debate Keyword Domains VS Branded Domains

There is currently huge seo advantage for keyword domains. Its the highest I've seen it in years. I totally and completely disagree.

secretagentdad said:

There is currently huge seo advantage for keyword domains. Its the highest I've seen it in years. I totally and completely disagree.

Click to expand...

But john mueller asserted that keyword domains lost influence years ago.

I strenuously disagree. Sounds like this was a statement not a question.

There has been reports that good content and a domain with pertaining keywords are more effective than just good content alone.

If your competing up against pepsi.com or coke.com trying to break into the softdrink market and bought cola.net cola.org cola.xyz along with softdrink.xyz etc your going to stand more of a chance than starting up a random brand. Even if you use some generic names to market your new brand you better your chance. Sure a brand can still function as it is all about the content but what is to stop you from doing the same with the generic names giving a certain advantage by generic promoting brand as well.

My take on this is that the answer is yes and no ... but indirectly yes.

I'm pretty sure all can agree that the "score" Google gives a site because of it's URL has been vastly decreased if not completely eliminated. HOWEVER ... there are most certainly other measured metrics that are indeed directly influenced by your URL.

Most notably click-through rate .. meaning that if (from search) people click to your site more often than other sites, you will score more than other websites in that part of your score. This is where a good keyword domain can distinguish itself from a made up brand. Effectively let's say you were selling forks and your URL was Forks.com .. then even if you were new and started with a lower ranking, people would still be much more likely to click through to your website than another website called SpikeyThings.com ... then just by the very fact people click through more to you, Google will then give you points .. theoretically not because of your URL .. but because of the human response to your URL (effectively Google sees click-through as a measurement of trust ...

So in the end your URL did not matter at all to Google .. but your URL very much matter to people searching for the term .. so in the end .. Google most definitely can measure and see the human response to your URL (via click-through rate and possibly other metrics), and so even if directly you get zero search rank points for your URL .. you most certainly do get points indirectly specifically due to the quality and precision of your URL simply because will be significantly more likely to click to a website with the URL "Forks.com" rather than "SpikeyThings.com".

That being said .. even if you had "Forks.com", if your site sucks or has no content, that would lead to people turning back in search, which would kill your search rank .. so while your URL most definitely is indirectly part of the equation, content ultimately is a very crucial factor.


Hope that all made sense! lol