Exact Match Domains

Great post! I share your opinion on this.

There´s just one strange catch. It seems like the advantage is limited to cno-domains. With a cno-exact match domain you do have a significant advantage on Google.de. A .de-domain doesn´t get the advantage. That´s strange and doesn´t really make sense. Obviously Google wanted to restrict the advantage of keyword domains to a few top-level domains. But a ccTLD like .de should have at least the same advantage.

I initially made the same mistake for my business's website, looking for a generic search term domain name (lcdcabinet.com). I picked the domain name because the term was fairly closely related to my product (remote controlled flat screen TV cabinets), and it had the most search traffic of any available domain names. I have since changed my mode of thinking to building a brand (rveel.com) instead. I decided that the small boost in traffic due to a specific search term also limited the scope of my business. I'm going to spend my time and effort on building my brand and improving my product line instead (including liquor cabinets and more, not just cabinets for LCD TV's). I realized that I had spent so much effort on trying to optimize my website for the search engines that it compromised the quality and experience of the website.

I have a couple points:

1. You're only considering the impact of exact match domains on brands. You aren't taking into consideration spammy product sites that use exact match domains to rank very quickly for one particular phrase or product name.

It's very easy to build a thin affiliate site for a product and get it to rank quickly when you use an exact match domain and build a few backlinks (a couple dozen relevant blog comments alone will often to the trick).

2. In a natural link profile, a large percentage of inbound links to the homepage will have anchor text that matches the name of the domain. This is hugely beneficial when it comes to ranking an exact match domain for a particular product. This is why:

When you have an exact match domain, the anchor text on virtually all inbound links can match your targeted keyword phrase without setting off any filters. Again, this is a big thing when it comes to affiliate sites that aim to sell one product and one product only.

3. With the above in mind, I would argue that exact match domains are too powerful when it comes to building thin affiliate sites. But I'm not complaining...

This was a good post. I agree with the statement “when you pick an exact match domain it is mainly only helping you wit that 1 main keyword that you chose”. I work with Google AdWords, specifically managing clients PPC campaigns and in a perfect world I would be able to target every possible variation of a word that a user might enter to find a specific clients product. But like this article states, 1) this is “essentially impossible” and 2) clients are often limited by their monthly budgets. If money was not an issue, clients could have thousands of variations of their keywords, making their ads essentially appear millions of times in a given month. The problem, however, is that the more times a client’s ad appears in Google, the more times searchers have the opportunity to click on that client’s ad and the higher the client’s monthly costs become.

Due to limits of monthly budgets, clients are often restricted to only using exact match keywords in order to keep their ad from appearing a million times a month. As stated “exact match only gives you that bonus on exact match.” This enables clients to have their monthly budget of say $500, last throughout the entire month.

Do you have recommendations of how to turn a generic keyword into a brand, in order to properly target exact match keywords?

You might say, if exact match domains bring in enough revenue to create profit after considering the domain costs, the time and energy required for upkeep and creation, and any additional expenses there might be, then they are worth doing. Whether or not there is more money to be made with a single, "focused" domain probably rests on the targeted keywords, and the market they are in.

Yeah I am not trying to say that domain names have no value (as I still try to buy good ones where I think they can help), but I just don't feel that they are a big nuisance to Google or searchers outside of brand arbitrage.

What this all boils down to is that exact match domains, like SEO in general, is just another tactic that can be used within your marketing mix to be successful.

When entering or even expanding into new markets, however, it's wise to gobble up as many exact match domains as you can. In most markets those with the most prime real estate win.

Yes,I agree to you that exact match domains do not matter a lot.

Although you might be having best keyword placed in your domain it will not make any traffic change to a brand that is having that keyword.

This Australian (search footprint) company owns hundreds of exact match domains and are charging local small businesses $1200AU per year to have their phone number on these sites. I'd like to here other opinions on this one.

It was refreshing to read your post, especially while reading at the same time one in favour of exact match domains:
http://www.qualitynonsense.com/2477/domain-type-in-traffic/

I agree with you when you say that EMD are restrictive and only perform very well for the keyword they match to. What about all the rest of the internet traffic? Would you rather build a brand to capture all this or keep adding spammy-looking EMD to your protfolio? Most of the best performing sites on the internet all have a name that gives no clue to what they offer: Google, Amazon, just to pick up on what you said.
You mention that you would have changed your domain name if you had a choice because you branched out. Well, Pizza Hut doesn't sell just pizzas!
EMD are very popular at the moment for the ease with which they rank but let's not fall for that and instead see the forest for the trees.

