John:    Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of the Works Media Podcast, I’m your host John Romaine and joining me is…

Byron:    Byron Trzeciak.

John:    This is Episode Number 15 and in today’s Podcast we’re going to be talking about bridging domains or as they’re sometimes referred to, traffic domains.  How you going Byron?

Byron:    Yeah, good thanks John.  How are you going?

John:    I’m well thanks.

Byron:    I thought I’d offer an apology on this Podcast for anybody that’s out there that’s waiting anxiously for the Podcast Number 15 and wondering where it is and wondering why John’s being so slack I’m going to take the blame, I’m going to step into the firing line here and say that it’s been my fault that we’ve been a little bit delayed lately.

John:    Well, we have had a lot of interference lately.  I mean, we’ve had a few fail to launch moments, failure to launch due to leaf blowers, chainsaws, lawn mowers, screaming children and birds that, for whatever reason, seem to sit right outside of my window here and chirp the minute I press record.

Byron:    Some people might think that’s a good thing to have ten birds hovering outside their window but in your case John I think you’ve attracted the wrong type.

John:    So, yeah, but that’s all good.  What’s happening up at your end?

Byron:    It’s warming up my way, very warm.

John:    It’s always warm there.

Byron:    For any of those listeners out there too, you know, in order to do this Podcast I’ve got to turn off my air conditioning and turn off my fan.  So by the end of it I’m just sitting here dripping with sweat as John sits in some nice cool air and environmental bliss.

John:    It’s interesting because I had – environmental bliss!  I had a listener ask recently, I guess he was under the assumption that we were both sitting in the same room, thankfully for me, no, but, yeah, you’re actually, for anyone that’s listening, you’re up in Port Douglas which is, God knows, right at the tip of Northern Queensland.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    And did they actually even bother putting that on the map?

Byron:    Well, you know, I grew up in (Tezi) so I’m kind of used to being left off the map but we’re only on the map around the winter months down south and then everyone realizes that we are a place that they’d like to visit.

John:    Yeah, then it’s 48 degrees and everyone wants to get the hell out of there.

Byron:    I think I was reading today even in Sydney John, I think you’ve got the heat wave there at the moment?

John:    Yeah, it’s really hot here today.  It’s got to be at least, I don’t know what temp it is, but it’s quite warm.

Byron:    40’s?  I don’t know if it’s that high but…

John:    Not sure.

Byron:    Yeah, anyway, let’s stop this techno-babble or lack thereof and get into it.

All right so exact match bridging domains.  So do you want to talk about what exactly they are and why a business would want to use one?

John:    Yeah, let’s start with what first.  Exact match domains – look, this is something that has been grinding my gears for years now.  This was something that Google came down upon back in 2000 – I think it was 2012 and an exact match domain is essentially a domain that you register that consists of target keywords.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    And I probably should have prepared a list for example sake before we started this Podcast but let’s say you wanted to sell children’s bicycles and you were based in Sydney, you might do a bit of keyword research and then go and buy a whole bunch of exact match domains that focus in and around those terms so, you know, cheapchildrensbicycles.com.au, childrensbicyclesSydney.com.au, Sydneychildrensbicycles.com.au.  So essentially the intention here is that by registering these domains and, I guess this is the why, why would you do it through registering exact match domains you have – there’s a greater likelihood that your site will pop up on the first page of Google if not the first spot with very little to no SEO whatsoever because that’s the way in which exact match domains tend to behave within the search results.

So at the end of the day, I mean, this is a strategy that business owners have been using for quite some time and it’s very amongst sole operators or very small business owners.  They’ll go and register, I mean, I’ve seen some business owners with 70 domain names scattered all around the place and, ah, and they’ll go on to say, ah, you know, there were a few more that we wanted to get but our competitors have got those so, yeah, it’s pretty messy.

What makes it really unfortunate, I think, is that exact match domains still work so…

Byron:    Definitely, yeah.  Yeah, so I mean, I guess there’s two different scenarios there, there’s businesses that may buy just a single exact match domain and that’s something we’ve mentioned in the past I believe and then there’s the one’s that buy in bulk and they might have a branded domain but then also use exact match bridging domains as you would call them to sort of rank their Web site on many different keyword terms and either redirect or even worse have the exact same site on another domain but…

John:    Yeah, well, just thinking about loud traffic domains are essentially lead generators and this is essentially where you might have a carpet cleaning business based in Brisbane and they might have, you know, dozens of different domains registered and active on the Web that are all potentially capturing leads so you might type in, you know, cheap carpet cleaning Brisbane and cheapcarpetcleaningbrisbane.com.au pops up first in the search results.  You hit a page and there’s a big inquiry form there and it says contact us now for a quote.

