What Is An Exact Match Domain?

Date First Published: 30th December 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 6/10

Learn more about what an exact match domain is in this article.

An exact match domain (EMD) is a domain name that matches the same keywords a page is trying to rank for. For example, if optimising for the keyword 'Computerhelp4all', 'computerhelp4all.com' would be an exact match domain. The keywords can match a domain name with any TLD and the exact match domains do not have to end in '.com'. When a domain name contains the topic that a website is about, it makes it much clearer to people what the site they will go to is about.

Partial Match Domains

A partial match domain is a domain name that only matches some of the keywords that a page is trying to rank for. They are a combination of the main keyword and something not related. For example, if optimising for the keyword 'sunglasses', 'sunglasses-shop.co.uk' would be a partial match domain as it only uses half of the target keyword, not the whole keyword.

History

Originally, exact match domains used to be a very effective way of ranking for a given keyword and in the 2000s, they greatly improved the chances of a website ranking high. However, its effectiveness has been reduced. In 2012, Google’s exact match domain update was released and greatly reduced the effectiveness that exact match domains had on a website's ability to rank in the SERP. Even though Google did not penalise websites for having an exact match domain, any exact match domains that were hosting spammy content had their rankings drop.

Since then, exact match domains have been used much less for their SEO benefit. Exact match domains are now considered a thing of the past when it comes to their impact on SEO performance, but including the topic of a website in a domain name is still beneficial.

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