EMD <--- Exact (Keyword) Match Domain - Some Observations

[GeorgR.]

In the past i might have said that "keyword in the domain" doesn't play as big a role as assumed - but i might want to revise my opinion in that regard.

EMD stands for "Exact Match Domain" and is employed by some recent systems and methods although this knowledge is not really new.

ANYWAYS,

Here some observations, i am sure some other might have some tips also.

-> "Exact Match" does not always need to be an exact match as it seems.

You can easily check this for yourself, and it doesn't matter whether the keyword is some product name (like "cbpredators") or say a word like "animals".

Type animals in google and you will see that google will highlight in bold this in the domain names, but they are actually not *exact*. In fact it considers "animal" too since sites are coming up for "animals" which use that word in the singular form in the domain.

I also observed occasionally how SYNONYMS seem to have the same weight.

Type yeast infection cure in Google and you will see it comes up with sites where it actualy high-lights yeast + infection + treatment

According to those observations it is likely that an EMD (exact match domain) does actually NOT need to be an exact match, but there is some flexibility in your choice of domains.

If you want to have an "EMD" but the domains are taken you can try plural/singular and synonyms and you are likely to rank as well as with a real EMD.

[Tom Goodwin]

Hi George,

I think what you are pointing out is how google decides to highlight certain keywords in a domain name, description and title based upon the search term. IMHO, the more bolded terms you can get in your search result for your site the better for CTR purposes.

However, I don't think this addresses the actual ranking effect in Google of EMDs versus non-EMDs at all. It has been my experience (as well as many others), that in micro niches (particularly where competition is weak) EMDs are vastly superior to non-EMDs (even if we are only talking about the addition of an extra letter or number. Even if we are just talking about plural vs. singular, almost without exception, whenever I have an EMD rank on page 1 of Google, the plural or singular version of that keyword is not within the first several pages of Google.

tom

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

In the past i might have said that "keyword in the domain" doesn't play as big a role as assumed - but i might want to revise my opinion in that regard.

EMD stands for "Exact Match Domain" and is employed by some recent systems and methods although this knowledge is not really new.

ANYWAYS,

Here some observations, i am sure some other might have some tips also.

-> "Exact Match" does not always need to be an exact match as it seems.

You can easily check this for yourself, and it doesn't matter whether the keyword is some product name (like "cbpredators") or say a word like "animals".

Type animals in google and you will see that google will highlight in bold this in the domain names, but they are actually not *exact*. In fact it considers "animal" too since sites are coming up for "animals" which use that word in the singular form in the domain.

I also observed occasionally how SYNONYMS seem to have the same weight.

Type yeast infection cure in Google and you will see it comes up with sites where it actualy high-lights yeast + infection + treatment

According to those observations it is likely that an EMD (exact match domain) does actually NOT need to be an exact match, but there is some flexibility in your choice of domains.

If you want to have an "EMD" but the domains are taken you can try plural/singular and synonyms and you are likely to rank as well as with a real EMD.

[GeorgR.]

Here is another interesting one:

I have a site which targets a term, let's simply say its "CJ Dinosaurs" <--

if i type BROAD cj dinosaurs in google i am getting outranked by "the-cjdinosaur.com". If i type PHRASE "CJ Dinosaurs" (with the ") that competing page doesn't even show up at all.

So broad/phrase matching plays a role too since broad search CAN include synonyms.

[Jacob Martus]

I second that one Tom. I've seen it time and time again. In fact, I have two exact match domains with the plural of keyword which gets bout 1/3 of the traffic of the singular...and on the singular version I'm on page 3 after about 50 profile backlinks...but #2 or #3 for the plural.

On several sites it's like this.

[Clyde]

What Tom said.

[calfred]

Good observation.

Still, EMDs are what I always use and they rank well.

I have tried ranking domains like EMDreview.com, EMDhq.com and they really do take much more effort to rank for the EMD keyword. Never looked back since then.


Calfred

[Jeremy Banks]

Originally Posted by calfred

Good observation.

Still, EMDs are what I always use and they rank well.

I have tried ranking domains like EMDreview.com, EMDhq.com and they really do take much more effort to rank for the EMD keyword. Never looked back since then.


Calfred

definitely, you still can rank for them as I have a few high earning blogs that are not exact match domains, but just have the keywords in the URL. It took longer, but now they rank great and I make good money from them.

[StoneWilson]

I noticed this in last few months, too. More and more EMD websites appeared in first page, most are longtail keywords, if can find some high converating products, I will give EMD a try.