Aaron, your experience is very similar to many. We start a website with a business model of x. But after a few yours we see y is a great opportunity and expand into y. We can't abandon x, because we invested to much money in it. But if we did not do x, we would never have seen the value of y.
What I think you are saying is don't have the domain name so identified with x that when you expand into y it does not fit. I think that is good advice, but I am not sure how to apply it.
So if I am determined to be an SEO and I pick Googlesearch.com and 2 years later I see that website conversion is a much better fit for me, how did that brand help me in the switch?

Well one solution might be to start off being quite literal to build up any initial cashflow. Then when you start to become quite profitable use that cash to invest in other projects & build at least 1 brand that can be fluid / expand without looking weird.

I used to be a big believer in keywords in domain names but now I'm working on a project for which there really is no keyword that "gets it all;" so I picked a neologism which would totally fit in on TechCrunch and focused on a brand-building approach.

I've had very good luck with strong keywords in domain names, but I've also seen that other people do very well without them.

Now, I think it's fair to plan your SEO in phases. In thelong term I like to be "in orbit" with organic links. If you've got a good viral loop going, you can devastate your competitors -- you can build your rank while you sleep. But to get there, you need some kind of advantage, and certainly keywords in your domain name can help you get off the ground. In my case, I'm planning to add more rocket fuel to make up for having weaker keywords.

I think you're taking too much of an affiliate marketer view of exact match domains.

Imagine a business - a real-world business - that offers XYZ service, where "XYZ" is something very specific and unambiguous.

Whenever they introduce themselves to new clients, they always explain "we're in the XYZ business" or "we offer XYZ" and the text on their website, marketing collateral and elsewhere reflects this.

Now consider that this business has competitors. Likely hundreds of them, unless it's in a super-small niche.

And all of those competitors are also saying "We're in the XYZ business" because, well, that is THE way to describe what they're offering.

At that point, the company that owns XYZ.com or XYZ.appropriatecctld has a MASSIVE advantage.

After all, their URL matches what they do, so whenever somebody sees the URL they already know what service they can expect to find there. There's no need to start the marketing dialogue with "We're coined-brand-name, and we offer XYZ".

Suddenly, they've slashed their marketing budget, as they're piggybacking on the "train of thought" of their new and existing customers, who are looking for a company that offers "XYZ".

It's also important never to lose sight of the fact that a URL is not just useful online. It's also going to show up in TV and radio ads, newspaper and magazine ads, press releases, news stories, on invoices and packing slips, on the side of vans and fleet vehicles, on billboards and posters, and in potentially hundreds of other distinct types of location.

In every single instance, it will be easier for a new customer (who's got the idea of needing XYZ in the back of their mind) to remember XYZ.com/XYZ.cctld than ANY other conceivable URL!

Basically, you're dropping the 7 repetitions that are typically needed to make a marketing message sink in down to 1...

By securing XYZ.com/XYZ.cctld, a company in the business of supplying XYZ goes from being just another company in their niche to being THE company in that niche. Everyone else is suddenly playing catch-up.

All this before you even start looking at the SEO and PPC benefits of owning an exact-match domain for the highest-trafficked term in your market niche. Sites are easier to SEO, and it's been proven that searchers are more likely to click on a PPC ad if its URL matches their search (since the URL then gets bolded, making that ad stand out vs all other ads, and since it also "matches their intent" better)

Hi Edwin
That is a great post & 100% true. Demand is created by how people use language in marketing, as they are telling people what to search for. :)

The tricky part is going broad enough off the start that you still have business flexibility. For our current site SEO.com would have been better than SEOBook.com, but then of course it wasn't available for $8 back then and I was poor. :D

However, I think television ads (& most other offline ads) will need to get much more relevant & targeted before the EMD would have a chance to be an advantage over brands in most categories. About the only "domain as brand" TV ads I have ever seen were creditcards.com & freecreditreport.com. Whereas I can't count how many ads I have seen from Monster.com, Bing.com, Expedia.com, etc.

Actually, Aaron, it's offline that EMDs will bring some of the best returns.

After all, there are so many situations in which a company only has a few seconds to make an impression that lasts long enough for the customer to take some action.

