cant beleive how many hometown domain names still avail ..for sure help with search terms on google ...liverpoolwindowcleaners.co.uk
still avail 123reg £6.98
www.saintalbunswindowcleaning.co.uk avail
Aaaaarrrgghhh! Don't buy them. Google now class them as an EMD! They won't rank well at all.
Although there is a crack down, there are quite a few URLS still ranking well. If you have/create quality stuff and have good link juice flowing, there should be no reason for them to devalue. it's not the EMD itself, for now...it's the blatent keyword stuffed pages that they don't like and the horrible backlink profiles.
I have all of the above on my twc website. Been around 11 years, top of google for 10 years solid. I got content, traffic, metadata, etc. all is good. Since the penguin, it can't be found for 'window cleaner telford'. My webmaster says it must be the URL. It's top still for gutters, patios and solar. But for windows, it's rubbish. It must be the EMD thing. We have tried everything else. It is cheaper to build a whole new site than try to fix the current one.
There are 101 one things to consider, although I agree EMD won't help!
Links + content are going to make more of a difference than the EMD in my eyes
Put it this way, if you type in IBM, IBM still comes up. You can say "but that's their business name", but it's still exact match in an algo's eyes. It says IBM in the domain and it's got IBM plastered all over it.
They have not just content, but good content. They'll have authoritive sources linking to all of their pages with diffrenent anchor text; it looks natural.
What I first noticed about yours is your KW density is heavy on the page I checked, too heavy.
Your link profile is small, like 500+ links, but only 7 rooting domains on OSE. One seems to be windowanother place, which probably has little or no value anyway, as these links are cracked down on.
Then there's deep linking, varied anchor text and so on...the list is endless. Don't just blame it on the EMD though is what I'm saying.