So any SEO worth their paycheck know that exact match domains are a big part of the SEO game and the top search results, but what exactly is the science behind that.

If Google has the advertised 200 factors being considered when coming up with 100% of the final figure that determines the order in the SERPS, how much of that is exact matching a domain.

An exact match domain is basically the domain name for your exact search.

If you are a customer searching for the finest Charlotte web design company, you may type in “Charlotte web design”. This is a high volume, high competition and high skill level search result. You will find here companies making a living putting good, usable content. But as in most searches you will also find the guy who used the incredible skill of “buying the name first”.

Why would this be such a heavily weighted factor in Google’s quest for the most relevant and fresh quality content?

Google beats us over the head with their message of “content is king” and telling us to “write good usable content for you customers not for search engines. Google then goes out spidering sites and gives perhaps 10%? 20% consideration to the guy with the domain name purchased fastest?

If I write “War and Peace” on the front of a Spiderman Comic book does that make it an award winning novel?

As per the above example, if you search Charlotte Web Design you will find charlottewebdesign.com listed at #12 right now. The website current had one page, an unfinished WordPress “set up” page and no content. They have just one link in the middle of the page that says, see our NEW web design and it links to another company’s website.

Below this at #13+ you will find 100 companies that have staffs, office locations and years of web design experience in Charlotte specifically.

So while they are preaching from their mountain that “content is king” Google forgets to mention the reality that apparently whatever goofball buys the domain first is “king”?

I only used this example for its’ keywords, take a look or more local and less maintained keyword results. A SERP like Charlotte web design has a lot of sites with a long history of backlinks and SEO efforts behind them. This fact will make the 10-20% domain name “bonus” less relevant. In this I mean that “Charlotte web design” doesn’t show this effect as other SERPS where there is less link building efforts. Any SERP that is truly natural is dominated by keyword domains and exact match domains.

This fact only multiplies all that is wrong with such heavy weight being given to the domain name. Any SERP where people just make a site for viewers and do not do anything artificial for ranking has twice the problem.