EMD well sort of?

I don't see why it wouldn't work. Especially if you can't get hold of the owner and want to try it.

Solid SEO and knowing what your doing will allow you to still rank.

I was thinking that it probably would but didn't know how much the state abbreviation would affect anything. One site I built is ranking decently for a decent volume local search term.

I also purchased the EMD domain and built a site there of course linking back to my primary site and it does better in yahoo and bing. It ranked on the bottom of google page 1 with no SEO other than on page. No Links Nothing.

I would like to do the same think with this new site but do a bit of offpage seo to get first 3.

EDM has no ranking value anymore, it's no different from choosing a brand name that has nothing to do with your keyword completely..

What works now is your off site SEO, if it sucks then you are doom..

EMD still have importance in seo for keyword backlinks, brand recognition, trust, etc. - but overall branding and shortness of the domain are much more important. I wouldn't necessarily go for keywordcitystate.com unless it sounds and looks great. For example - lawfirmsbostonma.com looks and sounds horrible. Options that look and sound better are - mybostonlawfirms.com - topbostonlawfirms.com - I find most of the time adding a state to domains makes it either too long or hard to read. Better to stick with other short descriptors to get your brand/domain.

EMD.com/org/net works for sure (much easier to hit page# 1). But it has to be exactkeyword.com/org/net

When I say it works, I mean with least amount of SEO effort you would be able to feature in Page 1# for keyword. Again this "least" varies with niche and competition but is always much much lesser than your competitors.

On page SEO (with good content) is definitely required but doing it wrong could get your site penalized.Same goes for back links.

keywordcity.com -

If keyword city is also a keyword receiving a good amount of exact searches , then that's awesome since it's an EMD for keyword city.

As you said keywordcity also receives decent amount exact match searches, with the domain then with bare minimum SEO you could get customers at your site. If you can get a good deal for keyword.com/org/net from it's owner, buying that could help you save some of your SEO costs.

keyword.gTld (e.g. co.uk) is what I would go if I want to rank better locally, and if it's available at a decent price that is much less than keyword.com.

keywordcitystate.com - Wont have same effect as EMD for keyword "keyword city" but much better than websites not having keywordcity in their domain/url. But it takes considerable SEO efforts (though little lesser than your competitors as you already have an advantage).

However, the number one negative of Exact Match Domains is one that gets worse by the day; there are only a limited number of them. Over time, not only have they gotten more expensive (if you want a quality one of course), but the effectiveness of them are slowly wearing off as other forms of SEO join the mix