A Domain by Any Other Name

Is still just a domain. Back in April I wrote in this post about the poor unfortunate soul who invested a huge amount of money in what amounted to an exact match domain (EMD). It didn't work out all that well for him and now, with Google's new algorithm update that affects EMDs, it's even more unlikely that it will work for anyone else.

According to this article on the SEOMoz blog, early data indicates many sites that had exact match domains (domains that match exactly the desired keyword, e.g., teethwhitening.com) took a significant fall in search engine results with the update. My take on it is that the sites that did drop probably were not that strong in other ways, so when they lost the advantage of having an exact match domain, they took a tumble.

The moral of the story is that having a strong site that is properly optimized with informative content will carry you a lot further than any particular domain name (you can learn more about how we handle SEO here). So ignore all those resellers hawking the dream domain, or even those registrars trying to push the dot whatever on you as they're barely a step above the former. Build your site with quality content, optimize it and keep it fresh. Then no matter what your domain is, the business you get will still smell as sweet.