So I thought it would be really useful if I explained in detail the history of search engine optimisation for SEO Company Melbourne. We went from ranking highly through an exact match domain, then falling from the top 3 for “SEO Melbourne” when Google changed their algorithm. And then after a lot of hard work we ranked 1st for SEO Melbourne again as of 6th of February 2015 as well as 2nd for “SEO” if searching in Melbourne after the Wikipedia entry.Â
Exact match domains
A little over a year ago a gentleman called me and offered me something that at the time was a little too good to be true. He said he had some domains in his possession that would be of great service to my business. He had SEO Melbourne.com, SEO Sydney.com, SEO Brisbane.com & SEO Perth.com. The first thing I asked him was: where he was calling from? he replied “Portugal”. Now this came as a surprise because he had a English accent. I immediately pictured something like this.
To say I that I wasn’t confident would be an understatement. However, the domains are highly valuable and I knew it. So I decided to at least investigate this man and his offer a little further. I asked him how he had come to have these domains in his possession? He replied that he had built a bot that first identifies high value domains and then purchases them as soon as they become available, faster than a human can. His bot does this round the clock and he sits in his house in Portugal in the sun selling them to business owners such as myself.
Now, whilst an interesting story and or life, I still had a considerable amount of doubt. So I asked further questions. If these are so valuable why did the owner give them up? He replied that many business’s go into receivership or change their priorities and simply (1) forget they have the domains and or (2) don’t plan on using them. He picks them up for peanuts and sells them to someone like myself that is willing to pay a premium for them. So at this point he had my full attention.
Slowly my inclination to hang up the phone wore off and I was more than willing to continue this interesting conversation. So I asked a further question, why did you call my business? He replied because he had seen our SEO TV episodes and liked them and thought I would put the domains to good use and that I have.
It was at this point that I decided to cut to the chase. I asked him how he would prove ownership and then obviously if I were to buy these domains how he would set about transferring them. He said that he could prove ownership through Who is and transfer ownership to me and back again to prove it. So I thought why not, give it a try. He delivered on everything he had claimed and I payed the premium.
The SEO Ranking Story:
Upon setting up SEO Melbourne that I designed primarily for SEO optimisation and conversion I instantaneously ranked in the top 3 consistently for SEO Melbourne and various SEO Melbourne Service based keywords and their derivatives. Firstly, I have to say that I certainly did not expect this. Even though I had uploaded a considerable amount of content, some 40 highly relevant videos on SEO & digital marketing. I also had the domain payments.seomelbourne.com, yet I still had my doubts about the power of the keyword (exact match keyword) within the URL as a means to rank the site.
Within a month from launching we started receiving our first requests for quotes. After a solid 2 months of ranking and receiving a great amount of traffic and SEO requests for quotes we lost our rankings. It was not all smooth sailing and it was evident that I would have to prove myself against my peers.
What happened?
Google updated their algorithm to give less credibility to websites with exact match domains in the URL i.e: you have the exact keyword as your domain e.g: shoesmelbourne.com and you target “shoes Melbourne” as your keyword. Many a business has made good money with this strategy and there was a point at which you were almost guaranteed top spot if you had an exact match domain. However, times changed and Google realised that a lot of spammy low quality sites where using this technique to create spam marketing funnels or blog farms. Alongside the famous Panda & Penguin updates there was a significant change a good 6 months later that affected exact match domain sites and SEO Melbourne was one of them.
Why were we punished if we were not a spammy site?
I believe as part of the update the algorithm looked at a number of external factors to come to a de ranking conclusion that was in my opinion affecting my site. 1. Age of site and 2. Credible follow links from respected websites. SEOmelbourne.com was both young and had very quality links from respected sites.
Straight away I worked with my clients to provide links on their site pointing towards SEO Melbourne and our clients were happy to do this due to the results we were achieving for them. This solved problem 2. Nothing much could be done about problem 1., so I set about working on what I knew Google loves. Good and share worthy content. We produced more SEO TV videos and introduced a blog. The blog featured as a dynamic form of content for the homepage. I also re designed the site to incorporate an extra dynamic feed for SEO TV videos. After some standard meta skeletal optimisation alongside some added content on various deeper pages I started to see some movement. Nothing major, but it was enough to encourage me to keep going and that I did.
Further tweaks and added content and I started to launch the rankings higher, we got as high as 1st for “SEO Melbourne” but would slip as the content grew less fresh. Over the course of 6 months, more and more clients started linking towards us, we continued to add content and voila we landed in the top 6. We stayed at between 5 – 8th for approximately another 3 months. Upon further optimisation tweaks including optimising all site assets, internal linking structure and optimising external assets such as SEO TV’s You Tube channel we hit the top 3. Since then, we have moved to number to the number 1 SEO ranking and have been rock solid in this position since.
Key Take Aways:
1. Your wrong assumptions can have the potential to shut very valuable doors if you don’t choose to take a second look.
2. Just cause someone is probably in their undies in Portugal sipping on  Pina colada’s and delivering a far flung story this does not mean you should hang up. Refer to point 1.
3. Do your due diligence before handing over any money to some dude in Portugal.
4. Do your research if you have been affected by a significant algorithm change, identify the most probable causes (do not jump to conclusions) and work to rectify the issues. Important: Whilst working on the issues do not ignore all other SEO ranking factors that need regular work.
5. It can be a long road back to the top, but wow is it worth it.
6. Just because I have the domain SEO Melbourne with an exact match keyword in the URL does not necessarily mean I will rank for it. It must be pointed out that there are other SEO agencies with exact match domains within their URL for high volume keywords and they don’t have a SEO ranking of #1.
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