So you fill it out and, you know, unbeknownst to the person sending the quote that inquiry is actually going through to a centralized email address and that email is potentially being bombarded with emails coming from 50 different sites.

So it’s a form of lead generation.  Bridging domains are a little bit different, not always, but bridging domains are a little bit different in that they’ll be either pointing to or redirecting to a main site which you just mentioned.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    So you’ve got all of these (thin) exact match domains pointing to the main site so you might just hit a site, you might, again, excuse me, type in a search term and find yourself on what’s called a placeholder and this is something that I wrote about in an article some time ago where there might just be a splash page and it’ll say, you know, to visit our main site click through to such and such carpet cleaning.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    And that’s essentially where they’ve got their branded domain so it might be like XYZedcarpetcleaning.com.au, it’s got nothing to do with exact match domains at all.  So they’ll hit that placeholder or the splash page and then they’ll click a link or be automatically redirected through to the main site.

So it’s pretty damn messy.

Byron:    Yeah, and I mean the scenario that we were looking at the other day with one Web site having their branded Web site and then also using an exact match domain which just pointed through to the same branded domain site or branded Web site and obviously Google comes along and they crawl one site and then they crawl the other site and can you talk about what happens in that case John where you’ve got one site operating off of multiple domain names?

John:    Well, that firstly is a really stupid thing to do.  That was – that was something that I haven’t seen for quite some time.  I kind of saw that and thought, God, are people really dumb enough to be still doing this?  I mean, that is a classic case of duplicate content where you’ve got two sites that are absolutely identical running under different domains.

Byron:    Yeah, exactly.

John:    Like you just said, Google’s going to crawl both sites and say, hey, wait a minute; this is an exact – Site A is an exact match copy of Site B, which one do we show in the search results and chances are once Google has made the decision as to which one it wants to show it will probably just completely de-index the other site so it completely defeats the purpose of doing that in the first place and there’s potential risk there that, in fact, most sites – both sites might go down because it’s – there’s intent to manipulate the search results.  It’s obvious.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    So that strategy is really, really stupid and its high risk.  You know, I couldn’t – again, I still shake my head when I saw that because they’ve obviously set up two domains.  I didn’t run the IP address of the domains, I mean, I’m not sure how they’ve got it set up but I’m sure if you looked in their Webmaster tools there’d be all sorts of nasty error messages and big red fonts going off so that’s really silly.  Don’t do that.

Byron:    No, exactly.  All right, so we talked a little bit about why it’s a bad thing but do you want to talk in depth on some of the negative aspects of that, I guess when you’re talking about branded versus exact match generic domain names, you know, what are kind of some of the advantages there for businesses in using one versus the other?

John:    Yeah, well one of the first things that comes to mind, I mean, there’s so many things that I could talk about.  Look, I always say to business owners, just all of this nonsense and noise and worrying about getting, buying up, all of these domains and paying renewals and worrying about – and I’ve got to develop content for this site and, ah, this sites gone down and I’ve got to fix that site and, ah, I’ve got the wrong phone number here and it’s just from a, you know – trying to manage that nonsense is just such a waste of time, effort and money.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    Again, the problem is that, it works and this is something that Google’s just not really good at.  I mean, even now if you type – if you go to Google.com.au and type in get more traffic, you’ll see the first listing there is an exact match domain and it’s obvious that they’ve just targeted that.  I mean, this is something that, you know, I really wish Google would get on top of.

You know, there was a whole talk about EMD, the EMD penalty back in, again, I can’t remember, I think it was early 2012 or late 2011.  And there’s talk about, oh, exact match domains don’t work anymore, that’s not true.  It was just it was just the fact that the majority of people that were using exact match domains had over-optimized link profiles full of keyword commercial terms as well as thin on-page content.  So it was a combination of things but the bottom line is this and this is what just does my head in is that this strategy still works.  A business owner can go and buy, you know, half a dozen different domains.  I mean, it’s really hard to argue the point with business owners when they say, well, look, I’m first page here for this term, I’m first page here for this term.

