Exact Match Domains (EMDs) - are they still a good idea?

[crabfoot]

Following on from Kay's EMD confusion, I'm unsure of the advantage that an exact match domain gives in the current interweb marketplace.

As I understand things, the panda has eaten the advantage that Gargyl used to give to EMDs, although there may still be something to gain from Yahoo/Bing.

So, if the exact match advantage has been heavily eroded, why are people still seeking domains of this kind? Is there still an advantage in an exact match domain that I am missing? If so, what is it?

[benitez17]

They are definitely more memorable and might be seen as more trustworthy by humans.

If I am looking for black socks, blacksocks.com seems like just the site to visit, whether Google thinks so or not.

[Fish]

Exact match URLs have also shown increased click throughs on ads. I believe that it increases your chance of a click through on organic listings as well. Then there's the whole issue of a keyword as a brand, self-explanatory and easy to remember.

[Clinton]

If the Gorg are influenced by other metrics from GA and elsewhere, the fact that EMDs are more likely to get type-ins, higher Adwords CTRs, even easier IBLs may still give a SERPs advantage even if the EMD dial in the algo is turned down.

[crabfoot]

I can go along with all the above suggestions, but I still don't understand why the prices of EMDs are not dropping ...

[benitez17]

I can go along with all the above suggestions, but I still don't understand why the prices of EMDs are not dropping ...

Because theoretical Google rankings aren't the only reason to own a domain, or even a good reason?

[KenW3]

As I understand things, the panda has eaten the advantage that Gargyl used to give to EMDs, although there may still be something to gain from Yahoo/Bing.

So, if the exact match advantage has been heavily eroded, why are people still seeking domains of this kind? Is there still an advantage in an exact match domain that I am missing? If so, what is it?

@crabfoot, from my vantage point and current research, EMDs still have an advantage with G. Granted, Yahoo/Bing rank them higher, but they are a benefit to G. Using Market Samurai to gauge offsite parameters, today an EMD will rank higher than the site with everything the same but the SLD EMD.

I am still buying them. One I bought last week is an EMD with 12k exact, 22k phrase, 5m broad on GAKT. I have EMDs on page 1, number 1 of G with zero backlinks right now. Granted, I try for 26 on-site parameters, and SLD exact is just one, but they are still working for me.

If I am looking for black socks, blacksocks.com seems like just the site to visit, whether Google thinks so or not.

This is definitely something that increases click-through rate, especially if the result is lower in the SERPS.

I can go along with all the above suggestions, but I still don't understand why the prices of EMDs are not dropping ...

This is due to scarcity. Whether people know how to use them properly or not, they still want them. There are several large domain name warehousing corporations. After someone drop catches for a while, you quickly learn who is likely to beat you to the name. Most good names never make it to the drop. There are also quite the multitude of domainers / smaller players convinced they can get rich flipping domain names, and they also compete for names.

[jimmifli]

I'm still able to get them to rank pretty easily.

I've posted this a bunch of times but it's worth considering again.

Google views navigational search as the most important type of search. If a searcher is looking for a specific business, Google wants them to ba able to find it 100% of the time. When a searcher types in "NY Web Designer" they might be searching for a NY Web Designer, or they might be searching for the business called NYWebDesigner.com. If the exact match domain is close enough in other metrics (links, pagerank, onpage) it gets a boost because it might be a navigational search.

An additional benefit is that an exact match domain can have a much more concentrated anchor text profile without having it discounted. For a non-exact match domain, it would be unusual for a high percentage of incoming links to be an keyword anchor text, most should be domain links or the company name. If a domain does have an unusually high percentage of keyword anchor text links, they will be discounted and not have full impact. With an exact match domain it would be expected that a high percentage of incoming links have the exact anchor text because it is the name of the business.

[golles]

This is a really interesting topic. and I have some data to share.

First thing is to forget search engines, PPC, SEO, CTR benefits for a moment.

There is absolutely no question in my mind that if you have a category defining domain for a given industry it will give you advantages far and away greater than any SEO/PPC/CTR benefits. These benefits are often (say nearly always) overlooked because most people focus on traffic.

The key here is conversions.

A leading domain in your industry will give INSTANT credibility to your operation. It is an instant brand. You become instant authority in that vertical (not search engine authority - I am talking end user authority / perception).

A few years ago I was involved in an ecommerce site and we had the opportunity to buy the defining category domain in the industry we were in. It was VERY expensive.

We needed data to justify the purchase. Like most people we were fixated on traffic and search engine benefits and not really on other benefits.

We took benchmark data from our current site at the time which had the keyword in the domain but had a letter prefixing it (think iWidgets.com as opposed to Widgets.com) - traffic (all sources), conversion data, time of year, time of month, time of day conversion data.

We then arranged a lease on the exact match / category killer domain and moved our site to that domain to test the benefits.

Site design remained constant, so did product range, categories, layout, - basically everything but the domain remained constant.

We 301 redirtected old pages to the new equivalent pages.

The results:
Traffic went down - for a period of 34 days - probably due to the domain switch.
Conversion rates increased from day 1 from 1.76% average to 3.84% average on the new domain.
Average order value incrased from £42 to £68
Average time on site increased from 2 mins to approx 4 mins.

You can only imagine what happened to revenue and profitability - with NO incremental traffic aquisition costs.

Now clearly the domain was a huge investment but well worth it. Infact it paid for itself within a matter of months.

So while this is not really about EMD's - you cannot under estimate the other effects a strong category killer domain will have to a website.

Of course there will be some agruments about the data and sure this is not a 100% precise science and you can never really compare like for like because there are 101 outside influences with regard to the internet, but the stats were staggering from day one.

Hope this helps.

[Kay]

I suppose this all relates to dot coms? I have a couple of pretty darned good dot co domains. I know that Widgets.com is much, much better that Widgets.co but might there be any advantage in having the generic .co EMD?