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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[MadAboutDomains]

But a term like BostonRoofing.com can be.

In fact I sold that domain years ago, and the end users have done very well with it.
It explains where you are. It explains what you do.

Brad I always value your input. My argument would be that Boston Roofing can be a trademark and could identify a single entity, however you're always going to be competing with other brands that offer the same service in Boston.

 

[bmugford]

@bmugford, set aside your grievances with Mueller's example choices for a second, and answer this question: What do you think Mueller's is trying to say with the article? What do you think his point is?

Good question.

It is hard to really know based on the presentation which included ridiculous generalizations like "everyone thinks you're a spammer" and a purposely awful example EMD.

Nike.com is better than best-running-shoes.com. How profound!!!

Whatever point he tried to make, he did it poorly.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

Brad I always value your input. My argument would be that Boston Roofing can be a trademark and could identify a single entity, however you're always going to be competing with other brands that offer the same service in Boston.

True, but you are always competing regardless of your domain.

If their domain was BostonRoofing.com, RoofDoctors.com, RoofDoctorsInBoston.com, etc.
Boston Roofing is the perfect type of domain in that field when it comes to credibility.

You don't need to capture 100% of the market share.

I guarantee all things being equal, most customers are going to choose BostonRoofing.com over RoofDoctorsInBoston.com or some terrible "brand".

Brad

 

[bmugford]

I personally have no problems with EMD or brands. I own and sell many of each.
You will probably notice my brand is "DataCube" and not an EMD in the field.

However, I do have a problem with a poorly worded, disingenuous argument about the negatives of EMD.
It is not that simple. I would have expected more from someone like John Mueller.

Brad

 

[DealMaker1]

No one is trying to win any arguments, we're trying make sense of what Mueller is saying.


You're conflating site keywords with SLD keywords. Keywords on your site will affect your SEO, keywords in your SLD won't.

Personally I'd say that EMD:s are some of the least valuable in general, above alpha-numeric. But I'd also limit my definition of EMD:s to be two words or more. Any one-word domain I classify as a generic domain because they're more consistently valued that way.


I agree. But people aren't reaching out to Mueller for help on semantics, they're reaching out to him to figure out how Google's search engine works.


Nowhere does this say that keywords in the domain help with SEO or even mentions EMD:s.


Because it wouldn't matter. His point is that EMD:s don't help with SEO and that it might also be difficult to expand your business in the future. The point stands even if you go with runningshoes.com.


No, it was a good choice because it emphasized the point he was trying to make: EMD:s don't help with SEO, and it makes it difficult to expand your business in the future.

A great example is zenpayroll.com who had to rebrand to gusto.com since they couldn't secure zen.com when they wanted to expand into different services. Now zenpayroll.com is a brand and not an EMD, but the point stands.

Well, if I'm conflating, you are splitting. It's obvious an SLD is just a fancy term for the part that comes before the dot. That's all. Let's not fall in love with our intellects now...

So an SLD can be a keyword or a brand. Google search will always take a look at what is to the left of dot and rank accordingly. And sometimes that is generic keywords. So it is not just for page SEO. Keywords in the domain WILL affect SEO. If it didn't, there would be no reason for Cutts or Mueller to come out and talk about keyword domains. Would there?

You will never divine what Mueller says ( it's called good old-fashioned protection of trade secrets). They never say anything straight forward because they don't want people trying to game the system. It's all open to wide interpretation, much like blue chip stock earnings conference calls.

So if there is something to be learned, I suppose it just has to be done by experimentation and observation and then to adapt.

 

[MKA]

Good question.

It is hard to really know

No, not if you read the reddit post and the article referred to in this threads.

The advice his gives are as follows:

• Don't buy an EMD for SEO, because an EMD won't help you with SEO.
• EMD:s can make it difficult to expand your business, because it can lock you into certain keywords.
• "Keyword-rich" (long) EMD:s are unprofessional and often identified as spam sites.

This is all sound and justified advice.

By misconstruing this as "EMD:s are all garbage, avoid them at all cost," you're missing the point, because that's not what he's saying.

 

[bmugford]

No, not if you read the reddit post and the article referred to in this threads.

The advice his gives are as follows:

• Don't buy an EMD for SEO, because an EMD won't help you with SEO.
• EMD:s can make it difficult to expand your business, because it can lock you into certain keywords.
• "Keyword-rich" (long) EMD:s are unprofessional and often identified as spam sites.

This is all sound and justified advice.

By misconstruing this as "EMD:s are all garbage, avoid them at all cost," you're missing the point, because that's not what he's saying.

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

 

[VadimK]

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.

 

[bmugford]

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.

Yes, the terrible example domain was clearly by design. It was to diminish EMD as a viable option.
Quality EMD are a viable option. Shitty ones are not.

Brad

 

[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.

 

[bmugford]

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.

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.

Nike.com vs Shoes.com is a lot more analogous than Nike.com vs Best-Running-Shoes.com.
It is just a terrible example domain to use.

You can't use a terrible EMD then compare it to Nike.

A shitty EMD is no better or worse than a shitty "brand".

