Description: Exact-Match Domains or EMDs were once a raging topic in SEO circles. They went out of fashion after a Google update started penalizing EMDs. We discuss how EMDs word in 2020.
How do Exact-Match Domains Work in 2020?
Exact-match domains were quite the rage not so long ago. Many SEOs got traffic out of thin air by simply buying domains that contained the name of a popular keyword. For example, if you’re going to start a car business online and you buy a domain called buycaronline.com, your domain is called an exact-match domain. This is because your domain name is a match with the keyword people search for on Google.
In the early days of SEO, Google used to take the domain name of a website seriously while ranking content on SERPs. Thus, a domain name with relevant keywords would get preference on high volume keywords even if it didn’t have the content needed to satisfy a searcher.
In Septemeber 2012, Google came out with an EMD update which penalized websites with EMD domains and made it difficult for SEOs to rank websites which contained keywords. Since then, the standard practice has been to avoid including direct keywords in the domain name.
However, there are still many EMD websites which exist. We discuss how having EMD domains affects traffic eighth year after Google’s update.
Do EMDs Still Help?
Yes and no.
If your website belongs to a competitive niche such as health, travel, insurance, and so on, having an EMD can be counterproductive. Search for keywords from any competitive niche and you would notice that none of the results on page one of Google has keywords in their domain. Thus, EMDs are not useful, and even dangerous, for a competitive niche.
At the same time, EMDs can be helpful if the niche of the website is narrow. This is because there are simply not enough websites to take advantage of low competition keywords. In such cases, Google doesn’t hand out penalties as long as the content on such domains is satisfying the needs of the audience.
Changing EMD for Better SEO Outcomes
Building search traffic with an EMD is very difficult and takes some time. Thus, changing the domain name is a good idea. Even if you have worked for years to bring your EMD in the good books of Google, changing domains wouldn’t harm your traffic and, in fact, help you grow faster without the burden of having an EMD.
In Conclusion
EMDs represent a period of SEO history in which technicalities were more important than actual content. While SEO has evolved over the years to become more content-centric, EMDs still exist and play a role in shaping the SEO strategy of some companies. In this article, we discussed the state of EMDs in 2020.
About the Author – Rajiv Chand is an SEO strategist with a long career in the field spanning more than twelve years He often writes guest posts for top institute blogs like DelhiCourses.in. The training institute is best known for its digital marketing course in Delhi and it also offers programs in business analytics and cybersecurity.