Source:
reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/sta8hd/how_would_google_rank_the_following_domains/
Question:
"Assume people are interested in "web design" and this is how they would enter it into the Google search bar. The term "web design" is just an example.
How would Google rank the following domains:
- web-design.com
- web.design
- web-design.net
(I don't know what is behind these URLs. It does not matter for my argument. Please don't click.)
I know .com is generally seen as the most valuable domain ending. But what if the term that is searched for ("web design") is identical to the domain, such as in the case of web.design?
Is web.design better than get-web-design.com?
Does anyone have any anecdotal evidence or even statistics to back this up?"
John Mueller:
"No difference. Also no difference if you used sabertoothed-hedgehog.com. Pick a domain name you can build on for the long run. Maybe you're doing web-design now, but what will you do in 5, 10 years? Pick something that lets you grow, or go with a domain name that's more like a brand which you can build out & which people can find you with directly (that would be my recommendation).
Creating separate sites for sub-business-ideas is a hassle, merging sites is a bigger hassle, moving domains is a hassle. All of these things take a lot of time, some money, and more. Go with something you want to keep for longer, which gives you room. There's no secret (or public) SEO-bonus for having your keywords in the domain name.
(and for those coming with "but there are keyword domains ranking well" -- of course, you can also rank well with a domain that has keywords in it. But you can rank well with other domain names too, and a domain won't rank well just because it has keywords in it.)"
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And
Google has clear instructions on how to optimize your SEO, and nowhere is it suggested that having a good SLD is beneficial for your SEO.
And this makes perfect sense, because your SLD doesn't need to have anything to do with the content of your site, and it makes no sense that your site would receive preferential treatment for having a particular SLD.
That said, Exact Match Domains are (EMD) still valuable. Because back in the day EMD did affect SEO, so people registered the lot of them, locking out non-serious users who weren't willing to give up a small fortune to get one. So the people that did end up using EMD:s were serious end-users that wanted to market their services, which in turn meant that people began to associate EMD:s with quality services, creating a degree of provenance, which has lasted to this day.
There's also the superstition that Search Engine Coordinators like John Mueller are lying about how search engines works. Which has managed to inflate the value quite a bit.
But generally people are moving away from EMD, and instead are looking for short and memorable brand-names.