Once touted as the holy grail of SEO, ranking an exact match domain could put you on the map to receive instant search rankings and increased traffic for your website.

Often composed of highly competitive and costly keywords, exact match domains could help you get and keep an edge on the competition without much effort in terms of content.

The simple fact of an exact match domain containing keywords was enough to rocket a website to front page search rankings.

Hundreds and thousands of exact-match domain websites popped up overnight, and exact-match domains were strongly commanding search rankings across major search engines.

Deceptive exact match domain ranking sniffed out

But like previous SEO advantages that were deceptively used to rank, Google launched an exact match domain update targeted to lessen the preference of exact match domains compared to non-keyword specific domains.

However, the EMD update, as often referred to nowadays, would not penalize the ranking of an exact match domain if the website met and adhered to sound SEO ranking factors as other websites per Google’s SEO Guidelines and Policy.

Good, bad or ugly: The endless exact match domain arguments?

In recent years, there is much good, bad, and ugly conversation to be had about whether or not exact match domains still rank well in search engines.

There is the camp that says ranking an exact match domain has lost its step and way in search engines.

They consider exact match domains archaic as dinosaurs and ineffective as the US Postal Service.

Others argue and say exact match domains are still the greatest thing since sliced bread when used according to search engine SEO policies.

Regardless of which camp you belong to, I think it’s safe to say that owning an exact match domain still provides value and an advantage over a domain that does not contain keywords.

In today’s post, I’ll attempt to address some exact match domain concerns while giving insight into one of my latest exact-match domain experiences.

Pay for performance SEO services, also known as performance-based SEO, is nothing new under the sun. Some call it pay for results or pay for rankings.

Nevertheless, the goal of pay for performance SEO services is lessening the risk of standard SEO services by requiring customers to not pay until they have been ranked.

This sounds good at first glance, as pay for performance SEO services sounds like a no brainer that is sure to keep money in your pocket until SEOs perform their work.

I mean after all, companies have pay for performance pay structures that pay regular or bonus pay based on meeting certain company objectives.

So surely if it works for companies paying employees, then surely pay for performance can work for SEO services.

To some extent, we’ve all had an experience with some sort of pay for performance type of an agreement.

Some of us have had good experiences while others have had either bad or downright nightmares of being had by pay for performance agreements.

In this post, I share my top six (6) reasons why pay for performance SEO services fail for both SEOs and customers, and how both parties should go about structuring sound pay for performance SEO services and agreements to ensure a real “win-win” scenario and working relationship.

What is considered performance-based SEO? There is much talk about pay for performance search engine optimization (SEO), also known as performance-based SEO. What it is and what it is not.

Today I want to outline and discuss what performance-based SEO is not in comparison to true and authentic white-hat, performance-based SEO.

I aim to help you identify the disadvantages of deceptive performance-based SEO.

We’ll identify, comprehend, and understand what to be on the lookout for when SEO companies or consultants try to pass gray-hat or black-hat SEO as performance-based SEO services.

Just when you think you have the perfect name for your business or you think of the most perfect domain name, you find out that the domain is registered.

Start over, surely not? Don’t let a domain name being registered get you down, especially if a website has not been developed on the domain.

You may or may not know it, but there are many ways to go about landing the perfect domain name to build your business on. One of the most common ways to land the domain name of your dreams is by buying it via an expired domain auction.

As luck would have it, sometimes domain owners forget to renew their domain names or purposely don’t renew their domain names for a multitude of reasons.

Nevertheless, one domain owner’s misfortune in losing a domain name can be your luck in finding and buying an expired domain name.

Today, I’ll discuss a few things you’ll want to consider when finding and buying expired domains. The entire process of finding and buying expired domains can be a rollercoaster experience, to say the least.

Nevertheless, with persistence and patience, you can end up with the domain of your dreams finding and buying it as an expired domain. Let’s get started.

Every so often, I either receive an email, or phone call, or have a conversation with a potential customer or customer about the pitfalls of moving web pages from sub-directories to the top directory of the website.

Unbeknownst to some, your web architecture is a vital part of your search engine optimization (SEO) effort and content, in addition to creating unique, value-add content that focuses on customers first and search engines second.

When designing or redesigning your website, it is imperative to understand how web architecture, including URL structure, can positively and negatively impact your website’s potential to rank in search engines highly.

Today’s post will try to shed light on SEO advantages and disadvantages of not planning your web architecture to be SEO-friendly or changing your web architecture without considering the SEO impact.

Another productive SEO week has shot by much like that of a shooting star, seeming to last only a moment.

All in all, I’ve helped a few companies progress their SEO efforts forward in a sound and positive manner.

I truly love what I do to the point that it’s not considered to work to me.

I find joy and am reinvigorated by every audit, optimization, coaching and consulting session, blog post and response.

I love the challenges as well as the handsome rewards in driving sound SEO that generates more customers and revenues for those I serve on a daily basis.

But enough about me, and onto today’s post about the discovering the true cost of SEO services in its entirety.

How fast can you get my website ranked and how much will it cost me?

I can’t tell you the number of times those two questions start a SEO relationship with a potential customer.

It’s quite a common occurrence in my line business as one would expect.

However, what’s more interesting is path the relationship takes as we converse about their SEO needs, asking and answering questions volleyed back and forth.

In most cases, I tend to find small business owners with previous SEO experience, whether a SEO do-it-yourselfer, in-house or outsourced SEO, are the ones to quickly derail my questioning with their own agenda.