Do exact match domains still matter?

Yes, recently there is a EMD update that might affect EMD domain if you over-optimize your site you will get penalized by EMD update. The best way is use non-EMD domain as for now.

When you ask if EMD's "still matter", are you asking if it's good or bad to have 'em? Matty C says it all depends on the content. I just read this yesterday -- granted, it cites SEOMoz, so some many not trust it:

Machiavellian SEO Doesn’t Work Anymore

Just as in traditional journalism, content marketers should never seek to betray or deceive readers, whether through SEO practices or their content. Anything that borders on sneaky or unethical eventually gets filtered out of search engine results, if history is any indication.
“Manipulative techniques like 301'ing old sites, hordes of anchor text rich links, exact match domains, etc. are gone,” Fishkin says. “SEO today is holistic. It demands that you build signals real brands have that, in years past, could be artificially overwhelmed by large quantities of links or other tactics.”

Well, it may be true regarding the idea that SEO has become a little more challenging in the post-Panda/Penguin era. But if you've been penalized by the EMD, there's very little evidence, imo, to support the idea that you can't 301 redirect old sites to new domains -- despite any admonitions to the contrary. If that was true, every domain that rebranded for complete honest intentions would be guilty of somehow deceiving their audience and that just isn't the case.



In short, nobody really knows 100% for sure about how the EMD will continue, but we can speculate based on evidence so far. If your site has good content and useful information, you're not going to be penalized by G for having an EMD.

And if you had an EMD that was hit, it's worth considering just 301'ing everything to your new domain. But if you haven't gotten hit, just make sure your site has some good content and you're doing your proper on-page and off-page SEO. Good content, SEO = no worries, imo.

I just did a search for "Detroit Car Repair", and once you get past all of G's sponsored links and authority sites, the first to an actual car repair shop was dearbornautotech.com/ .... Dearborn being a neighbor, bordering Detroit ... "providing quality car care in Detroit/Dearborn, MI since 1996". Some WordPress site, and the domain was just put up in 2010, so it's not ranking high because it's some old, "trusted" domain.

If you don’t own a keyword domain or an EMD, that’s still okay.

James,

I thin EMD’s can still be a good component in an overall strategy but as jpweber points out, it depends on the content. The sites who were penalized that were using EMD’s were not knocked out of the SERP’s because they were using EMD’s but because they were using other questionable tactics and happened to also be using EMD’s as well.

Here is an interesting post on SEOMoz about the topic,

Are Exact-Match Domains (EMDs) in Decline? | SEOmoz

Best,

Shawn

matter become complicated ,,

i so many sites Emd and still rank other down

for my experience i have two New Emd domains and all in page 1 ..

Obviously no one knows except Google but personally, despite any updates, SEO should not be the main source of traffic therefore you should have BRANDING as the #1 focus. So a brand name is what you want to have, no an EMD.

Do you Notice A Website With Exact match Domain that posses Quality (After EMD only healthy sites) in design , Content , popularity are Ranked higher in searches ...
May Future experiences Worst .. But right now from relevancy factors Exact match domains are placed good mark in search visibility ..

If you think your website can rank on the 1st page of Google only from your exact match domain.. It's not looking possible. It's still matter in SEO, But you must have to do quality work also, to get your website ranked on the 1st page of Google..

EMD is still ranking like it was before, the thing you have to avoid is over-optimization, spam works, spam content, spam links etc.

If you are doing quality work then you would get benefit of this, there is no doubt to it really.

I have one EMD site and it ranks Google page 1. It has quality content that has led to a lot of natural link growth too it. I'm a little lucky, because aside from setting the site up right, I have done very little external SEO for it.

I think EMD can be a wortwhile thing if you site is good quality otherwise and no spammy links, I really don't see how it can hurt if other things are taken care of

if they matter or not we all know that Google puts more emphasis on brands from
now on. why not build a brand instead of a boring keyword-domain? the ranking
difference won't be so evident...

It does still matter but not as much as it did a few years back

EMD is not critical after the recents updates.
To rank well, you not only need to take
Considerations on SEO, you need to
Take care of the traffic sources.

Googles is concerned on the bounces rate,
Unique visitors, frequency of traffic, etc..

Please take efforts to tackle these factors
Than EMD factor..

It is all about content when it comes to gain ranking. EMD's had a bit extra advantage but that advantage has been gone now. It does not mean that if you have a EMD, your will be penalized straight away.

OO yeah, exact match domain is the MOST important thing when you want to rank a website for a specific keyword, then title, description, H1 tags, etc.

I saw a video of Matt where he say Google is trying to give EMD an no EMD domains the same oportunity to have succes in the serp, but remember Google sero is based on the criteria of the people in charge so they can change their minds any day they want.

yes they are but you should have onpage SEO good then only it will works.
thanks!!