When they’re right, it does – it works.

Byron:    Yeah, exactly.

John:    But it’s a loop hole and with anything, you know, SEO, Google, updates, you know, (met cuts), these crazy videos they’re always shutting down loopholes so it’s a really thin SEO strategy.  I guess the other thing to think about is apart from costs, you know, the management, trying to keep on top of everything, I mean, typically with most business owners that are doing this, they’ll just slap a site together in one afternoon, throw it up and they don’t touch it so it just sits there but the other thing hat you’ve got to think about is link equity as well as your brand too.

I’ll cover link equity first.  Like, if you’ve got one site and people are constantly linking to one property or one Web site then over time you’re going to accumulate more links and therefore build out your link profile so you’re going to have more link equity and with that comes domain authority and that’s when your site starts to perform across a wide variety of terms as opposed to just, you know, this site is dedicated just to this one keyword.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    So and what was my other point?

Byron:    I was just going to say why you think there John, there’s obviously, when it comes to exact match domains, a difference between people who are using them or businesses using them as a bridging domain so, for example, it’s ByronsCrocStore.com and maybe it’s CrocsonlineAustralia that I’m using as another bridging domain and if, you know, if your brand is actually called getmoretraffic, for example, then it’s – you know, even when other sites are linking to that site they’re linking on a branded term so you get that mixture of I’m linking to you on a branded term but you’re also using the exact match as well whereas if your business is Works Media for example and you also go out and buy SydneySEOServices.com then there’s a difference there in terms of, well, you’re just getting slammed with keyword-based anchors versus your branded one as well.

So there’s kind of that different scenario.

John:    Yeah, and it becomes a total mess and that was my second point; brand, protecting your brand.  If someone hits a page and they see, like you just said, Sydney SEO services and they click through and they end up on Works Media it’s – there’s total confusion there.

Or if they go to Sydney SEO Services or whatever else, BrisbaneCarpetCleaning.com.au and then they call the number and someone answers and they say, Acme Carpet Cleaning this is Barry, like that causes total confusion.

Byron:    Yeah.

John:    And people are getting smarter when it comes to searching online as well like I’ve only got to copy, cut and paste a phone number to find out how many variations of different sort of sites are floating around but, you know, I see – and you would have seen this too, you’ll be driving down the highway and you’ll see a van go past, right, a florist are renowned for doing this, I see this all the time.  They’ll have on the side of the van, you know, Ms. Daisy’s Florist or whatever with the phone number and then you’ll look at the domain name and it’s CheapFlowersSydney.com.au.

Byron:    Yeah or FlowersDirect.com…  Yeah.

John:    Yeah.  So there’s a complete mismatch between the domain name and the brand.  And, you know, I’ve spoken about brands before, Google loves brands!  You’ve only got to start sort of reverse engineering link profiles to see what’s working at the moment and, you know, brand anchors and emphasis on brands is where you want to be not just chasing thin terms.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    It just doesn’t make any sense.

Byron:    I think back to your frustrations before about exact match domains working quite well.  I think that’s where they’re still working really well is when it’s – that’s their actual brand name they’ve just based it around, you know, the keywords that they’re targeting and, I mean, from a Google perspective it’s very hard to punish that especially if they’re a legitimate business if they’ve done legitimate link building, legitimate, you know, online activity with their Web site they’ve just chosen to go with, you know, I don’t know, SEOSydneyServices.com for example.  I mean, yeah, it’s hard for Google to outlaw that really.

John:    No, you’re right, it is very hard because who are they to say that, you know, that business isn’t getting more traffic.

Byron:    Yeah.

John:    They don’t know, you know, and that’s – I’m sure that must be driving their Web (spam) team insane because it’s just being abused.  They’re getting better at it.  I remember, and I think we spoke about this once before, you know, if you typed in Brisbane Carpet Cleaning you would get BrisbaneCarpetCleaning1.com.au, BrisbaneCarpetCleaningX.com.au and you’d get all this sort of nonsense going on and I’ve definitely seen less of that but unfortunately at the root level like for exact match domains they’re still performing and it’s such a shame because you’ve only got to look at the results, look at the pages ranked first for the term because they’re using an EMD and take a look at the quality of content and information that’s on there and then compare that with maybe a site that’s back on Page 2 or 3.

