Exact Match Domains (EMD)

Phil’s SEO Tips

If you are into SEO, you definitely came across the abbreviation “EMD” or the term “Exact Match Domain”. Let me explain quickly what it is and what it means to your SEO.

First of all, what does it mean?
An exact match domains is a domain that consists of the keywords you want to rank for. So if you have the keywords “Dog”, “Training” and “Iceland”, you would pick a domain like “dogtrainingiceland.com”.

Why would I do that?
As the address of your page is relevant for search engines, it is quite obvious that they take your domain into consideration as well. So having a domain with the exact keywords in the domain can help you ranking for these terms. BUT!

WHAT?
Matt Cutts told us webmasters in a recent video of his that this doesn’t guarantee any benefits when it comes to ranking. This means that if you have great quality content an EMD will probably help you in terms of ranking for your keywords. Nevertheless: If you don’t have unique content that is worth reading and creates benefits for the reader, you will not have any advantages with an EMD.

To cut a long story short
The current (August 2014) most important thing when it comes to SEO factors is content. An EMD can help improving further but nothing works without great content.