Are EMD values post Penguin in the toilet?!

I think post penguin values for both reseller and end users are totally in the toilet. Perhaps the current overall economic climate isnt helping but imho gone are the days of snapping up a high volume/high value EMD for good/strong money & whacking links in and making cash.

 

6 weeks on from penguin and it looks to me like EMD's can still do well. maybe high volume emd's are suffering I don't know, but lower volume ones even in high paying niches are doing fine. My best earner atm is an emd, rank fluctuates between 3 and7 and is only 3 months old.
My biggest losers penguinwise were well established partial match domains.

What i think is much more risky atm is buying websites based on current search ranking. We've had two massive updates in two years that have knocked some well ranking sites for 6 and we don't know when the next one might be.

 

I have just launched a single page site using an EMD with little content and no inlinks yet it quickly got ranked at number 3 on G.

Go to say though I think the fact that I have no adsense or aff banners on there helps

 

What's the exacts - and much competition targeting the phrase?

 

Not many UK exacts and there are plenty of adword ads for the term but not any sponsored ones, I am surprised because the domain contains the word gift.

 

Exact match domains are not the issue with Penguin. The issue is exact match domains with a high % of matching anchors. EMD's as a whole and EMD's with natural / no pattern link profiles still rank well. EMD's that have been heavily SEO'd for the given phrase don't.

My EMD's with minimal matching anchors still rank very well. Much better than a non-EMD with the same link profile.

There is a lot of talk of EMD's being devalued post-Penguin as a lot of sites using them have dropped. But they've not dropped because of the domain itself. They've dropped because people buy the domain and then heavily link it with the exact match anchors.

To add to this though, I wouldn't risk purchasing a high ranking website given the amount of competitors I've seen get slapped. It's far too easy to lose your ranking these days. The line is extremely thin. I think as a whole, EMD's do still help you rank but I don't think they can be valued as highly (£) as they once were. Whilst they're still a great way to rank quickly/easily, the position is equally easy to lose. For me, buying an EMD was not just a way to get a position, it was also a way to retain it long term. All SEO's know that getting past any established EMD in the SERPs is a challenge. Even if they're not actively promoting their site. I for one don't want to invest money into a domain to rank it and then risk losing it a few hours, days, weeks later by means of a Google slap. One thing is for sure, Google does not discriminate. I witnessed 7-figure domains get slapped on April 24th. Be very cautious.

 

Hi just to clarify, do links to mydomain.com with the anchor text mydomain get seen as natural? Or does G want to see at least some links with text other than just the domain name, with or without extension in the link text?

 

It's a good question - my gut feeling is that too many word.com links might still count against your rankings for word, but if your domain name is effectively a new word created by sticking two words together ie goldshoes it doesn't add to your anchor thresholds for gold or shoes.

EMDs definitely still work but the whole thresholds thing is hard work as it is clear that Google won't see your EMD term as your 'brand name', just more commercial anchor text.

 

"G" wants to see whatever is natural. Would it be natural for 75%+ of your links to say "mydomain"? Probably not.

Maybe 20% tops. And not just all to your homepage either.

Click here, this website, here, source, mydomain.com, http://www.mydomain.com

You need all that jazz as well.

 

Taking a brand at random..

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.carphonewarehouse.com

The various combinations of domain links are (www, no www, slash/no, no/http etc):
(127+73+36+381+17)/2225= 28% so still pretty high

Other variations of brand name (in top x results - i know there's millions of variations below the fold) 40% (probably up to 50 or 60 when you factor in all the permutations)

Commercial keywords - not sure but I would expect around 20-25%

Noise keywords like click here etc - probably just 5%.

The issue is that the biggest number there, the brand name variations, are what can get you into hot water with an EMD as all a sudden your 50% 'brand' and 20% commercial becomes 70% commercial. Add to that the fact that humans will see your domain name as 'keyword' it means most real, natural links you get will still get you into trouble.

So what do you do? Manufacture a brand name to sit on top of your emd? 'Frank's hotdogs at hotdogs.com'? Anyone else got other plans? B&Q at Diy.com are an interesting example as they are probably the biggest uk brand on an emd:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.diy.com/

still probably just 25% url anchors, roughly 30% brand and only just 1.6% exactly matching [diy] - but they have a far wider spread of anchor variations below and I'm only doing a quick check rather than sifting thru in excel

 

Actually, tho it may not be that common it does happen:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.moneysupermarket.com

57.7% url variations. Wonder if there is a correlation between amount spent on traditional media advertising and the emphasis on the domain name vs brand name alone - 'you're so moneysupermarket.com'

 

MoneySupermarket is a terrible example if we are talking about natural links They spend a fortune on links.

Though even then, if you compare the totals of referring domains to the specific anchors...

http://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/anchors/subdomains/www.moneysupermarket.com

Against the overall total of referring domains...

http://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/www.moneysupermarket.com

You're talking about less than 10% for any specific variation. I think that's the key now really. Don't over do ANYTHING. Even if it's your brand name, it would unnatural to be getting more than 20% or so for any one anchor text.

This is my main site, which has never had any link building (paid) done to it: http://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/anchors/subdomains/whatculture.com

It's again around that 10% maximum for any one specific phrase/word.

 

A terrible example of natural links yes, but a great example of unnatural link buliding that has escaped a couple of manual penalties and continues to thrive

 

IMHO Unless you are prepared to SEO for the long-haul and try do it properly then you will get caught up in penguin, kitten, puppy or whatever future bollocks names they give their updates.

Having sold a few decent domains since posting this thread I'm gonna refine my original viewpoint and summarize by saying domain sales to small time affiliates are screwed....

 

Short, articulate and high quality EMD's will always be a good investment, but some webmasters might need to change how they build links and do it in a more natural manner.

One reason for current EMD values is because of the low price of .UK domains; people can easily register 100's or 1000's domains. The problem is that only a small portion of the names are good enough to be worth much in the current climate and SERP competition.

 

Totally agreed lower volume ones are still doing fine.

 

The value of exact match is in development

In my opinion the value of exact match domains isn't in the "exact match" - it is in the fact that the "exact match" domain can be built out into a larger site utilising all sorts of "phrase match" terms with relevance to the "exact match" term and have a strong chance of doing well in the SERPS once developed as long as good SEO techniques are employed.

So no " exact match" domains have not devalued as such and they are definitely not in the toilet but what you can and can't do with them may have changed. The value of the domain is still there but the real value will be seen when these domains start being developed into larger sites. In my view therefore when assessing the value of a domain - the domain industry should be looking at "phrase match" as the metric and not "exact match"!

 

for me penguin is almost entirely about the link profile, and a little about too many ads / ad placement. i dont think it hit emd's at all.... yet!

 

Using EMDs to build credibility is one of the benefits of an EMD.

I see today that the BBC is pulling news from Football couk. Obviously more to do with content than domain name, but I'm sure it helps.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18603617