Are We Seeing the End of Exact Match Domain Names (EMDs)?
By merely having the exact keyword in your domain name, Google would assume that your website was relevant for the keyword and rank it highly with minimal effort on your part.
And for years this worked.
Affiliate marketers would build "micro-niche" sites targeting one product, throw up a few backlinks (or several), and get to see ranking fairly easily. I did this a number of times myself and was a big advocate of "micro-niche" sites originally.
This strategy has come up in WA a number of times, with even a few WAbinars being focused around the construction of a "micro-niche" or one-product site.
However, from my own experiences and through a bit of research, this strategy seems no longer effective. I began noticing this especially around March, where my micro-niche sites just weren't able to rank very well. And recently, I'm looking through the SERPS and am seeing less of these micro-niche sites coming up.
And if they are up in the first page, they will be there for only a week or two then be gone for good (it seems).
However, in all honesty, I'm not surprised that Google would be making it harder for these sites to rank. I mean, whenever I see one with an EMD, I automatically assume its an affiliate site and that it is going to be either biased or low quality (and 75% of the time it is both). These types of sites seem spammy to me, so it ultimately doesn't surprise me that Google would eventually clamp down on them.
Should You Still Build Sites With EMDs?
In my opinion, it no longer seems worth it to build these types of sites unless you plan on getting most of your traffic from something other than Google directly (e.g. pinterest, or streetarticles).
They don't rank as well anymore and can be perceived as spammy by both Google and users. Even if they do rank well for a little while, they will eventually fall from the SERPS.
I find myself moving far more towards building authority sites that provide expert information and promote more than one product in a niche. Although they may take a while to rank, once they do they will usually maintain their rankings as long as you add fresh content regularly, don't buy links, and don't over-optimize. Plus the great thing about an authority site is that every new article your publish is much easier to rank right away due to the established authority of your domain.
What Domains To Go For
The domains that I'm going for these days often only have part of a keyword in them. If I have a site based around coffee maker reviews, I might call it thecoffeefreak.com
This does not seem over-optimized to Google, has the word "coffee" in it (thus indicating the topic of the site), and allows me enough room to expand. For instance, if I wanted to add coffee grinder reviews or barista tips to my site, I could. I would not have this same flexibility if my site was: bestcoffeemakersunder50dollars.com or coffeemakerreviews.com
Anyways, I'll think I'll wrap up this blog post here, seeing as its already gone on far longer than I intended!
Obviously, this is just my opinion based on my own experience with Google, so I understand if some of you out there might disagree. But I think its important to have a discussion about this issue because of how long EMDs were heralded as a ideal in the SEO community.
Does anyone else have thoughts on EMDs? Do you still seem them as viable today?
Recent Comments
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Matt Cutts actually came out and said that Google is going to be giving a lot less juice to EMDs.
interesting read! i've never had to urge to even click on a EMD when looking for something, and more with something in the likes of "thecoffeefreak" when searching for something.. A cool sitename often, not always, relates to good content inside..
But still, when going purely for a very specific niche, i think there's still a lot of people who don't go looking so far. Let's say an average internet user who isn't used to using google etc that much would be like "oh ok, this says the exact thing i'm looking for in the url so that's gotta be 100% related to what i'm looking for"..
it would be interesting to see some real statistics on this matter, no use in trying to look for those very specific domains when the content itself is the determining factor to the site's success.
I agree that the average internet user doesn't pick up on EMDs. However, I do think that an increasing number of them DO pick up on them. Once again the real determiner is content. If you're content is high enough quality than you will keep them on the page.
I never had a micro-niche site but since they seem very popular within the IM community, I was thinking to make a try with my first one of this kind, and therefore this discussion is of great interest for me.
However I can only add my opinion as a Google user, and as a user I have to admit I am often rather annoyed finding lots of EMDs in search results. The fact is that I am compelled to waste time in looking into them to check for quality content that should be relevant with my search (which I often don't find). Also, EMDs leave me always with the feeling they are only meant to market something hidden in the middle of a bunch of some average and obvious informations.
So, as a matter of principle, I tend to not trust them that much.
Microniche sites are a great way to start because they don't require so much work and you're minimizing your risk quite substantially - if it doesn't work, you can always start another one.
However, if you're going for this approach, I think it is super important to have the best content possible and provide something more than just a rehash of a product description or sales pitch. If you can, buy the product and do a personal review of it. Put up a youtube video and write a streetarticle and squidoo lens linking to your page. Not only will this diversify your traffic sources, it will provide for a high quality user experience.
I also read this somewhere and I guess I agree with you. When I search for reviews online, most of those sites that are appearing in the first page are the authority sites such as cnet, toptenreviews, amazon, etc. I also bought lots of domain names that are rich keywords. But my partner and I planned to build a branded site this june and make it an authority site. It will be a review of many kinds of products. I know it will take longer for it to rank but I agree that it will work for long term use.
The key to an authority site is to have it based around a particular topic or niche. Not only will your site seem like more of an authority in the particular niche, but people will be more inclined to interact with it and like it on facebook/twitter/pinterest/etc.
But yes, an authority is a great long-term asset, and if at the end of the day you want to sell it, it will be worth way more than a single micro-niche site.
I think it should be content based. You could have an EMD and the content(or most) of it not even related.