Brad

 

[MKA]

Nike.com vs Shoes.com is a lot more analogous than Nike.com vs Best-Running-Shoes.com.

Not for Mueller's example, because he's specifically referring to EMD with an abundance of keywords.

This would be like me saying that most long abbreviated domains are bad, and you correcting me by claiming that 2 letter domains are worth millions. It's not applicable to what I'm saying.

 

[Future Sensors]

So, now, would you take nike.com or shoes.com?

Google will welcome brands like Nike every hour of the day to spend a lot of money on Adwords.

 

[bmugford]

Not for Mueller's example, because he's specifically referring to EMD with an abundance of keywords.

This would be like me saying that most long abbreviated domains are bad, and you correcting me by claiming that 2 letter domains are worth millions. It's not applicable to what I'm saying.

So his point is that bad domains are bad?

The real takeaway is if you have some terrible EMD, with (2) hyphens, "everyone" will think you are a spammer.

I would go further and say that if you have a shitty EMD with (2) hyphens or a shitty "brand" with (2) hyphens there would be no difference.

His real point seems to be more "don't use terrible domains".

Brad

 

[MadAboutDomains]

True, but you are always competing regardless of your domain.

If their domain was BostonRoofing.com, RoofDoctors.com, RoofDoctorsInBoston.com, etc.
Boston Roofing is the perfect type of domain in that field when it comes to credibility.

You don't need to capture 100% of the market share.

I guarantee all things being equal, most people are going to choose BostonRoofing.com over RoofDoctorsInBoston.com or some terrible "brand".

Brad

In the context of that article I would say that BostonRoofing. com suffers from the things that are pointed out in that article.

 

[VadimK]

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.

The example taken was to show the absurdity of his comparison. It's the cleanest ''keyword-rich'' name possible (1+0).
But it doesn't matter - the quality 2 key-word rich domain will beat brand-to-be in the absolute majority of the cases. Take RunningShoes vs. some random urango.com (who said brand has to be 4 letters?).

The brand becomes valuable only when developed. But we are talking about the domain name picking stage, so, all ''brands'' are undeveloped.

So, the quality ''right here, right now'' will be in a good keyword-rich domain, rather than something pretending to be a brand word - because 90% of people will never develop it into the proper brand, but that's the other story).

 

[bmugford]

In the context of that article I would say that BostonRoofing. com suffers from the things that are pointed out in that article.

Yet somehow they bought it, grew the business, and have been very successful.

So maybe John should not give up his day job.

Brad

 

[Future Sensors]

He even uses the example best-running-shoes.com

He didn't. The SEJ article interpreted his words with this example domain.

 

[bmugford]

He didn't. The SEJ article interpreted his words with this example domain.

That's almost worse then.

It would mean his comment is not related to "best-running-shoes.com" type domains only.
It would be even more broadly against EMD.

The second two points can be debated. The first point is absurd.

Brad

 

[DealMaker1]

I personally have no problems with EMD or brands. I own and sell many of each.
You will probably notice my brand is "DataCube" and not an EMD in the field.

However, I do have a problem with a poorly worded, disingenuous argument about the negatives of EMD.
It is not that simple. I would have expected more from someone like John Mueller.

Brad

Basically he was speaking for the sake of speaking and lacking in substance. Shame because all he accomplished is getting some people frazzled and nothing more.

 

[Future Sensors]

That's almost worse then.

It would mean his comment is not related to "best-running-shoes.com" type domains only.
It would be even more broadly against EMD.

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Yes. Looking at the original question that Mueller was trying to answer on Reddit, it's even more confusing. I still think the hyphen plays a central role. The question was:

 

[MKA]

So his point is that bad domains are bad?

No.

The advice his gives are as follows:

• Don't buy an EMD for SEO, because an EMD won't help you with SEO.
• EMD:s can make it difficult to expand your business, because it can lock you into certain keywords.
• "Keyword-rich" (long) EMD:s are unprofessional and often identified as spam sites.

 

[MKA]

It's the cleanest ''keyword-rich'' name possible (1+0).

No.

"Rich" means "an abundance of".

If you're "rich in money" (wealthy) it means that you have an abundance of money.

If you're "rich in love" then that means that you have an abundance of people that love you.

By the same line of reasoning, "rich in keywords" or "keyword-rich" means to have an abundance of keywords.

For a domain, 1 or 2 keywords is standard, and therefore can't be considered an abundance of keywords.

Consequently, neither shoes.com nor runningshoes.com are keyword-rich domains. Because they both contain a regular amount of keywords for a domain.

 

[VadimK]

No.


No.

"Rich" means "an abundance of".

If you're "rich in money" (wealthy) it means that you have an abundance of money.

If you're "rich in love" then that means that you have an abundance of people that love you.

By the same line of reasoning, "rich in keywords" or "keyword-rich" means to have an abundance of keywords.

For a domain, neither 1 or 2 keywords can be considered an abundance of keywords.

Consequently, neither shoes.com nor runningshoes.com are not keyword-rich domains. Because they both contain a relative meager amount of keywords compared to other domains

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.

 

[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.