Can this hurt my google ranking ?

[keenlearner]

I guess I am walking a tight rope. I have a high quality site with EMD. I did not lose any ranking in the last updates. I am concerned that Google will target more EMD sites again.

I have also purchased a new domain which has my brand name and one keyword or partial EMD. I like the new domain as it has my product name plus one keyword. If I do a 301 redirect will I lose my rankings/link juice or get any penalty. Lets assume after I do the 301 Google comes with a stricter EMD penalty. Will I be out the woods then or will google still target my old domain and pass the penalty. I am too nervous since my business depends on my website and with google I do not want to take any chances and play safe. Thanks.

[bundakuwan]

you must be play safe.

cause Google won't tolerate any behavior of the site that don't abide their rules..

[Test-ok]

I have also purchased a new domain which has my brand name and one keyword or partial EMD

Every site is potentially an EMD...pepsi.com, coke.com. It depends on the search term...milkmoney.com is an EMD for the term Milk Money...No?...So as far as Google's concerned it's going to be way too difficult to penalize EMD's. Low quality EMD's ...yes, but that applies to most all low quality sites, Google is just making sure one doesn't rank for the url and the url alone. Which means Google was giving urls way too much prominence...and probably still does.
With that said if a site does rank purely because of the EMD...it's a low quality site.
Hope that makes sense.

[whiterabbit]

create two sites ...do what you've been doing with the existing site and go really non-aggressive on the branded version of the site.

I guess I am walking a tight rope. I have a high quality site with EMD. I did not lose any ranking in the last updates. I am concerned that Google will target more EMD sites again.

I have also purchased a new domain which has my brand name and one keyword or partial EMD. I like the new domain as it has my product name plus one keyword. If I do a 301 redirect will I lose my rankings/link juice or get any penalty. Lets assume after I do the 301 Google comes with a stricter EMD penalty. Will I be out the woods then or will google still target my old domain and pass the penalty. I am too nervous since my business depends on my website and with google I do not want to take any chances and play safe. Thanks.

[YoFluffy]

Surely concentrating on making your own site top notch will be time better spent? Comprehensive and good quality, relevant content, regularly updated. Strong, authoritative back links.

We have an EMD and it's been rising steadily regardless of latest updates - hopefully for the reasons above, and the fact it's not a one page, thin and badly written site on Buy-Viagra-Online or equally as tenuous businesses.

In seeking to enhance the search system and make it more relevant and less spammy for users, surely Google won't take it further to penalise all sites with an EMD but, as Matt Cutts states on his blog, "low quality" sites. Or am I just being naive ?....

[grgmathew]

With that said if a site does rank purely because of the EMD...it's a low quality site.

The above statement by Test-ok does suggest that your site has been penalized for EMD for the following reaons
1) Your site lacks quality.
2) Your site been very new.

Google would keep on targeting EMD domains which has less authority and lacks quality, so Changing domain would not help your cause in case where you are still looking to have one keyword within your domain.

[keenlearner]

Thanks for all the responses so far. I have also been doing some research and it looks like some high quality sites were also badly hit by EMD penalty. With Google we should never say never nor assume. I am building more high quality links but it seems like the EMD syndrome is not helping the site climb higher.

I think even though I am not penalized in the last update but still Google will resist all my efforts to rank higher. May be they see high quality EMD domains as more seo savvy and hence there is a separate filter for guys like me who combine quality and seo. In October alone I got 6 great links including PR Web releases and my ranking has not inched higher though I am still on position 7 for a competitive keyowords and number 1 on all my long tail or non money keywords.

[Dr.Marie]

Google did not penalize sites for having an EMD. In my opinion they did the following:

-penalized sites that ranked ONLY because of their EMD but were otherwise really poor sites.
-removed some of the ranking benefit that used to accompany having an EMD

If I were starting a business about green widgets and www.greenwidgets.com was available I would not hesitate to buy it because I know that I am going to create a good quality website.

[keenlearner]

Great. I understand the EMD better now. On another note, what if I want to change the domain name because it has a brand name in it. Will that cause any negative change in ranking or will all the link juice pass to it if redirect ? Thanks for the help.

[Test-ok]

No it won't cause any negative affect, it may not rank as well, but that depends on how and what you do when you change it. 301 will pass juice, it's been noted by many that it doesn't pass all of it..how much it loses? don't really know...Hopefully the domain name will help more than the juice thats lost.

[keenlearner]

>>it may not rank as well, but that depends on how and what you do when you change it. <<

Is there anything I need to keep in mind ? any specific do's and donts ?