This is an interesting post. I honestly see them as viable, to a certain extent. When I start out I think of the user first so I'm not going to get a domain such as howtobuildmyownblogwithwordpress.com or something crazy like that but if something comes up like howtoblog.com is available I'm definitely going to take it (I understand this is not very targeted but just an example). Since, I'm putting quality content on the site anyway I've found I'm able to achieve the rankings I want just as I always have. Of course I attribute this to the content but you have to assume the domain does help a bit.
Still, I agree that building authority sites are the way to go. It's what I've always strived to do rather than target specific products. I've done a few but really it takes too much effort and time and you're at the mercy of that product, if they stop offering or something to that nature you now have a hole in your business.
True, you can always change authority sites that target 1 specific niche - unless you're like Doctor Oz and have a website like http://www.doctoroz.com/. Then on top of that, you have to buy each .com domain for doing this.... both a waste and an outdated strategy if you ask me.
"I've done a few but really it takes too much effort and time and you're at the mercy of that product, if they stop offering or something to that nature you now have a hole in your business."
I am in the beginning stages of my campaign and was looking to set up a website dedicated to a certain product, and use the keyword phrase as the domain name. But after reading this blog post and your comment, I am hesitant to continue on this path, since, like you said, I am at the mercy of that product.
What would you recommend I do? Should I continue and dedicate my website to one product? Or try to research more on building a website that can provide similar products in a given niche - like an authourity site (not exactly sure if I am using that term correctly?!)
Also, does it really matter what the domain name is, as long as the website itself provides quality content?
Thanks in advance for any feedback!
Sundeep
If your site didn't have the keyword you were going after, the strategy we're talking about right now wouldn't be considered anyway since that's pretty much what we're discussing about. ;) As for creating an authority site, just make your keyword relevant to what you're talking about, or at least your brand name (like Ivetriedthat.com and whatever else).
Its an interesting topic.... I asked several friends (yes, a small sample size, I know :)) who have no idea about IM, EMD's etc and they said they thought that if the sites name corresponded with the term they were searching for, surely it would be high in the listings.....
what i wonder is : will google "give" their users/searchers what they expect to see?? (assuming the content matches the search query) Isn't google in the business (very successfully) of supplying superior search results?
My question to you would be this : if the site is well constructed, contains good content and offers valuable information to the user, why would google not want to rank it??....or is google simply going to banish it because it is an EMD...to me that makes no sense :)
Or would they banish it if all it was was a straight out advertisement with affiliate links etc??....to me that would make more sense.
My right here, right now experience is : I have an EMD that grew thru the ranks to number 2 on page 1 google (over a period of 8 weeks.....it sat there for 6- 8 weeks and has just moved to number 1 spot in the last 2 weeks...it has taken the number 1 spot from the "creator" of the item in question, who is regarded as the "queen" of the niche!
I guess time will tell.
Any one else care to comment?
It's probable that he's seeing these types of sites vanish due to there lack of quality content and so forth. These sites were probably made with the mindset of just targeting these keywords within there primary domain, and just shooting up the rankings. I really don't think that your domain name matters much though for real as long as it represents what you're site is about anyway. It's only 1 keyword relevant to what you're talking about....
There are tons of keywords out there you can target, so to me this just goes to show somebody basing everything they're doing around Google, as opposed to all the other awesome mediums found on the worldwide web today. People often limit themselves to there own boundaries they've created within Google, either with the intention of trying to take advantage of the system with the added possibility of not having any effect outside of Google to the full potential it really deserves.
Congratulations on getting your site to the number one spot! And yes I agree that many of these EMD sites that are disappearing are poor quality/overly promotional. With Google there is obviously no exact science and of course there are exceptions.
I think one of the problems inherent to an EMD site is that site owners might tend to overoptimize it. It is very easy just to target the one KW the domain is based on and then get an over-optimization penalty. So perhaps if one avoids these pitfalls it is possible to keep an EMD ranking well.
I will say that I have seen EMDs disappear even if they do everything properly, so people's results will be different, and I suspect this might be related to the industry their site is in. Certain industries seem to be more aggressively "policed" than others.
@ slayton1s I totally agree that we shouldn't base our entire business around Google. Even recently I have been working at this, and with considerable success. For one of my sites (an old micro-niche site), virtually all my traffic is generated through Streetarticles (indirectly through Google I suppose), and I'm making sales on that site nearly everyday. So yes, I would highly recommend looking into other ways of generating traffic.
I haven't been doing this for 3 years & started out with old strategies like this, but I more or less do what you were talking about in the 2nd part of your blog. I target specific niches, but put products relevant to this specific niche (instead of just 1). I'm glad Google's starting to crack down on spammy stuff like this. It seems I started doing Internet Marketing at a pretty good time (February 2011).
Yes, one of the benefits with starting late is that you don't remain stuck on ways to build websites that don't work anymore.
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I have an old site, on Blogger actually that is page one 2nd spot on Bing and Yahoo. On Google it is on page 2 position 4. It is an exact match domain. At one time Bing and Yahoo had it number one. It took a good while for it to show up on Google but at one time it was page one position 4. It is a simple blog with posts all on a similar topic that went along with the exact match domain name. The site does not convert and has been left alone for quite a while. It amazes me that Bing and Yahoo still find it relevant.
I have another site that has first position ranking for keyword in Google. Yahoo and Bing have it way back. The Page that is getting over a hundred hits a day is not exact match for the domain but the keyword is in the title of the page.
Use the keyword in the title of your post or page. If you can use part of your keyword in domain name...go for it as long as it makes sense and does not sound spammy. The content will either convert or it won't. That is where your focus should be. Make sure your content is going to help people solve a problem or be helpful in some way.