A keyword match domain name comes with many built in advantages: type in traffic, links are easier to acquire, authority given to it by Google, etc.

One advantage that often gets overlooked is that owning the exact match domain will make it very difficult for negative listings to appear in the SERPS for your name. The more competitive the keyword phrase the harder it will be for negative listings to creep up.

As the market matures and more competitors enter, they will likely use the keyword + some modifier in their domain name to compete and try to grab some of that traffic off the generic keyword search. This simultaneously makes it more difficult for negative listings to appear for your primary keyword/brand. Even if users type in ‘keyword.com’ into the search engines, the results that will be returned are your site at #1 (hopefully with sitelinks) and #2, and then 3-10 will likely be competitors who are using the keyword in their domain name.

I’ve been examining a bunch exact match domain queries lately and very rarely do negative listings appear.
Obviously many of the quality, traffic driving keyword domain names are taken, but they are up for auction every so often and this is another reason why they are worth the premium that they’ll cost.

Marketers go to great lengths before creating an ad campaign or other actions that are going to serve as a point of interaction with prospects. While this is obviously time well spent, marketers should be equally concerned about existing customer interactions that they do not control, mainly what appears for their brand name and most important products in the search results.

In a world where anybody and their mother can easily create a web page about anything they desire, it is becoming more and more important that you (as an owner of your brand) are aware of what’s being said about you online. In the good ol’ days when media was consolidated this was a fairly easy task to undertake, as you just had to check a few places. But with consumer generated media being all the craze these days, there is plenty of opportunity for brands to thrive or suffer its consequences.

In the eyes of a customer, what a third party says about you can be far more powerful than anything you can say about yourself. With more potential customers doing their product research online, it is crucial that you are at least aware of the interactions that a potential customer can have with your brand. When searching, most people don’t go beyond the top 10 results, so if you can control the top 10 for your brand you will be in good shape. In my personal experience when I’m searching for a product or service online if I see intelligent (intelligent is a completely subjective term, concerns I may have with a product may be unimportant to you) criticism about the brand I’m looking to do business with, I won’t necessarily write it off, but I will look for alternatives. Negative listings create lots of unnecessary friction in the customer buying process by putting the seed of doubt in their minds and making them far more susceptible to buyers remorse. If they still end up purchasing from you despite this and you don’t deliver you will have validated the doubt they previously had and lost a customer for life, and could potentially have a greater reputation issue on your hands.

Another thing to keep an eye on which is consistently overlooked is what is being said about your other important assets, mainly your employees and your flagship products. While you can usually catch what is being said about key employees by monitoring your brand references (since most people will say John Smith of XYZ corp to provide context to their readers), you will likely have to separately monitor your core products. The Pareto Principle says that 20% of your products will drive 80% of sales. Obviously the 80/20 ratio is not exact, but a similar ratio is evident in most businesses. If you aren’t aware of what’s being said about your most important products and your brand, you are likely leaving money on the table.