Want to rank well in Google? Get an exact match domain.
 by Casey Markee

Want to rank well in Google? Get an exact match domain.

  • I'm starting a new venture and I have the chance to pick up a domain with my exact match keyword in it. Unfortunately, it's a little long. Is it still worth doing or should I go with something smaller but not as qualified? Is this going to make a big difference in Google?

Answer: Exact match domains gained a bit of interest late last year when Matt Cutts of Google spoke specifically about them at PubCon 2010. Although he was careful not to say too much, he did imply that exact match domains are an "area of interest" for Google that they'll be watching more closely.

Translation: If they are an area of interest to Google, they DEFINITELY need to be an area of interest to you as well.

It's always been a widely held belief in the SEO community that purchasing an exact match domain can increase the odds of getting a solid ranking for a hard to target keyword. But the mystery of why this has been the case has never been truly explained, though some common theories exist.

The most popular explanation to the existence of an exact match domain ranking bias may be the tendency to link to sites by using their domain name as the linking anchor text. For example, our own site at Search Engine News has hundreds of backlinks with the anchor text search engine news as you would expect. It is thus no surprise that the site is going to appear number #1 in Google for search engine news.

What is interesting is that this phenomenon is not however just tied ...

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