Michael Rader from Brand Root crafted a very long and thought out post on the Death of the Exact Match Domain. Of course Michael is running a brandable boutique so this may read to some like the Chik-Fil-A commercial with the cows saying,
Michael talks about bland names vs brand names
From the article:
Brand Names over Bland Names
People want to be part of a trusted brand over a keyword heavy domain, which offers nothing more than the product or service provided, often in a bland, automated and straightforward kind of way. Purchasing online lacks the human touch but it doesn’t have to feel that way. The navigation and purchase experience can be warm and friendly, mimicking a personable connection. While there are several components that build a complete brand, the experience generally begins with the business name. A unique brand style name quickly imparts a sense of excitement that a boring, keyword packed domain cannot.
As an illustration, let’s say a visitor searches for the phrase “management consulting” and finds a company called Velg. Here is the brand-empowering process that goes through the visitor’s mind during his/her experience:
Discovery – “Hm, I found something new. A business I’ve never heard of.”
Curiosity – “Ok, what is this though?”
Adventure – “Let me explore a bit.”
Knowledge – “Great! I now know about a cool new business/brand!”
Power – “If this is a product or service I need now, I have conquered my need/want! If this is something I need later, I’ll know the solution!”Conversely, here is the not so brand-empowering process of coming across a website with a name that matches the visitors searched keyword, ManagementConsulting.com: – See more at: http://www.brandroot.com/resources/item/47-death-of-the-exact-match-domain#sthash.MHMTifiP.dpufConversely, here is the not so brand-empowering process of coming across a website with a name that matches the visitors searched keyword, ManagementConsulting.com
The article is well worth reading in its entirety whether you agree or disagree. Read it here
The fact of the matter is there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle. Add to that the smart buyer who tries their best to get both, maybe they use the M.U.P. (Made Up Pronounceable) for their company name but use managementconsulting.com for SEO and Adwords campaigns.
Michael ended the article with the following, “The days of exact match domains are over.”
Brand Names over Bland Names
People want to be part of a trusted brand over a keyword heavy domain, which offers nothing more than the product or service provided, often in a bland, automated and straightforward kind of way. Purchasing online lacks the human touch but it doesn’t have to feel that way. The navigation and purchase experience can be warm and friendly, mimicking a personable connection. While there are several components that build a complete brand, the experience generally begins with the business name. A unique brand style name quickly imparts a sense of excitement that a boring, keyword packed domain cannot.
As an illustration, let’s say a visitor searches for the phrase “management consulting” and finds a company called Velg. Here is the brand-empowering process that goes through the visitor’s mind during his/her experience:
– See more at: http://www.brandroot.com/resources/item/47-death-of-the-exact-match-domain#sthash.MHMTifiP.dpuf
I agree w/ the majority of the points in the article, but I don’t agree w/ the “Death of EMD’s” as a whole.
I’ve never used BrandRoot, but I have submitted a handful of domains to their competitor that were approved. They were short 5 or 6 letter domains that I had recently hand registered and absolutely nothing inherently valuable about them. Yet I get appraisal values @ $1500, $2500, etc. (still get reminders to list them).
“It’s immediately clear to the visitor that the name is a ploy to get their money and nothing more.” (from the article)
Well isn’t that basically what companies that push brandable domains are doing (in some sense)? Let’s limit it to 5+ letter domains that are ENTIRELY brandable and nothing else. W/o doing much fact-checking, I’m going to assume those are the bulk of their offerings. Aside from a lack of knowledge on the process of registering a domain themselves, there’s no reason a business couldn’t have gotten the same/similar domain themselves for $10. It really doesn’t take THAT much creativity.
Personally, I’d much rather take the $2k+ and spend it on a generic keyword domain or EMD that fits w/ my business. And I guess this is from experience w/ domains, but I find them to overall appear more reputable than just a straight brandable. And maybe that’s because I know they probably spent more to acquire it.
Without stretching this out to long lol, weren’t straight-brandable domains pretty much born out of the lack of EMD’s freely available to grab up? Start-ups needed to shift their focus to cheaper domains they could get w/o much investment. So to say that “EMD’s Are Dead” is undercutting what has actually allowed businesses like these to now charge prices comparative to EMD’s.
Don’t get me wrong, BrandRoot and all those other’s are great businesses and if I owned own myself, I would have more than a few articles on the subject, whether I wholeheartedly believed it or not 😉
He’s got rythm, but I think your picture kinda sums it up well.
He ignores the possibility that ‘Velg’ is ‘Velg Management Consulting’ doing business at ManagementConsulting.Com … I’d prefer this as a potential customer looking for management consulting, especially via search. Theres only one address for Management Consulting, and its not whatever random four letters your startup can get ahold of. ‘Velg.Com’ would be obviously great toi have too! I’d certainly rather type that in if I am their customer and need access frequently. But thats after thet’ve used ManagementConsulting.Com to inform me that they are ‘Velg Management Consulting’ and can also be reached at just ‘Velg.Com’ …. Thats my idea of how this example best flows. As always, imho.
Aloha 🙂
The problem with a lot of domainers defending the value and importance of EMD’s is that not many of them have actual experience running developed sites (and i’m not talking mini sites or “buy a script” directory type of sites ) or building a online brand.
I’m with Michael 100% on his statement that the time of EMDs having much added value from an SEO perspective has been long gone and i also agree that as a consumer i feel much more emotional attachment to companies such as Spotify compared to OnlineRadio.com or Amazon compared to BuyOnline.com or Indeed.com compared to Jobs.com. Do a wild guess who ranks #1 for the keyword Jobs these days…
I own some premium EMDs myself such but so far this year I’ve sold close to US$ 20k in brandables names and have yet to sell a single EMD.
When we started building our most recent startup (which is a webtool for domainers) we could go for DomainingSoftware.com or something alike but decided to go for Efty.com instead for many of the reasons stated in Michael’s article. And guess who’s ranking #1 for domaining software?
Also, not all of the names on the brandable marketplaces are hand regs. If you have been watching the winning bids for 4 and 5 letter brandables on Namejet you know these domains are rising in value FAST because there’s a real demand from real businesses who prefer a real brand over a EMD these days.
Domaining software gets 10 searches a month according to the goog keyword planner, that is no big deal to rank number one. The exact match domain can be a brand too, that is what they have going for them, they can be both, these made up words only have one, it might be a good one, but the emd can go both ways. OfficeSupplies.com can be a brand and an emd, velg cannot.
Frederich , appreciate the comment but i think you’ve missed my point. It is an example to show that you don’t need a EMD to rank on the keywords your product or service is about.
Did you also looked up how many monthly searches the words Jobs is getting?
I kind of agree with Frederick you didn’t make your point because at the end of the day anybody can rank for something that nobody searching for go see if you can rank for car insurance with that name I will bet you can’t.
Fair enough. That example might be not be the best one because of the low search volume but when i search for car insurance i dont see any EMDs or even partial domain match domains on page one. Try other high volume searches and you will see a similar pattern. Of course you can rank high with a EMD too but it doesnt give you any SEO edge anymore over a similar site with a brandable name. That’s what this discussion is really about imo.