It is one of those misconception that Google gladly spread around. Do you believe it? Specially for non-US locations it seems that domains that match the keyword are still in great control. Why Google cannot eliminate the most simple signal, when they know that it is widely used tactic? What is the point of that?
Although having a target keyword in your domain is a big factor to rank higher than your competitors for this keyword, Google don't like to talk a lot about the exact match domains for one killer reason: if every marketer knows about this secret, no one will be able to register an exact match domain name in the future, because you will see a lot of low-level marketers will launches a lot of crappy websites and rank it high.
At this day in age proper SEO and development can get any domain ranked for almost any keyphrase..Although I still believe having the terms in your domain can make the task a little bit easier..Still, with so much competition these days no matter which route you go some SEO and quality backlink building will be required..
I read somewhere that the EMD update was not really targeted against exact match domains per se, but rather over-optimization of a site using keyword stuffing as measured against your domain name. So meaning google has now become smarter and is now checking your keyword density in relation to the keyword in your domain name. I believe EMD's are still very powerful for ranking. It's the keyword density and on-page seo that should be considered - lower keyword density and not stuffing keywords too much in your meta tags, titles, post tags, etc. It was recommended to use more synonyms and LSI words. I heard many EMD sites that got hit by the update were able to bounce back once these tips were implemented.
Having a EMD does not mean it's over for you. Yes, after the "updates" a lot of sites have been hit and penalized but that is because they have poor or duplicate content. Google is trying to make web surfing a better experience for all of us. So just remember, you CAN still register EMD's but make sure it's very important to have UNIQUE and QUALITY content and you'll do just fine!
I don't believe it. It is only true for THIN EMD sites. You know what these look like, right? EMD domain with maybe 20 to 30 articles. Thin content. No regular updates. Created solely to capture long tail traffic and feed it to adsense or other popular ad programs.
I agree with mraudi above, quality content is still king and I've noticed Google favoring authority sites with unique content more and more now.
More unique content on the site and more updates lead to better ranking. This is the reality. However, many people think that they should add about 4000 words, which is too much and in my opinion no client will stay on your site and read such huge amount of info. I've noticed that many of my competitors use hidden text by using button with a title - Read more or More Info, which is a good strategy.
That is correct, the sole reason why Google is favoring "authority" sites is because authority figure sites are "wise" in terms of their content and uniqueness. Let's put it this way to make it easier to comprehend, anyone can build a site targeting a certain keyword with 5-6 pages and 500 word articles. But often these "thin" EMD sites are left untouched after they get their rankings. Google sees this as a trend these days and will punish these sites. I'm not saying it's not a positive thing to have short 500 word articles. In fact, that is better than a 1000 word article because Google want QUALITY not QUANTITY. You just have to get to the point, keep it short and provide readers value when they visit your site.
I do not believe that Exact Match Domain will disappear from Search Engines...Google say that it is removing or giving penalty to those website, having low quality content and backlinks which are not useful for users and they are not staying on that websites. So we have to modify our website according to users and take new tactics so that we will avoid the EMD Penalty.
im sure there is still value to it. at the end the overall site has to be good . if the content doesnt match it wont rank. if it matches the domain should still give you an edge
It is not the end for EDM's both for US results and International results. All that was changed is the weighting that the algorithm placed on them. The reason it "seems" like they are useless is because Google also penalized so many EDM's that had single, copied pages of content. EDM's still work extremely well if you have unique content.
Yeah.. it seem EMD update not affect all exactly matched domain, it also looks the content, keywords density and some factors too.
Its true Still Google giving good preference on exact match domain because of keyword include in Domain . It was warning for crappy websites owner for Not use illegal techniques
Don't believe everything you hear...do some testing and investigating yourself. I checked a few EMDs I've had online and most were doing pretty well. Of course they had unique content and were quality sites. That being said, I've also found a few EMDs that had little to no content that were also ranking. It looks like they're still working on perfecting this filter/update.
It still depend on how your content related to your domain keywords. They sure will protect the privilege and priority of exact match keywords to those site with quality and related content. Because they notice lot of site just rank top cause of exact keywords but their site mostly is ads and not fresh content . They just try to be fair to everyone .
Ranking a domain/site is just as easy or hard for exact keyword domains or non keyword domains....... content content and content are the three major words here. Unique and good content with quality backlinks can rank any domain for certain keywords, exact or not. IMHO this is a good develpment.