Could EMD (Exact Match Domain) have cause SERP drops?

[Quime]

Hi all,

Another suggestion was given for our fall in SERPS.

Recently Matt Cutts announced that EMDs would be hit by new algoritms.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-20-15789.html

Only our site with exacts matches...

cours-telephone-anglais, curso-ingles-telefono, kurse-englisch-telefon, and corso-inglese-telefono

were hit.

Does anyone else have experience of this?

Would a solution be to create new URLS and redirect? Or would a redirect carry the penalty over? Is there anyway to fix that sort of penalty?

Many thanks for your help.

[SEOAndy]

I wouldn't necessarily call it a penalty. It is just that Exact Match Domains have been "turned down" as Matt Cutts put it. It means that Google doesn't pay AS much attention to them as they previously did and yes it may cause ranking drops due to it.

When you talk about moving over to another domain you won't 'carry the penalty' but you might not see any ranking changes because changing domain won't give you back what the EMD used to give.

You might want to look at your backlink profile. I have had experience of people having EMDs but having a poor backlink profile and it has dropped them down the SERPs.

Just be aware though the EMD is NOT a penalty by any means, it just means a ranking signal has changed and you have been affected, so focus on your other ranking signals such as links, on page optimisation etc... and get that improved to improve your rankings.