Google has evolved over the years and is now much much more intelligent then it was 10 years ago. In the early 2000’s till about 2008, you could buy an EMD (Exact Match Domain), put up a site under that name and expect to harvest traffic with relatively low amount of effort.
Today this has changed a lot.
Since then Google has done several EMD updates. Many of the poor quality EMD sites kicked the bucket or were severely penalized by Google and they lost their rankings.
Today, you can still build a strong EMD site but it has to follow the rules that Google has laid out and you need to work as hard as anybody else. There’s very little EMD “free ride” nowadays.
EMD vs Branding
A lot can be said about EMDs but I want to cut to the chase.
With all the effort you have to put in on a site today, you really need to think about the name of your brand. If your brand is really Bird Cages, then yes, maybe birdcages.com could be a good name for you. Or is it?
The domain name that you pick for your brand is very important. Can a generic, EMD domain name do the job?
Don’t get me wrong there are still some EMDs positioning well. But you have to look behind the scene and dig here and there to find out what they are actually doing. Or it could be that it’s not a very popular niche and you show up well with your EMD.
In order to determine this, you really need to look at what you want for your business. There are many tactics to get leads and sales and this ultimately is up to you to decide what course you’ll be taking.
Building Many Sites with EMDs
If you have the resources and you feel like building a bunch of EMD sites, you are welcome to give it a shot:
- birdcagescalifornia.com
- birdcagesportland.com
- birdcagesmadeofmetal.com
- etc
If you’re only after a few extra leads here and there, then I’d say yes, build those EMDs sites.
But personally I always preferred working on a brand and spending my time and energy on the brand’s main website. And making that one really strong.
Again, I want to keep this short but there’s much more to this:
- Activity, a Google ranking factor (social interactions and quality content)
- Size of the niche (how competitive)
- Your overall branding strategy (how you want to be perceived)
NAP
Name, Address and Phone. With Google local, it’s important that your site has those 3 elements. If your brand is Bird Cages and you have stores in all those different cities, then yes, you should spend some time on building a site for each store and make sure that NAP is clear for each one. With NAP clearly distinct plus properly registering with Google Local, your site has a better chance in the local search.
Conclusion
It really depends what you want to build and how much energy (money + time) you have.
Google seems to like brands that are working hard at providing good quality content and what their customers need.
Also, to be frank, I’m not a big fan of low quality websites that fill up the web space and that are barely taken care of.
I’m a big brand pusher and that will usually be the direction I will take. But each situation is a little different and I need to reassess each time there’s a new client to make sure the web strategy we pick works the best for him/her.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Patrick
patrick@sproutsuite.com