EMD stands for Exact Match Domain. It is essential to know that back in the year 2012, an EMD held a great value in the market. If you are wondering what an EMD actually is, then keep on reading. EMDs or exact match domains are those domain names that match a search query precisely, which will lead more traffic to your page or website. In this way, your website will be ranked well. In a nutshell, exact match domains can help your website in getting ranked high by driving more traffic on your website. As you already know that in the past EMDs were very valuable, but what about now? Are these domains still being used or not?
What is Google’s take on EMDs?
Matt Cutts, the chief spam fighter of Google in 2012, came up with an algorithm change that was based upon decreasing the rate of low quality EMDs whenever people would search from Google. A great example could be of the exact match domain such as buybluejeansnow.com. Therefore, the owner of this website thought that with the help of this domain name whenever people would search for ‘blue jeans’ or ‘buy blue jeans’, they would be led to his website.
Negative Aspect of EMDs
The main problem with EMDs is that their URL can be labeled as spam website because of their similarity with search terms. Even though buybluejeansnow.com is a strong domain, but it only has 7 backlinks. Another issue with EMDs is that you will not find any unique content in these URLs. Google has really tried its best to clean up the spam mess by making sure that only website with strong content would be displayed on the first page of search results. Therefore, when you search from Google you will always get high quality sites search results. There is no doubt in the fact that Google has tried its best in making sure that low quality websites don’t use their tactics to take the place of high quality websites. With the help of machine learning, Google knows so much about what the users want that it provides with the exact high quality websites on its search engine result pages that people were looking for. Therefore, in the modern world there is no place for low quality website on Google’s search engine page.
Does Google like EMDs?
This is definitely a good question. It is believed that Google does like exact match domains only if they are not spams and are actually strong websites just like hotels.com. The good thing about hotels.com is that when you will search for hotels, this website will be displayed on top because of its domain name. This domain has more than 15 million links and is very easy to use. So, if you want to look up for a hotel in some destination, then this site is the best option to use. This domain was bought for 11 million dollars. Therefore, hotels.com is ranked on top whenever you will search for the keyword ‘hotels’ and it is for sure an organic site. Google used the EMD update to get rid of spams in the first place. Therefore, by the end of the year 2012, Google got to know that there are some EMD holders who got penalized for only having a catchy EMD, but they ended up using the EMD update so that the sites with only a low quality EMD would be punished.
Should you get an EMD?
If you are willing to get an EMD, then you will have to do a lot of research as many good EMDs are already taken. So, if you have money in your wallet, then get ready to spend it as a great EMD can be a bit costly. Also, if you have great content to post on your website with the right intension to help the public, then there is nothing wrong in getting an exact match domain. Getting an exact match domain can definitely help you in getting more traffic on your website, so you will need to put in a bit effort to make your website worth the visit.