Url matching keywords

Hi I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but exact match domains have lost a LOT of their value recently.

This is due to a Google algorithm update released later last year that actively penalises EMDs. This means that it's become a lot harder to use these exact match domains (emds) for search engine traffic.

Your domain might still hold some value from a brand perspective. But if it's something like ipodvideoreviews.info forget about it because that sort of domain can't be turned into a brand.

Hope this helps

Personally I would build a homepage targeting that exact phrase using standard SEO techniques and build some links. As well have several other pages on the site related to that keyword. See if this pays off for you. Either monetize the site with adsense or yahoo/bing or even affiliate programs.

You can always sell the domain afterwards and it will have more value.

Or just keep it.

PaulMal,

I would suggest that if you cannot convincing build a quality website with the domain to do something else with it. Without knowing what the domain is I can’t tell you how much it would be worth to sell for you.

As for the EMD part, petemcal touches on an important point about Google’s EMD update however this update doesn’t really penalize sites for the sole reason that they are using an EMD. Rather, many sites that happened to be using EMD’s as part of their ranking strategy also happened to be “spammy” websites with shallow content. They may also have been using other black hat tactics that caused them to show up on the radar. An EMD can still provide some help in terms of ranking but you will not be able to build a margin site (in terms of content) with it.

So in a nutshell, if you can’t build something good with it, I would move on.

Here is a good post from SEOMoz on the EMD update,

Google's EMD Algo Update - Early Data | SEOmoz

Here is another good post on the topic,

Your Guide to Google

Hope that helps,

Shawn

Will see on building a site the normal way and see how things go. What i gather from doing some research is that it's not a great advantage having a EMD but it doesn't hurt either as long as you use white hat SEO. Will give an update to see how things go in the near future. Thanks Again