I will be the first to admit that I am happy when I get an exact match domain to own or work with. Yes they do have an advantage, but not as much as they used to have. What is much more important is having relevant content and a good SEO strategy in place based on a sound platform (good onsite SEO).

Having good onsite SEO, relevant content, lots of high quality backlinks and a strong brand, your website can outperform a website with an exact match domain (EMD). What people forget is that you can also have the keywords in the URL path if that floats your boat giving you keywords and a brand if you opt for a brand URL.

In some cases I have seen websites with exact match domains end up losing their race to the top because the site owner has assumed that their exact match domain was all they needed to take the crown and they have neglected to put much effort in elsewhere.

If people ask me whether they should buy an exact match domain my reply will generally be that if you can get it from a registrar for a standard price then yeah go for it. If you can buy it for a pretty small price and you don’t have a brand domain already then yeah I guess it’s worth it if you are not expecting miracles.

If you ask me if you should spend £5000 (or other random silly figure) on an exact match domain I will generally say no. Because that £5000 could be spent much more efficiently on an SEO campaign, whether it is funding the procuring of links to your website, funding better advertising or even thinking about improving the website’s content.

If you search for car insurance on Google (.co.uk) there isn’t an exact match domain in sight until the bottom of page 3. The first page of search results is all brand URLs. What I do notice though is that of the 10 results on the 1^st page 5 contain all or part of the search phrase in the URL. All 10 mention the search phrase in the Meta title and all 10 mention it in their Meta description.

Of course in other niche’s exact match domains are reigning top, but if one is ranking above you don’t worry, all is not lost. Just roll up your sleeves and work harder.

Here is a video by Matt Cutts discussing exact match domains and keywords in domains.

When it emerged that Google was looking at fresh content as a ranking consideration people selling SEO rubbed their hands with glee across the world. If Google has said that fresh content is a must it is an easy sell to people who have relatively static websites. “Just post news and events articles on your blog a few times a day containing keywords and the world will be your oyster”.

Now that I am so aware of it I can’t help but notice these crappy blogs everywhere. Post Panda article spinners have new homes.

Having a blog can be a huge asset to an online business, especially when done right. The right way is a truly socially engaging affair aimed at building relationships with potential customers and hopefully a loyal following who will go forth and sing your praises… Well you get the point. If I visit a company blog I expect to see a good mix of product information, guides, company news, offers and reviews which all in all is a generally positive experience.

What I don’t expect or want to read is the same spammy paragraph saying “buy sofas London while seeing the Olympics” or some other shoehorned rubbish surrounded by a loosely related post. What people don’t seem to realise is that this certainly can’t help in the long run. Google might see that the site is regularly updated but the click through and bounce rates could be a huge low quality indicator.

The challenge is how can you classify a blog post as low quality? If I was trying to combat this content I would probably look at factors such as:

• How consistent is the word count? This sounds stupid but lots of companies producing written content do so often to a set word goal so there is a good chance that posts will often be a similar length.
• Linking consistency:  If every post has 2 or 3 internal links in could it be classed as truly natural?
• Comments: If there are no comments on the post could this be an indicator of poor engagement?
• Bounce rate: Google already offers you the chance to block a site if you return to search results…
• Prominence of blog in the site hierarchy:  If a blog is tucked away in a dark corner of a website is it trying to avoid people?

I’m sure that each point could be argued. I do think that at some point algorithms will try to evaluate blogs using a wide range of factors to give a quality score.

Now you may think that I’m not a fan of blogs after reading this far. I am a huge fan of good blogs. Often if you search for an answer to a question, the answer will be on a blog post, with a wealth of comments supporting the validity of the information. I just thing that a blog is so much more than glorified keyword loaded mega tweets. Good blogs are a home to information, opinions, link bait engaging content and much more. The sad thing that a lot of people miss is it’s the high quality engaging content that is much more likely to lead to a conversion.

What do you think will be the next big thing in the Google Parrot update?

Image credit: Archeia Muriel, thanks!

This SEO blog will contain a selection of SEO news, guides, information and personal opinion. Hopefully it will be of use to some people looking to improve their websites, or someone just looking for something to read when they have 5 minutes to kill!

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Image credit: Jim Clark. Thanks!