry for new competitors who are thinking about joining the market.
Finally, achieving brand loyalty takes time and requires significant effort and requires unification and integration among all the other brand equity assets.
Other Proprietary Brand Assets
The proprietary assets include some components that don’t have a monetary value but still contribute to the trustworthiness of a brand. Things like patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc.
How to Choose A Brand Name
Choosing a brand name is not an easy decision because it sticks with your business as long as you are in business. Even a re-branding decision comes with its costs at any moment in time, and the later it happens, the worse.
If you are a well-established business with a certain brand name then you decide to re-brand, there is a high cost you have to pay and a value you have to sacrifice and the later you postpone that decision of re-branding the more expensive it gets, and the more value your business loss.
A re-branding process requires a huge investment in terms of financial cost in addition to the brand equity you have to let go with your old brand name along with the all costs you have spent on your marketing efforts before.
Do you know that the amount of organic traffic that Twitter (or X) receives today from the old brand name “Twitter” is more than 3 times the traffic it gets from the new name X?! (Notice that a lot of domain name investors consider X as the “best brand name in the world!” and maybe the most expensive too!)
Below is the search volume from the 2 keywords (Twitter vs X) according to Ahref.
And that’s why choosing a brand name should be set right from the very beginning to avoid any sacrificed costs later on. But how to choose a brand name?
10 Main Characteristics for an Ideal Brand Name
Below are 10 main characteristics and criteria to take into consideration when choosing a brand name for your business. Although your brand shouldn’t achieve a 100% score for all of them, considering them would help you come up with the perfect brand name that is made to live.
Catchy
A catchy brand name means it will stick to the minds of your customers, which means higher and better brand awareness. But how to make sure your brand name is catchy? The main point to remember is that some letters are more attractive and memorable than others and some combinations of letters or patterns of letters are more attractive and musical than others
And that’s why in the domaining industry some letters would increase the price and value of a brand name massively. Letters like P, C, V along with some other combinations of letters.
Musical
We as humans have 5 different senses. The more of these senses get involved in something, the more it stick with us.
And that’s why associating a brand name with a sound is one of the great determinators of the stickiness of a brand name. Think about the Phonology of your brand name. What patterns of sounds are involved in brand name and what emotions or meanings it evokes?
Memorable and Easy to Pronounce
The previous 2 factors contribute to the memorability of a brand name but still, they are not crucial, however, the Memorability and ease of prounounciation are deal breakers for a brand name.
Think about a good brand that you find a hard time reading its name or to memorize it, what level of effort so you put into this? And how many additional transactions would you have made with it if it was easy to remember? Think about “Ghirardelli “vs “Mars” which is more sticky with you?
Genuine
A genuine brand name means it’s original and authentic. Don’t try to make your brand name a copy of a competitive brand or very similar to it in terms of letters, pronunciation, or logo.
Not only does it decrease the brand value in the eyes of your customers but it also would bring you intellectual property issues. Copying and imitating is easy and popular, but creativity is hard and scarce. So don’t try to be but yourself, everyone else is taken!
Evergreen
A brand name is made to live, if you think otherwise then building a brand is not the ideal choice for you.
And that’s why having an evergreen brand name that will stay relevant for decades to come, is an important factor to consider when naming your brand. Don’t build your brand name around a current popular trend that will fade out sooner or later. Or around a current technology or invention that would be outdated a few years from now.
Expandable
As we said earlier, a brand is made to live. That’s why you have to think beyond your horizons when naming your brand.
Imagine you are a “car tires” company and you built your brand name and identity around “car tires” then 7 years later you achieved tremendous success in this vertical and decided to expand to other car accessories or to “motorcycle tiers”.
What an unenviable position is this!
You either will have to rebrand your business, start a new brand, or give up on your ambitions of expansion. That’s why it’s important to think about your current industry or vertical, the neighbor verticals in the industry, the neighbor industries, and the other possible markets for expansion. Remember that you are building a brand for the future so don’t restrict yourself to your present.
Short
Having a short brand name is not a deal breaker for a brand but still, short brands are memorable, easy to type, and easy to pronounce. On the other side, long brand names are hard to pronounce, hard to process for the human mind, and harder to remember. So even if you are considering a long brand name make sure it’s not too long.
Meaningful
Meaningful brand name doesn’t mean to convey the exact purpose of the brand, it means to be derived from the industry or represent a story of a brand or a vision the brand is willing to achieve or a quality the brand strongly believes in.
