Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to Beat Exact Match Domains
-
Hi all,
Has anyone got any particular methods for beating exact match domains in the SERP's?
I've got a stronger link profile than the 7 results ranking above me, but cant seem to get anywhere in the SERP.
I'm thinking:
-
links with keyword anchor text
-
aggressive on page optimisation
-
more links
Any ideas/experiences you've had would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
James
-
-
fair point
-
Cool, thanks for the detailed response. Makes a lot of sense. J
-
Lots of people ask... how do I beat exact match domains... how do I beat spammy links... how do I beat the link buyers.... how do I beat...
Just get in there and build great content on a great site and you will defeat all of these "competitors of the month".
-
We've had some pretty good success in beating exact match and partial match domains in the SERPs. I don't think I could attribute it back to any one thing that we did, but here is something that we did:
We aggressively pursued many exact-match or near-exact anchor text links from a number of websites directly to the page we wanted to rank. Your link profile may already be stronger than theirs, but it needs to be even stronger. This is pretty tough - When I look at our stats vs the exact match domains that are still page 1 but now lower on page 1, they have very few inbound links. Below is a screenshot from page 1 of Google for "marketing automation".
I know OSE hasn't crawled a lot of inbound links for this page or some of our competitors, but you can see the rough impact. We have a DA of 86. They have an 11. You might not think they would even be in the same ballpark as the other domains ranking for this term, but Google loves exact match domains, at least for now.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Exact Domain Match does it help or distract?
Does owning / buying an exact domain match help or not necessary? For example our main website ranks for nearly 14,800 Keywords but one KW we are trying to get in the top spot for we are currently at the bottom of page #1. We do see an exact domain match available so we purchased it but i don't know if it would actually help us or distract us. I was thinking we could create an article about the keyword on that exact domain then do some on page seo and back linking. But would that be more of a distraction VS. just focusing on getting more high quality back links to the main website we have ranked on Page 1 at the bottom? Any ideas or benefits to use an exact domain match to help boost also?
Link Building | | Cfarcher0 -
Backlinks from ads on parked domains? Is this possible?
Hello Moz Friends, So as I was researching some competitive backlinks and I noticed a lot of backlinks that a clients competitor has are on parked domains and they appear to be google ads from some point. You know the pages that this page no longer exists, or hey do you want to buy this domain? and it has like 6 google ads on it? Yep those pages. My clients industry is construction and their competitor has links from zombie websites, foreign, websites and more. But the links are no longer on the page. Like when it was crawled, their ad was showing. Does this make any sense and is it usually temporary? Thank you for your thoughts friends!
Link Building | | asbchris0 -
Does LinkedIn Pulse Backlinks add to domain authority?
I'm working on linkbuilding and content partnerships to drive referral traffic and boost our page ranking and domain authority. I wanted to check and see if Medium and LinkedIn Pule backlinking work just as well as other sites? Best, Jonathan
Link Building | | kjomalley0 -
Root-Domain vs Subdomain Linkbuilding
Hello Mozzers! Couple of days ago I received a request to start optimizing a wordpress website, the domain itself has been around for around 10-12 years so it's it can be considered as one that has real history behind it. The page has been moved from HTML/FLASH to wordpress about 3 - 4 years ago and hasn't been any SEO maintenance on it. The site used to rank for first position with several keywords, but now understandably, it has greatly decreased. My main question would be, that when I've checked the root domain's and the subdomain's metrics with MOZ Open Site Explorer, the sub domain (with "www.") showed a PA 40 and 90 external links while the root domain (without "www.") only has 27 PA and 6 External links. I know that the 301 or server redirects only transfers about 90% of the link juice to the targeted URL but the difference between the 2 results seem way too big for me. What do you think? Is this normal?
Link Building | | adamdankhazi
During future link building is it more beneficial to target the root domain so the page won't lose that "10%" by redirecting the new link from sub-domain to root domain?
Is it possible to get more juice transferred? Thank you very much,
Adam0 -
Total Exact Match Anchor Text Percentage or a Few High Quality Exact Match Backlinks, which is better?
Hello, I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am trying to rank a web page for a competitive regional search term. Upon inspecting all the competitors’ backlinks they appear to using an overly high exact match anchor text to rank on the first page for this keyword. Somewhere in the region of 15 – 55% exact match anchor text. So the question is what does big G provide a heavier weighting for, A.) The total percentage of exact match anchor text for all your backlinks, until it reaches the point of over optimization. A higher percentage up to about 60% will help you rank in the top 3. Meaning I should change a 1,000+ backlinks on multiple domains to the exact match anchor text. B.) Or just a few backlinks with the exact match anchor text but from really high quality domains with a ‘Majestic SEO’ Trust and Citation Flow above 40. Any help would be appreciated, exact match anchor text is meant not to work but it still does.
Link Building | | tomfifteen0 -
Your Experience with Exact Match Anchor Text Penalties
Hi Moz community! I was wondering if anyone has ever seen a site penalized or dampened because of too many exact match anchor links or know of any examples. I don't want to be overly concerned about it if it is a low risk. Thanks!
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Does linking to a subdomain give link juice to the main domain?
I have a few domains that I'm going to use for link building, will the link juice from the sub domains transfer to the main domain?
Link Building | | Vsky0
