INSIGHTS•4 MIN READ
Are We Seeing the End of Exact Match Domain Names (EMDs)?
josephthl
Published on May 18, 2012
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
For years there was a consensus that Exact-Match Domains were a great way to get a huge boost for the keywords you were looking to target. For instance, if you were looking to rank for the keyword "how to build muscle fast" having the domain name www.howtobuildmusclefast.com would be ideal.
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?
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?
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