advice Google’s John Mueller Cautions Against Keyword-Rich Domains

[News]

Keyword-rich domains may harm a website's long-term success, warns Google Search Advocate John Mueller. Here are five reasons why.

Keyword-rich domain names were once thought to be an effective way to increase a website’s visibility and improve search engine rankings.

However, there are several reasons why keyword-rich domain names can be detrimental to a website’s success.

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[MKA]

@VadimK, while I couldn't any definitive definition for what makes up a "keyword-rich domain," some people did use it in the same sense as you, i.e. a domain name that contains specific keywords for which you want to rank, not mentioning any specific number of keywords. So I'll concede this point.

If you have an EMD and have relevant content, it has to get a boost , however minimal.

No. This is what Mueller is refuting. The SLD is not considered in the ranking of a domain.

In response to a reddit post Mueller specifically clarified that web-design.com, web.design, and sabertoothed-hedgehog.com all rank the same for web-design. None of them receive a bonus of any kind.

 

[MKA]

In any case the burden of proof is on your shoulders.

The burden of proof is on the claimant.

You're making the claim that Mueller is lying. Back it up or back down.

By virtue of Cutts and Mueller speaking toward a "cutback" in keyword domains (the SLD side) IS the proof that the SLD has always factored into their ranking equation. That equation is being refined but the keyword side is NOT being expunged.

Isn't that proof enough that SLD have ALWAYS factored into the ranking? That these Google guys come right out and say it has been a factor?! They have just implied weighting will be refined , that's all.

What you're referring to was over 10 years ago, and no one is arguing that SLD wasn't a factor in 2012.

However, Mueller's recent (2022) statement was that there's no difference in the ranking for web-design between web-design.com and sabertoothed-hedgehog.com.

This means that SLD doesn't matter. At all. Because sabertoothed-hedgehog has nothing to do with web-design.

 

[MKA]

His first point is quite literally - "everyone thinks you’re a spammer".

That is like a dumb take you would find from some random idiot on Twitter.

Brad

No, he's emphasizing that an abundance of keywords in your domain makes a domain look unprofessional. He even uses the example best-running-shoes.com to prove that it looks like a spam site.

I already wrote on this, but just to be even more clear, if he really wanted compare a keyword-rich domain vs brand, he should have compared Nike not vs ridiculously awful 2-hyphenated 3-words name, but vs Shoes.com (but important - where Nike is not a brand developed as a result of an investment of billion dollars - but just a random 4 letter name which only has chance to become a brand - imagine, you don't know what Nike is, no such company, no trademarks exist, nothing - it's just a random 4 letter domain name).

So, now, would you take nike.com or shoes.com?
(If nike is hardly imaginable as such, imagine a word rike.com vs shoes.com)

To me, the answer is obvious.

Shoes.com is not a keyword-rich domain, it contains 1 keyword, the smallest number of keywords a domain can contain.

Keyword-rich would imply a minimum of 3-4 keywords. Because most brandable domains are often 2 keywords, and brandables are meant the be short.

 

[MKA]

Talking about proper English grammatics - yes, but it's definitely not the case from the domaining standpoint.

Do yourself a favor, go and check across different online ''keywords-rich suggestion tools'' - where for any given keyword numerous combinations of two words will be suggested.

I've never seen the phrase "keyword-rich suggestion tools" in my life, In fact Google gives me 0 results for it (it also gives 0 results for keyword-rich suggestion tool")

What you're referring to is probably keyword suggestion tools. But that doesn't use the word keyword-rich.

And again, Mueller's example of a keyword-rich domain was best-running-shoes.com, which contains 3 keywords. Which can be considered excessive, since the norm is 1-2 keywords.

 

[DealMaker1]

Hmmmm. Yep. Old news. But you can try and change this old news. Try and see what happens. Not as easy as you think.