Byron:    I’d be interested in one of the things that we kind of learned in security was that you’ve got to stem the problem from today and this point onwards before you go back and fix all of the old issues so I’d be interested to see whether there’s a difference between exact match domains say if we bought one today and tried to get it onto the first page.  Obviously there’s ways and means of doing that but – versus some of the older ones that have been around for a much longer period of time maybe before Google started coming down so hard on exact match.

Just see if there’s a difference there whether Google’s trying to stem that problem from this point forward and kind of leaving those older ones just sit there because they don’t want to harm legitimate businesses that are out there as well.

John:    Yeah, again, it comes back to them being able to accurately and consistently identify how to handle exact match domains.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    You know, for business owners that are listening to this call, if you’re out there running around, you know, with 50 exact match domains and they’re all pointing to one main site you are just moments away from losing everything because they’ve only got to flick a switch or change the volume on a dial and that can bring everything crashing down and that’s really silly.

You know, again, it comes down to taking shortcuts, it usually always works out to be the longest way around just build out one site and build it out well.  Get involved in outreach, you know, hire a reputable SEO agency.  Start cranking out really helpful information and content that’s going to pre-sell your products and services.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    Yeah, the whole EMD thing, you know, I’ve – it’s funny, I had a discussion with a couple of guys at the pub, as you do, everyone’s an SEO expert after 9:00 PM and several beers but I had a chat with one of the guys just recently, ah, you know, I’ve just – all I’ve got to do is register all of these Sydney painters, painter in Sydney, housepainting.com.au, I just register I’ll be first page and everything, I’ll make a fortune.  I don’t need to spend any money with you.

Yeah, okay!

Byron:    Yeah, I know that is out there.  I mean, more recently I’ve seen issues with people that have built businesses around legitimate exact match domains, they haven’t done any type of spammy activity, they’ve just had a Web site that’s been built around content but this has been a Web site now that’s probably been going for six years or more maybe I’m not even sure on the exact number but what he’s seeing more recently is that anybody that mentions his location with similar services, this is in the wedding industry and he’s a photographer so he’s even finding that say or example it’s locationcatering.com, he’s getting people go through to them and saying, ah, you’re such and such there, I’d like him to take my photos and out of the kindness and good will of these people they’re still forwarding the leads through to him but he’s just noticing how they’re going every which way and it’s not just with people in the exact same industry it’s people in similar industries with similar location-based exact match domains, I guess.

John:    Yeah.  I mean…

Byron:    It’s a real problem.

John:    Yeah, you can imagine someone performing a search for let’s say pest removal Sydney and they’re sitting at home, they’ve got termites, right, or let’s call the termite guy so they look up pest removal Sydney and they’ve got, you know, they want to get a whole bunch of quotes so they call, you know, several companies or Google pest removal Sydney.  They go to the first list and they pick up the phone; hi, this is Darren from such and such pest removal services, how can I help?  And they say, yeah, we’re just after a quote please, ah, let’s look…  You know, X, Y, Zed dollars, thank you, see you later.  And then they go to the next listening and then they see, okay, well this sites different, yeah, let’s have a look and call, yeah, good day this is Darren from, you know, X, Y, Zed pest removal – it’s the same bloke!

Byron:    Yeah.

John:    Can you imagine how awkward and weird that would seem?

Byron:    Ah, yeah.

John:    I’m sure that must happen.  It’s never happened to me but – yeah, that would be really weird.

Byron:    I think the worst thing would be though if somebody’s coming to – you know, they want to deal with you or they want to deal with your company and they put in a domain name and it’s just so similar that they’ve gone through to your competitors and your business has gone through to them.  I mean, that for me is enough to say, no and that’s for anything that’s generic and stick with a brand, build around that brand and…

John:    Because, you know, a good example might be I might own SEOSydney.com and someone else might own SydneySEO.com.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    So, I mean, if you tell someone just in passing, oh, what as your site again?  Ah, SydneySEO.com, ah, cheers great, I’ll check that out when I get home.  They end up at your competitor’s site.  Use a brand, always use a brand.  I mean, you know, just take a look around at some of the world’s biggest Web sites, Google, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, you know, you don’t go – you don’t type in buycheapbooksonline.com to go to Amazon.

Byron:    No.

John:    So big brands already get it.

Byron:    Absolutely.

