For my personal experience, it still works and works great.

I agree with Misshang

This year I had a client in the Corporate Finance sector who started a new site.
Anything financial tends to be mega competitive.

I found a keyword rich domain name which to be honest I could not believe was still available.
Any way we purchased it and used it for the site. Within 3 weeks the site ranked page 1 position 1 for the main keyword in the domain name and also ranked for many similiiar variations.

As a result I have one very happy client

Bernard

Yes, it still works but for competitive keywords, other factors (domain age, backlink profile) outweigh EMD.

Id say it still works - but at this point more likely bc relevant domain names are aging. If youre registering a new domain, i wouldnt worry about matching keywords

Yeah, 'keyword in domain name' is still a ranking factor, but it doesn't play a huge role in the algorithm anymore. I've also had higher success rates in ranking domains when the keyword is present in the domain just as others have.

[DELETED]

It is an added advantage to rank site in SERP's. Yes, keyword in domain matters but not much, there are other few important ranking factors which need to concentrate than keyword in domain

Good domain name is always an added advantage but I don't think it really has effect over SEO or the search engine rankings ! And yes stop thinking much about this one ..

Good domain names are valuable internet property, try to grab them before someone else does.

Instead of getting SEO benefits, you also get users' benefit....

Because

ProductReviews.com is always better than
ProductReviews2525.com

Users will like to check more with ProductReviews.com

Of course it still works, but it's not the only thing that counts. But since the topic is domain names, keywords are a must if you want to rank well and also, using something catchy is really important so that the domain name will be easy to remember for everyone who stumbles upon it.

Having an 'exact match domain' still gives you a boost in rankings, however not like it use to.

The biggest issue with these domains is they will count towards an over-optimization penalty.

Does That Mean If You Use An Exact Match Domain You Will Automatically Get This Penalty Applied?

Simple answer no, but if you then use exact match titles and have a high keyword density in your articles then most definitely yes.

Hope that helped.

Regards

ProveResults

From my personal experience, EMDs still work great, if they also suggest a brand name or function as a brand name. Google has been strenghening brand names for years. So what I do and recommens is:

- Use the keyword in the domain if possible (buybestlaptop.com)
- try to make it look like a brand (buybestlaptop-inc.com)
- keep the domain short (buylaptop-inc.com)
- do not go for longtail domains like "buybestlaptopforunder100dollar.com"

The examples might not be that good, but i think you know where i am going :-)

cheers michael