If your brand name for your “studio design” business can fit a “law firm” then maybe you need to think about it again.
Think about Facebook, and Reddit.. Although the names of these two brands don’t tell the exact purpose of the brand, each has a story behind it.
Facebook is derived from the face book directories, and Reddit is derived from “read it”. But still, this rule is not a deal breaker for a business, unless it’s your chosen brand name is not confusing to your customers it’s not problematic.
Impactful
One of the main criteria for choosing a brand name is to be impactful. An impactful brand name inspires you, moves you in some way, evokes some emotions in you, or triggers some action or belief within you. Mostly those are the brand names with verbs or that could be used as verbs. Think of Reddit, Idealab, and ThinkPad.
As you may think, this is not a critical factor for every brand but it would set your brand apart from the others in the market.
Final Word
Choosing a brand name is not an easy task and it shouldn’t be! Because you are building an asset for the future of your business. And as we have seen, there are many criteria involved in this process, some of them are crucial and some are nice to have.
If you are looking for a good brand name for your business or considering a rebrand, contact me today a let me do the heavy lifting for you and get you the ideal brand name that fits your needs. Contact Me Today!
How Can Expired Domains Shortcut Your SEO Journey?
What Are Expired Domains?
Expired domains are website domains that have not been renewed by their owners. Every domain needs to be registered and renewed periodically to remain active. If the owner fails to renew a domain by its expiration date, it becomes available for anyone else to register.
More specifically, the domain name lifecycle is as follows:
Someone registers a domain name and pays for it.
The domain expired after one year or two and requires renewal.
The domain becomes available for renewal by its owner for 40 days after the expiration date.
After 40 days without renewal, the domain enters the Redemption Grace Period where it becomes available again for 30 days before it is released back into the general pool of domains to be available for anyone to register.
If still no action taken on the domain it enters the Pending deletion period for 5 days
Then finally it becomes available for hand registration again.
What Are the Usecases of Expired Domains For SEO?
Expired domains are as old as the internet and they have been used heavely for different SEO purposes since then until Google decided to put an end to that age of shady and spammy SEO tactics that focused on manipulating Google Algorithms system. Below are different ways Expired Domains work for SEO:
Building An Authoritative Website Without Re-inventing the Wheels
One of the main use-cases for expired domains is to build a new business upon it.
Imagine you decided to start a business today and want to use SEO as one of your main marketing channels. As a new website, you have to put a lot of investment into SEO upfront and wait for enough period of time before you could expect to see any SEO results, and if you are in a competitive niche/ market then the time and investment would double or triple depending on your case.
But what if you could find a domain name that has been running for 2 or more years, has been doing SEO, has healthy backlinks, and has authority and trustworthiness from Google, then you use this domainn to build your website upon it? That’s how the expired domain magic works.
It’s a catalyst for your SEO results.
Does This Strategy Still Work Today?
Yes, it does with some considerations like:
The similarity and relevance between your niche and the niche of the old website that was on that expired domain.
The relevance and contextuality of the anchor texts on the linking pages to the expired domain pages.
The differences in the layout/design of your new website and the layout/design of the old website
All the above are important factors to consider before making up your mind.
Is This Strategy Effective for Seo?
Yes, it’s a very powerful strategy that could shortcut your SEO results and bring you fast results, especially in competitive niches (but only when done right).
Private Blog Networks (PBNs)
PBNs are one of the most famous use cases for expired domains for SEO. PBNs means to have a lot of websites owned and managed by the same person who links between all of those different domains creating a network of linking websites. From there, he can link any website he wants to rank and make use of the authority and link juice in all of these websites in his PBN.
PBN is considered a black hat tactic that has been used since the Golden age of SEO spamming, but it now evolved a lot to cope with the new evolutions of Google algorithms.
Do PBNs Still Work Today?
It depends, sometimes they work and sometimes not!
Although Google or the white hat SEO community would tell you otherwise, PBNs still work today BUT in some cases and some niches only. So it depends!
Are Pbns Effective for Seo?
Again it depends! When PBNs work they are very beneficial and would leverage your SEO efforts, but when they don’t work they would ruin your business and get your website penalized.
301 Redirects
301 redirects as the name suggests means to find an expired domain with a healthy backlink profile and authentic backlinks then redirect it to your current website to make use of the link juice (link equity) it has.
Do 301 Redirects Work?
Yes, they do!
Although Google advocates and speakers would say otherwise, 301 redirects for expired domains is still a proven and solid SEO strategy that works very effectively both in the long and short term.
