Should I Give up on my EMD?

Quick question for the experts:

I had an exact match domain website in a particular micro niche prior to the Panda/Penguin updates and despite the niche being full of 6-7 'Heavy Hitters' I still managed to sit Top #3 easily prior to the updates. I haven't touched the site since its drop.

I still believe the niche is profitable and that my SEO ability is good enough to rank up there again.

I want to know, however, am I better off ditching my existing EMD (even though it's 2 years old,) prior to starting again? Will Google be 'holding a grudge' against many exact match domains, you think?

I just don't want to throw hours toward some great link building if the site is doomed to fail due to falling under the EMD umberella.

Would love to thoughts from people who have been in a similar spot!

The Google grudge is against EMDs with low quality content and links. Where are you now in the SERPs?

It all depends on the content on your site. If you have a lot of high quality content, the site is probably worth some more investments, if it was a MFA site, you'll probably earn more (and faster) if you start from scratch.

Maybe just leave it alone for about an year and then try to make some SEO and see what will happen
I am sure that google will change the alto for long lasting sites someday

bertbaby said:

The Google grudge is against EMDs with low quality content and links. Where are you now in the SERPs?

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I am right at the back of the back in the SERPS after the update and literally haven't touched the site's content since then.

The links were not too bad - certainly not link farm material - and the content is about 80 articles deep at around 500+ words each.

My friend, there is a big misunderstanding here.

The EMD update is not a penalty against EMD's..... they just don't get automatically ranked like they used to.

Google doesn't punish your site for having a certain domain name; it's just that before the update if you had www. bluewidget1.net , you were practically guaranteed with just the slightest bit of SEO to rank very highly for bluewidget1. All the EMD update did was take away that benefit, and now the site needs to rank based on other onPage factors, and backlinks.

It was actually one of the only smart moves google has made in the last couple of years (sorry about your lost rankings, but overall, this is a good move for both the search engine and people using it).

So rank your site away. Its got good content and age, and is ready for a campaign without the boost of being an EMD.

SEO_Alchemy said:

So rank your site away. It's got good content and age, and is ready for a campaign without the boost of being an EMD.

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That's some brilliant insight, mate. Thank you for taking the time!

I honestly thought that having a EMD was a nail in the coffin of that site and, as a result, I've done no work on it as I thought it'd be like trying to scoop water out of the Titanic with a paper cup.

I'm going to give ranking it the way I've ranked other sites since a go and ideally, if my link building strategies and content creation is good enough, I'll start climbing that mountain once more.

Thanks again for taking the time to leave such a detailed response. Forums thrive courtesy of people like you.

bertbaby said:

The Google grudge is against EMDs with low quality content and links. Where are you now in the SERPs?

Click to expand...

Exactly...... If you were ranking highly just for being an EMD, like so many were, then good bye rankings. If you got a Penguin or Panda Penalty due to bad content or bad links...... forget it. But if your site just lost some rank because its EMD boost was taken away.... you're all good. Now you just rank without that B.S. benefit.