Yes, but you have to be very careful how you build backlinks to them.

EMDs still matter and it can still rank but not like before. Prior to the update, EMDs worked like magic – Google gave a much boost even without having to build many quality links. The EMD update targeted the sites with low quality content. If you have an EMD, you could leave the homepage post uncategorized (WP permalink) to avoid URL keyword stuffing. Whether your domain is an EMD or not, keep in mind that the most important factor is still the overall domain strength wherein those who rank on the top got higher quality links. Even if a site is an EMD, what leads to a better site is the quality of links.

Yes this is the main reason why branded sites pushed down on the rankings.

EMD's are still being shown in SEPRS..
i have seen many emd's having no backlinks but still at top 10..

EMDs still give you a benefit, the EMD update targeted low-quality EMDs, so if you have a high quality EMD you'll still get an advantage..

EMDs are still very valuable. The secret to benefiting from them is to avoid anchor text spam. Let's say you own the domain keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com. If you will build links using the anchor text "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3" repeatedly, you will most certainly get yourself banned.

Try to brand your EMD with a unique way and vary the link anchor texts as much as you can.

My view is that the in the new Google world there is no advantage in having an EMD, and Google will penalise if you over optimise the keyword. However it has to be an advantage that prospective customers know what your site is about.

EMDs still rank but like Mr Cutts said, "low quality" EMDs will be effected after the latest algo update.

If you can't get an EMD or don't want to, do you get SEO ranking benefits by using the keyword in your subfolder? EX: MainSite.com/keyword

I think this was the history in last update Google brought in their search engine algo..

I agree with Link Assistant!!! A brandable domain is always preferred. (now can I get dat buzzbundle with free algo updates!?!?!? ha ha )

I don't think EMDs hurt at all. They just don't help as much as they use too, especially for thin sites. If your site is really about the EMD keywords, that is, if your shoes.com site is all about shoes, why on earth would Google penalize you.

Don't get it twisted, you don't get "penalized" for having a EMD, you just might get outranked by someone who doesn't have the keyword in their domain name, moving you down a little bit. When you lose rank, it's not a penalization all the time, it could also mean your competitors are doing more then you are as far as SEO, or are considered "better quality" then your site now.

There are rumors that it does not work but It still works pretty well.

yes ,it does still matter but you need a quality content on yours website.

Definitely still matters! I have this site in one of my niches, which has less backlinks, lower PR score, newer domain name and not so keyword optimized site and still ranks better than mine... The only thing I noticed that it has better than mine is an EMD.

I agree with IM Affinity. I recently did a launch jacking campaign where I had (productname.com) vs (productnamereviewbonus.com). (productname.com) crushed it with no links at all and stayed within the first 2 pages consistently for all my money terms. The non-EMD was down around the hundreds in all of my results even, with quality links. After I switched some of my links from the non-EMD site to the EMD site, even better rankings ensued. EMD's are still good and definitely give you a big leg up.

EMDs still work great. I recently had one with no links easily outperform one with great high quality links. Once I switched over the links the EMD moved up even more. Get the dot com version of the EMD if available.

EMDs are indeed considered when it comes to ranking for a particular keyword.

Here's a conundrum for you SEO experts, any help and opinions would be much appreciated:

We are a distributor for a brand name of a cleaning product fairly well known in the states but not here in the UK. We are going to build an ecommerce store and want SEO done for the product. We have been told to do the SEO based on the main store and the brand name and alternatively we have been approached by another SEO company who suggests buying some EMD's (such as worktopcleaner.co.uk) which would be searched in Google for what our product does and then build some quality 1-2 page micro sites with unique and interesting articles and pictures, blogs (even videos) and then link these EMD's to the main ecommerce store so when the visitor clicked on a product on the microsite it takes them to the main ecommerce store. I think to just build the ecommerce store and do the SEO just on the store would take months and cost a lot of money as nobody would be really searching for the band name. Or perhaps have the ecommerce store provider of the store and the SEO on that and have this other company work on the EMD micro sites and link them?

I've had people recommend EMD and others coming up with a branding domain like Zappos(dot) com. I'm trying out both methods and will monitor the results.

Exact Match domains doesn't matter anymore now. It's all an age of branding. The more branding you can create for yourself, the better off will you be.

BTW, exact match domains doesn't hurt either if the site has really good content. Google has only put down sites with thin content that were of no use to the searchers.

An exact match domain name will still win against the exact same site with a random domain name. It's just that now, Google gives less of a boost to EMDs than it used to. End of the day, the domain has keywords in it, and that is proven to still be effective.

Yes they still work and usually quite well despite what Matt and the boys say.

However my guess would be this will change in the future... but it's just a guess

Yes, they do still are probably stronger than not emd. But overall, imo a good long term strategy is to build a business asset therefore you should really focus on building a brand. Think bigger than just a small-medium niche site.