Last year I talked about bfads.net, a site that managed to capture a massive amount of traffic with what many would agree is a sub-par .NET domain name. Black Friday 2012 looks no different as bfads still sits above-the-fold for one of the highest traffic search terms of Q4, Black Friday.
Over the last few months Google has emphasized that exact-match domains no longer provide the same pizzaz they used to however looking at the search results for Black Friday do tell a little different story.
BlackFriday.com has the #1 spot this year, a popular site run by super Domain Investor Kevin Ham and in position #4 (at least for me) is TheBlackFriday.com followed by BlackFriday.fm. Those are pretty stellar rankings for some nice exact-match domains including a .FM domain in the mix which is pretty rare.
I think this shows that you do have to look a bit further into what Google said about exact-match domains. They didn’t say that exact-match domains were worthless, but instead they said that exact-match domains with low quality content and junky backlinks were being hit harder than ever before. In Matt Cutt’s explanation of the change he said the following:
small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results. (SEORoundTable)
This is in line with all the changes Google has made over the last few years hitting all sites low-quality sites so it makes sense to include EMDs. However those that have headed for the hills and exclaimed that exact-match domains no longer have any magic should think again and these Black Friday search results are a good example.
The truth is that Google has gotten a lot better at finding sites with junky content covered with ads and keywords. It’s time to build for the user and exact-match domains still have a nice place in the market and can be very valuable for branding.
If you want to hone your SEO skills I highly recommend trying out SEOMoz’s 30-Day Free Trial, I’ve been using them for years and along with exclusive articles and webinars they have some of the best SEO tools on the planet. In my book it’s always been, go Moz or go home and nothing could be more true today given all the changes that Google has made.
As usual I’d love to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!
