I came across this question from an entrepreneur in a forum: Guys let's say....I sell some product (example-vegetable cutter) through my website which is xyz.com....now does it make sense to buy a domain name vegetablecutter.com(if available) and link it to my xyz.com website....does it help in seo? Does it help bring more traffic....plz advice. To paraphrase the question, the entrepreneur has a domain xyz.com in the niche of vegetable cutter. He now plans to buy a domain called vegetablecutter.com and then do a domain redirect to xyz.com. He wants to know, whether this backlinking strategy will give him any SEO boost? In short, the answer to this Question is - NO. This backlinking strategy will not give him any SEO benefit.
Understanding EMD/PMD in SEO
Exact Matching Domains (EMD) are domains which are exactly matching a keyword you are targeting. For example, if you are targeting the keyword “Cleaning Services Bangalore”, then an EMD will be cleaningservicesbangalore.in. A partial matching domain (PMD) is one which has few keywords in the domain name. For example, for the same keyword above, if your domain is housecleaningservices.in, then it qualifies as a partial matching domain (PMD).
EMD and Google Ranking
Prior to September 2012, website owners could rank websites literally within days by buying exact matching domains for target keywords, without very little backlinks. This was a loophole in Google’s algorithm. This resulted in lot of low quality websites ranking. Post an EMD update by Google, those days of merry making using EMDs are over. You cannot rank a website overnight by simply using a keyword stuffed domain name. However, research has shown that, if all else are equal, an EMD ranks better than another domain for a keyword. This means, if you are building a quality website, with lots of valuable content and backlinks, then an EMD is likely to perform better in search engines than another domain which is not an EMD. So the bottom line is, EMD or not, you will need to make quality websites.
Does Backlink from an EMD help?
Yes, if the EMD is a quality domain. If you have taken the pains to build a quality EMD with valuable contents and backlinks, then the domain has some value. If you now building backlinks from that domain to your money site, that will definitely help. Or if you are doing a 301 redirect of your EMD to your money site, then it will help as well. However, in the question above, EMD (vegetablecutter.com) backlinking will not help because:
- The EMD vegetablecutter.com is a fresh domain with no value and no backlinks. It has no authority.
- EMD has no content
Now if you redirect vegetablecutter.com to xyz.com, there is no value because vegetablecutter.com has no content, no history, no backlinks and no content. So there will be no SEO boost to xyz.com.
Will this result in Spam?
No. Since the entrepreneur has just bought a domain and made a 301 redirect, this will not result in spam.
Conclusion
EMD backlinking can help only if the EMD has some authority. A thin EMD, or a fresh EMD with no content is pretty much a useless site. Backlinking from such a domain will have no impact on SEO. What do you guys think?