For example, if you drive past a van with a URL on it, you might notice that URL for 2-3 seconds tops. So as the owner of the van (and the company whose product/service it's advertising) you'd better be 100% sure that what you're promoting "sticks" in those 2-3 seconds of grudging half-attention you're going to get from passing motorists.

In that situation there's quite literally no time for game playing. "We're Blah and Otherblah. We offer tax preparation services. Visit blahandotherblah.com" - you've lost the reader before they've even finished reading, since they're focused on driving.

Contrast that with "TaxPreparation.com" in big, friendly letters.

If the reader needed their taxes prepared, they'll know where to go when they get home in the evening and finally find the time to actually sit at their browser. All they have to do is follow their existing train of thought - there's nothing beyond that to remember. In other words, there's zero friction between the "need" (in this case tax preparation) and the destination (taxpreparation.com)

Or what about tradeshows? Scan down the list of exhibitors at an average conference or tradeshow - especially a b2b/specialist show - and you will likely have literally NO idea at all what each company does. So many obscure names, none of which give a clue to the service being offered. And most tradeshow sites I've seen only list the company name and URL, and require a click to see the actual description.

So imagine again that the URL is "TaxPreparation.com". Job done. You don't even have to see the description to know that's a company that may be of interest to you.

Don't focus on the "short head" of super-high-value one word EMDs. There's a very valuable and very important "long tail" of 2, 3- and sometimes even more word domains, each of which is the PERFECT MATCH for a very specific product, service or industry.

And for a company who offers exactly that product or service as their sole or core line of business, there can be few moves that are more potentially rewarding than securing THE URL for their niche.

I get what you are saying. But has there ever been a single cult brand that was like "pizza.com"? Whereas in Berkeley there are raving fans for "Joe's Pizza."

I think perhaps the best strategy for many fields might be a hybrid approach: unique business name & generic domain name ... but I do think there are a lot of variables in play going forward.

At some point the separation between online and offline blurs (Google Android, Google TV, etc.) and as that happens, if people navigate primarily by search suggestions, I think being unique/remarkable/recommendation-worthy is more important than being easier to locate on a more common / more generic name ... because ultimately the businesses which are best received will end up having the best lifetime customer values and search will end up recommending them most frequently as well.

Ready for round #3...think we are at maybe a draw :D

I should also add that I buy some good domain names too...I just don't see them as being "so over-valued" the way some other SEO folks do. The point of the above blog post was not that they have no value or too much value, but the perception that they were over-valued is IMHO not entirely accurate.

What about the 99.9% of businesses that aren't cult brands AND that have no aspiration - or prospect - to become cult brands?

Of course you don't need a generic domain name to build a great brand - great brands have been built long before the Internet was invented, and more will go on being built pretty much forever.

But it's not about the out-and-out winners, it's about everyone else.

For every "household name" company, there are probably quite literally thousands of companies that only their EXISTING customers have heard of.

And in many fields, there are hundreds of seemingly interchangeable companies, none of which are either A) easily distinguishable or B) of themselves particularly memorable

Beyond a certain size and, for want of a better way of putting it, "fame" of a company, there will be fewer benefits to be gained from a generic EMD. If 9 out of 10 consumers know your product already, you don't have to worry about teaching them how to "find you". But the odds are very good that you got into that position by expending tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on "branding" - a luxury which most companies - and just about all purely B2B businesses - don't have.

Anyway, there's no "one right answer" in any of this - I'm just trying to ensure that the wider uses and benefits of an EMD don't get lost on the cutting room floor when viewed through the relatively narrow prism of online marketing.

Fantastic insight on EMDs. Our business decided to go with a brand name as opposed to a keyword rich domain. The brand name has taken some time to build up and is going to take a lot more, but going this route has provided us with the flexibility to expand our business without being pigeon-holed by our domain name. Many people perceive a company by their domain name, as shallow as that sounds, so it was important to us to have something malleable, catchy and memorable.

EMDs are great for getting pages / sites ranked. However, in my opinion, a really strong brand name (i.e. Google, Apple, Expedia) is far more valuable in the long term. I can't think of any companies / brands that went with a keyword domain that have had the same effect on consumers like a Google or Apple. I feel like there is some perception that keyword domains like freecreditreport.com are more spammy / sales related as well - at least for me.

