Google update targeting exact match domain EMD Are you affected?

Typical Google. Launching another update to get rid of folks like us. This time it is targeting low quality exact match domains. Since I have 50 of those for my Amazon 50 niche site challenge, I am already mentally prepared for the worst to come.

After checking through the stats last night, none of my sites are actually affected even though all their domains are exact keyword domains. Amazing! There is no obvious conclusion but I am guessing that one of the following could explain why my sites were not affected.

Reason #1: I build my sites correctly

If any of you have been following me in my amazon challenge updates, you will know that I build these sites differently from my past sites. Specifically:

• No more writing keyword stuffed titles that matches the keywords in my domain
• No more getting spammy backlinks
• No more focusing on one set of keywords
• Trying to write something of value to serve the folks coming to the site
• Using different themes

That is basically how I have been building my sites. Although their traffic is not high, it is steadily increasing. The mini cupcake maker site for example has gone from 1-2 person a day to about 5-10 a day. I believe the true potential will come in another 1-2 years as the sites gain more content and age. 

Reason #2: I was lucky

This is definitely one possibility. Maybe the alogorithm missed my sites because I wasn't targeting the ultra spammy niches like finance, legal, home furniture etc. Or maybe I was targeting keywords that had low monthly search volume. Too low for the alogorithm to care.

One key observation

One of the key observation was that none of my sites were pulling in traffic from the keyword in their domains. Let's take the mini cupake site as an example. I have never gotten one person typing in the keyword mini cupcake maker. Instead the following is the list of keywords that are bringing the site traffic.

The above image makes one wonder if this is a good leading indicator to tell you if your site will be penalised. If your site has lots of different keyword combos like the one above, you are probably doing your optimisation correctly. If you are seeing lots of repeated and targeted keywords, you might be getting too aggressive in your SEO.

Anyway, it is still early days and I will continue to monitor the effects of this exact match domain algorithm update.

Hope none of you has been affected. 

Posted in: seo tips