SEO Benefit from Redirecting New Exact Match Domains?

[debi_zyx]

Hi, All!

This is a question asked in the old Q & A section, but the answer was a little ambiguous and it was about 3 years ago, so I decided to repost and let the knowledgeable SEO public answer...

From David LaFerney:

It’s clear that it’s much easier to get high rankings for a term if your domain is an exact match for the query.

If you own several such domains that are very related such as – investmentrealestate.com, positivecashflow.com, and rentalproperty.com – would you be able to benefit from those by 301ing them to a single site, or would you have to maintain separate sites to help capture those targeted phrases?

In a nutshell – SEO wise, is it worth owning multiple domains to exactly match valuable search phrases? Or do you lose the exact match benefit when you redirect?>>

To clarify: redirecting an old domain with lots of history and links to a new exact match domain seems to contain SEO benefit.  (You get links+exact match domain, approximately.)  But the other way around? Redirecting a new exact match domain to an older domain with links?  Does that do anything for the ranking of the old domain for the exact match keyword?  Or absolutely nothing?  (My impression has been that it's nothing, but the question came up for a client and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.)

Thanks in advance!

[brycebertola]

Recently google has really downplayed the importance of exact match domain names. If the domain name is newly registered it probably hasn't earned any links yet, and therefore wouldn't pass any SEO value.