It will be interesting to see how companies continue to brand themselves online as relevant keyword domains become more scarce. I think we are all trying to create the next "Google", not the next "searchengine.com"

I'm interested to hear further discussion on EMD's and local, niche business strategy. I'm in agreement about branding the business first and foremost, and for outreach beyond local boundaries, that these things trump an EMD strategy. I still however see a great value to EMD's in the local search space. If I'm a local mechanic, and can buy up veniceautomechanic.com and with a little SEO work jump to the top for that term, and extending that out, buy up some related domains, set up some simple websites with a little content on them, this seems a fairly quick and painless way to boost visibility and get clicks. Depends on the project, and all projects are going to have their own nuances, but any thoughts/experience to back up/refute this strategy?

I really enjoyed this blog post, thanks Aaron for breaking this down for us. I feel like EMD's can still act as a category for a business website. "I understand what you are saying about how an EMD will really only help you with that exact phrase" however some exact phrases are someones entire business and will be their business for life, living through the changes in economy and any environmental impact which may occur. So EMD's have there place on the web for certain business models. A prime example of the business model I am referring to is the real estate industry for small town Realtors who only service one city, township, or neighborhood. This said Realtor may specialize in single-family homes, condos, or even land which can all be categorized under the phrase "real estate" so starting up your business website with "cityrealestate.com" would work for this business model.

I complete agree with the power of building a brand on and offline and how to successfully optimize that brand on the web. That being said it's vitally important to understand the impact a EMD will have on someone's business online and make a sound decision or recommendation from there. Fully grasping your client's or personal brand and goals is obviously step one then you should be able to choose a domain name which will work for you both long term and short term needs. If you are going to be a local business for life and not looking to grow nationally or globally, than an exact phrase match domain which fits in an overall industry category could work for you.

It's also important to keep in mind that your domain name won't make or break your SEO rankings nor your PPC ad placement. You need a well rounded marketing strategy when you launch your business website and that needs to involve, a site which is user-friendly, helpful to your target market, has quality content, proper title tags and meta data, designed to appeal to the eye, but coded for the search engines.

I got to this post after reading Aaron's 11/18 post about exact match domains. I commented there about a recent experience I had with an exact match domain I owned taking over top position for a principle keyword vs. another site that I own that is much better on most counts but targets the same primary keyword phrase. When the non-EMD site I own dropped from the top spot I was really distressed and thought it was going to kill sales. However, fortunately, we apparently did a decent job of building a brand and the drop did not hurt us nearly as much as I had feared. (In fact, knock on wood, our sales are up significantly compared to the previous year during the same period when we held the top spot.) This is due, in large part, because our traffic from sources other than organic search for our principle keyword has become an increasingly larger percentage of our overall traffic. For example, our direct traffic has increased 30% over the last 1.5 years.

The general problem with exact match domains and making the foundation of your business the organic traffic that you get from specific keywords is that you are entirely at the mercy of G's algo. A strong brand transcends the search engines, has more staying power, is more flexible, and affords the business more control over its destiny.

Great comment. :)

I have trouble understanding a lot of the concerns about EMDs in regards to branding or a lack of forward flexibility when it comes to expansion. Take online retailers like CSNStores.com, Hayneedle.com, ATGStores.com, IVGStores.com, CymaxStores.com and ClickToShopLLC.com - all of which utilize a strategy of buying up EMDs whenever possible or adding a prefix or suffix to launch a category specific store. Some of these retailers sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of product annually.

Guess what bakersracks.com sells? Is the content relevant to those searching for a bakers rack? Yes. Does the site rank well in G? Yes.

For the other stores that could not secure the EMD, many of them still rank very well -
allbakersracks.com - CSN Stores
bakersrackshack.com - IVG Stores
bakersrackscollection.com - Cymax Stores

These retailers still make a case for keyword specific domain names and whenever possible EMDs.

My guess is that where EMDs are effective now for many of the reasons listed on this page - Google Local and G's organic search in time will be updated to ONLY show brands. Can an EMD also be a brand? Absolutely. Can an EMD not be a brand and be generating high levels of monthly revenue and profit in 2011? Absolutely. However the later will in my prediction will have (as Aaron has said) cinder blocks coming out of their pants. So of course aggressive and skilled SEOs can make money with EMDs just as brands can but for a long term plan I would recommend high quality, life enhancing products, information and services. This to me truly is the key to lasting long term success - which cannot be shaken by a search engine no matter how mighty.