Feeling Held Back By Your Exact Match Domain?
Do you want to expand your product offering but feel held back by your exact match domain?
If you are just trying out something new, it doesn’t make sense to risk your current site and rankings. It would be better to experiment with the new products on a section of your site or to start a second site to see if you see success. It would be a shame to make a drastic change for an unproven business model. If you start a new site, you could show the site as a sister company/site on your current site to help with backlinks and exposure.
Exact Match Aren’t What They Used to Be
That said, there may be some anecdotal evidence that people click on your site more often because of the URL, but exact match domains don’t carry the weight they used to. Google has repeatedly said they don’t give a boost for exact match domains.
“There’s no magic EMD bonus.” — John Mueller from Google
The way an exact match works best is if it is also branded. I.e., if your company was called “Photography Gloves.”
More likely, your site is ranking because you have a product and content that solves something people are searching for. Many people say that SEO is dead, but really, it’s that info and affiliate sites are dead, not SEO for products/brands.
When to Migrate Your Domain
Once you’ve established the new products work, moving to a more universal domain name makes sense.
Done properly, changing your domain can be successful. It is essential to have a plan. An example of this is a migration project I worked on for Armstrong Flooring when they split from the main Armstong company. We migrated from part of armstrong.com to armstrongflooring.com. With my plan we managed to recover and then better traffic after six months. There were millions of site visits at stake.
Some Things to Think About When Migrating
- Audit what is working and make sure this transfers to the new site.
- Create a redirect plan: I.e., where does every page redirect to on the new site?
- photographygloves.com/red-gloves -> newsite.com/photographygloves/red-gloves
- Notify Google of the migration: In Google Search Console under “Settings->Change of address”
- Create a backlink update plan: make sure import sites with backlinks know you changed the domain.
- You will see a drop in traffic after the migration while things settle.
- Typically, we use Paid Search ads to drive traffic using the most important keywords.
- As organic traffic recovers, ease off the Paid Search ads.