John:    And, you know, you can still rank well I Google for your target terms just through, you know, on page optimization and consistently published content.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    Based around those terms and that’s something that I published a comprehensive article about once before because it – you get a lot of that especially where there’s locations involved like you just said a minute ago where I want to rank for 60 different suburbs in Melbourne so I’m going to go and register every single suburb tied in with my keyword and I’m going to be first page in Google for all of them.  You don’t need to do that.

Byron:    No, and I think, you know, it can be really easy for a lot of local businesses.  I mean, we mentioned florists before, I work with a florist that deals a lot with wedding flowers, wedding flowers for many different locations in the local area, many different suburbs and, you know, all you’ve got to do is start building some content around the flowers that you’re making for the locations or for the particular bride and groom and, you know, mention some of those locations naturally and all of the sudden, you know, you start seeing the results.

John:    That’s what you’ve got to do is do a review.

Byron:    Yeah.

John:    Here’s a function that we catered for.  We display some photos it was held at, you know, such and such convention center at, you know, location here…  You know, shoot a video about it, get some photos, talk about it, publish some content.  One of the easiest ways for business owners that are working in services, in a service industry where they’re constantly going to locations is to just grab a note taker, take – I’m sure everyone’s got a smartphone, you can even just use your phone.  Take a whole bunch of photos, do like a voiceover thing of where you’re at, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, repurpose that into content that can be published within your blog.  Give people and idea of the services that you provide, where you provide those services and the sort of work that you do.  There’s no need to be running around registering 500 domains.

Byron:    Oh, absolutely.  I mean, I would definitely be doing that if I was in the tradey kind of environment, you know, if you’re a builder, somebody that’s doing garden maintenance or something.  Set the camera up and set it to take a photo every one or ever ten seconds or something and film your progress for the day, put it up and say this is the kind of thing we create in some form of time lapse video.

John:    It doesn’t even have to be that fancy.  Let’s talk about kitchen or what do you call those people?  Kitchen magicians.  Cabinet makers or whatever they’re called, they go and install kitchens in homes, you know, get a before, get a during and get an after series of photos.  Grab the owner, you now, owners are going to be absolutely doing back flips about how happy they are.  Ask someone to hold your iPhone and point it in – get involved, stand beside them.  Say, okay, Audrey how do you think – what do you feel about your new kitchen and ask her a few questions.  So, you know, your kitchen was a little bit tricky because we had to do this and that and get them involved, make it about two or three minutes long.  There’s – content like that is really powerful as opposed to just, ah, look, I want to rank in Google for, you know, kitchen installations Acacia Ridge just go and register that domain.  It’s really, really silly.

Byron:    Yeah, make it easy for yourself, try to make it enjoyable and simple, you know, we – John and I we get on the phone, 30 minutes, bang and there’s a piece of content; you put it on many different sites so it really is a good way to do it.  It’s something that I’ve learned just by going…  You’ve got to make it easy, make sure it fits in with all the other stuff you’ve got to do with running your business but, you know, forget managing ten different domains just go easy content that you can push out that’s going to have some value and it’ll be a lot better long term.

John:    Yeah, drive all of your efforts towards one property not 500 because that’s just, oh God, that’s a business owners worst nightmare.

Byron:    Yeah.

John:    And you know when I get on board to help a business owner and they say, well, we’ve got 70 domains and we’re going to be buying more, can you help us optimize all of – what?

Byron:    All right then John.

John:    Let’s wrap it up.

Byron:    Yeah, let’s wrap it up.  Thanks again for your time.

John:    30 minutes…  Yeah, no worries.

Byron:    And we’ll be back next week for Podcast 16.

John:    16!  Just a reminder to the listeners if you’ve got any questions send them in I’d like to do a listeners FAQ episode, we’ll just answer your questions, we’ll try and take on as many as possible, we’ll bang them out.

Byron:    Absolutely and you’re now available on iTunes as well John so anybody that’s got an iPhone or whatever can subscribe and just get it downloaded automatically, make it easy.

John:    Yeah, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, probably even end up over at YouTube as well, we’ll repurpose the recordings and publish them out on YouTube, it’s all about leveraging your content is exactly what we were just talking about.

Byron:    Yep.

John:    All right, let’s get out of here.

Byron:    Thanks John!

John:    Thanks Byron.

Byron:    Speak to you again in the next Podcast.

John:    See you dude, bye.

Byron:    See you later.

The post Ep15 – Should Small Business Owners Use Exact Match Domains to Generate Leads? appeared first on Works Media SEO.