The importance of exact keyword/domain name match?

So a year or two ago it was all the rage. Pick your keyword and build your domain around it - with the advent of content curating, I'd suggest the current thinking is that it has more to do with the quality of the content and how you add value on top of popular content - these elements are more likely to drive your rankings and traffic than embedding a key word in your domain name.

Another element to consider is the fact that if you pick a keyword as the domain name / website name, its potentially less brandable and less momorable. Example: Snapfish.

That word means nothing to do with the services delivered but is memorable.

Creating a site called "Slim Buns and abs . com" or whatever may get you some ranking juice but becomes so generic that customers who find you will surely soon forget you.

I'd opt for great content and kick ass memorable name instead...

MM

From my experience having the exact keyword in the domain name is wonderful. However that does not mean your website will not rank well in the top search engines.

If you are adamant about having the exact keyword match you could always create a sub domain with that keyword in it. The good thing about that is Search engines notice the key word in the domain and treat it as such, and creating a sub domain is free. example if you wanted to create a website with niche market as the keyword in the url you can create nicheworld dot com as your main website and then create nichemarket.nicheworld.(com).

Don't get caught up with the exact phrase as it has been proven to be damaging at times of unstable algorithm changes. As long as your keywords match the same topic of your URL you should be in the clear.

Seriously I'd hate seeing any more ridiculous hyphenated sites pop up.

Its more of a myth rather then reality with respect to Google Today.
You need not to have an EMD always to get your site ranked for any perticular keyword.

For Example
The Keyword you want to rank for is ABC and Your site is www(dot)ABC(dot)com
(Sorry I cant post URL)
This is an EMD but suppose the very person working on this domain has very little knowledge about SEO and he/she over optimizes or fails to optimize the page at all technically for that keywords then he/she would hardly get any ranking.
Whereas the same keywords can be ranked easily with calculated SEO without even the exact match domains.
I know opinions might vary but I have gone through several test and only after that I have concluded.
EMD used to be very famous a year and half ago now its almost dead.What matters more is the one-page seo factors,site's content,hosted ip,content and keywords relevancy and while building links keyword and source relevancy.If anyone can take care of these factors then the site would definitely rank weather it be an EMD or an non Exact match domain...

The exact match domain is not going to determine how well your site ranks - hard work will though. With a search volume of 2,400, I wouldn't bother my ass searching for an exact match anyway.