It has long been seen that having an exact match domain name, is a good thing. For example, if your a wedding photographer, then having weddingphotographer.something, would help you rank better for the search term ‘Wedding Photographer’. That used be the case, until Google rolled out its new EMD (Exact Match Domain) update.
With this new update, less importance is being placed onto what the domain is. Been happening for a while you may say, and that is true. Just look at sites like Moonpig (what has ‘Moonpig’ got to do with greetings cards?). It is possible to rank a website, for keywords of your choosing, no matter what the domain name is. But now the domain name will play alot less importance in the factors used to rank a website.
Although this update is slowly being rolled out across the board, and is starting mainly on sites that are in highly competitive niches, eventually it will affect all sites.
So, the big question now is how can you overcome this, and make sure that your JoeBloggsPhotography still ranks well for Joe Bloggs Photography. It comes back to the same three things that have been around for a while now. Content, Social and more content.
The big search engines no longer seem to be concerned with what your domain is (unless is contains expletives, or implies that you run a porn site), it is about the user experience. That is why the content on your site is so important. Having unique, interesting and up to date content is a big help. This means that people find what they are looking for when they visit your site.
Next is social. This is coming more and more to the forefront, and many more people are now using mobile devices to view sites, and find out what’s been happening. That is what drove us here at Badges Patches to implement out new Facebook page integration. We’ve had Twitter integration for a while, but the new Facebook integration allows you to comment on blog posts, direct from Facebook.
So don’t get hung up on choosing a relevant domain name for your business any more. Just look at us, Badges Patches, has nothing to do with SEO, but yet we still rank well for it.