Are 301 Domain Redirects Effective for SEO?
Yes, 301 domain redirects are very effective but with some considerations like the historical data of your website. If your website with no historical data, then maybe a 301 domain redirect is not the right thing for you at this point.
Where Can You Get an Expired Domain?
Expired domains are available at different expired domain names auctions, that’s where those domains are showing when in their various periods after getting expired -as we have discussed at the beginning of the articles.
There are plenty of domain auctions for getting expired domains like:
SpamZilla
ExpiredDomains (dot) net
Seo (dot) Domains
GoDaddy Auctions
DomCop (dot) com
To name a few.
Now, we have seen the expired domain types and their usage for SEO, still the devil’s in the details of implementation.
And here comes the question; How to evaluate an expired domain and make sure it’s safe and effective before using it?
Things to Check Before Buying an Expired Domain
Relevancy
How relevant is the expired domain niche to your niche? The closer the better.
An ideal expired domain would have the same purpose, the same market, and the same language as your domain.
Domain Traffic
Traffic is one of the easy and fast ways to differentiate an authentic website from a spammy one for a simple reason, if a website was getting good traffic from Google before it expired that means it was ranking and if it was ranking, it means it is a “Google-friendly” website -if that’s a term. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t dismiss an expired domain because it doesn’t have traffic, maybe it used to have traffic in the past or maybe it has pages with good backlinks that could be beneficial to you even if they are not getting traffic.
Think about .org backlinks which are considered among the strongest types of backlinks but still mostly are not targeted towards popular pages.
Backlinks Quality
In backlinks, the quality is much more important than the quantity. Actually, most of the heavy lifting in expired domain analysis is in checking the quality of the backlinks.
But what exactly to look for to determine the quality of an expired domain?
Do follow vs no follow: if a domain is getting 1000 backlinks but 95% of them are no-follow then you should look only at those 5% because that’s what matters for link juice.
Number of referring domains compared to backlinks: Generally speaking you shouldn’t expect those two numbers to be the same or even near each other. But the more unique referring domains the better.
Traffic amount the linking domain is getting: As we said before, traffic is one of the easy filters for detecting good backlinks.
Anchor texts optimization: are the anchor texts of the backlinks over-optimized? Or do they look natural?
Types of anchor texts: are the anchor texts of the backlinks contextual, naked backlinks, or backlinks from the sidebar or footer?
The purpose of a backlink: An authentic backlink is an “editorial” -as Google prefers to express it. This means you should look at the context of the backlink, does it look like an authentic backlink that was built because the linking site finds a value in that page? Or is it paid one? (Note: paid backlinks are not always bad, it just depends on the industry)
Notice that checking the quality of a backlink is not always a straightforward task, but a skill that you develop as you get your hands dirty analyzing websites over and over. However, the above factors are the fundamentals that would help you get started.
Backlinks Quantity
The number of backlinks that the expired domain has is another determinator of a good expired domain, although it’s not an absolute metric because the quality is more important. Still, the number of backlinks and the number of referring domains is an important factor to check.
Imagine you found an expired domain that is getting a backlink from 2 authoritative websites with do-follow links, would it be more valuable or another expired domain that is getting 8 backlinks? The more the better of course (given that the quality is good)
Possible Google Penalties
To be honest, this one is hard to detect if you are not an SEO!
Even, some professional SEOs with long years of experience in the industry have revealed wrong decisions they have made about some expired domains they thought were authentic, then after paying and building some projects on them, they found out they are penalized and thus all their money spent is lost.
Although there is no checklist, a tool, or a straightforward method to check for a potential Google penalty unless you are the owner of the domain, there are some strategies that could help you to get started and you can develop your “Penalities Detecting Muscles” from there.
Some questions to ask include:
What was the traffic trend in the last period? Is there any sudden drop? What are the reasons for the drop?
Is there a suspicious creation or deletion of pages in bulk on the site? What are those pages about?
Is there a negative correlation between traffic and backlinks? Which means one of them is going up where the other is going down?
Final Word
Expired domains have many uses for SEO, some of them are risky and some are not, and it all depends on the industry, the niche, and the status of the website that will benefit from the expired domain. Also vetting and analyzing an expired domain in a detailed way before buying it or using it for your business is a crucial step that makes all the difference in the success of expired domain strategy for SEO.
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I am Happy to Help!
If you want to pick any kind of domain or want to have a domain related consultation, fill the form or reach out to me directly and lets work together!
