Are there diminishing returns of keyword stuffing domain names?
-
Aside from the obvious usability issue of having a super long domain name. Let's just for a moment image that that doesn't matter at all.
Is there a point at which having another keyword in your domain name is not giving a significant boost to SER?
Lets be more specific. Often we see two keyword domains, and they rank well. and I have also seen many 3 keyword domains raking well. but what about a 4, 5 or 6 keyword domain name?
like:
keyword1keyword2keyword3keyword4keyword4keyword6.com <-- obviously it looks ridiculous, but we are ignoring that factor for the duration of this question.
I would also like to know in multiple keyword domain names, does the location of the keywords have any relevance? is it like title tags? closer to the front = more boost?
And furthermore one last question on the same subject. Does google consider varations of words when it gives the boost to "exact match" domain name in search results. for example: BookStory.com V.S. BookStories.com when someone searches for "story books" would these two get the same bonus?
-
Straight from the horses mouth, checkout this video from Google's Matt Cutts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWFv43qubI
Importantly: "Now if you are still on the fence, let me just give you a bit of color. that we have looked at the rankings and the weights that we give to keyword domains, & some people have complained that we are giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains. So we have been thinking about at adjusting that mix a bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm, so that given 2 different domains it wouldn't necessarily help you as much to have a domain name with a bunch of keywords in it."
-
Keyword domains work best for exact matches. For example: BrassWidgets.com will get a ranking bonus for "brass widgets".
If you add another word like "RedBrassWidgets.com" you lose almost all of the ranking advantage for "Brass widgets"
Singular and plural make a big difference. Remember, they are best for exact match queries and as soon as you depart from that they really decline in ranking value - unless you earn the ranking by normal methods.
These are my opinions based upon owning a few keyword domains and competing with them for a very large number of queries.
I haven't done any scientific studies and I have not read anyone who is going to put numbers on these concepts.
-
With Google's continuing focus on usability and user experience coming into their ranking algorithems more and more you would expect they would give less weight to product-feature1-feature2-feature3.com than product.com. The fact they are gearing up to show performance in analytics data suggest that usability in gaining in importance as is social significance. How many people do you think with use up most of their tweet with your url?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How keywords and subfolders connect
I'm working on restructuring my site. We have main topic areas, and any given visitor will ONLY be interested in 1 of those topics. So to consolidate the information into a simpler format, I want to take all the various pieces of content and wrap them under a given topic. [There is a question in here, I promise.] So I want to create www.domain.com/topic/subtopic-1, /topic/subtopic-2, etc. [Yes, I will apply all necessary redirects for any new URL restructuring.] Now here's the question: If I want to rank for "Peanut Butter Sandwiches with Jelly" and "Peanut Butter Sandwiches with Jam," will I be able to structure the URLs as /peanut-butter/sandwiches-with-jelly/, or should I go /peanut-butter/peanut-butter-sandwiches-with-jelly? And please note, /peanut-butter/ will likely redirect to /peanut-butter/subtopic-1/ since it won't make sense to have /peanut-butter/ on its own. [PB&J is just an example.] What's the best way to go about this? Any recommendations? I really appreciate your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jheath0 -
Sub-domain or not???
Hi, We're setting up a forum for our users (our target audience responds extremely well to forums). I was wondering if it should be set up on a sub-domain or not. I'm leaning towards sub-domain, but our devs say this will impact how they approach it so I'd like to give them an answer asap so we can proceed with planning it! Thanks, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Domain and Sitemap Question
Hi - I am hoping you can help me with this issue we are currently trying to solve. We are hosting our mobile site's content on a different domain than what the URL of the site is, though owned by same company. In Google Webmasters tool we have the mobile sitemap under "sitemaps.xyz.com", however the URL of the site is "m.xyz.com". We have submitted 60MM pages in the mobile sitemap, but only 1MM pages have been indexed. Do you think this set up causes confusion with the bots? Does this affect the crawlability of the site? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ladylana
Eva0 -
Create different pages with keyword variations VS. Add keyword variations in 1 page
For searches involving keywords like "lessons", "courses", "classes" I see frequently pages in the top rankings which do not contain the search term in the title tag, despite these terms being quite competitive. It seems that when searching for "classes", google detects that pages about "courses" may be just as relevant. What do you recommend? option 1: creating 10 pages optimized on 10 different keyword variations, each with a significant part of unique content or option 2: one page and dropping throughout the page 10 keyword variations in body and headlines Given that keywords are all synonyms and website has already high domain authority in the niche. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Outranking a crappy outdated site with domain age & keywords in URL.
I'm trying to outrank a website with the following: Website with #1 ranking for a search query with "City & Brand" Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 11 years & 9 months old Has both the City & brand in the URL name. The site is crap, outdated.. probably last designed in the 90's, old layouts, not a lot of content & NO keywords in the titles & descriptions on all pages. My site ranks 5th for the same keyword.. BEHIND 4 pages from the site described above. Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 4 years & 2 months old Has only the CITY in the URL. Brand new site design this past year, new content & individual keywords in the titles, descriptions on each page. My main question is.... do you think it would be be beneficial to buy a new domain name with the BRAND in the URL & CITY & 301 redirect my 4 year old domain to the new domain to pass along the authority it has gained. Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference? Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out? Thanks for any help & suggestions on how to beat this old site or at least show up second.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Removed Duplicate Domains, What Should I Expect?
Hi All, So I have been at my current company for 5 months now. I quickly realized that they previously bought multiple domains. The domains do make sense (they are mostly our products, etc). However they did not just redirect to our main website, instead, they were a direct copy of our main website. They had it setup so that when we made changes to our main website, www.mainwebsite.com, that the same exact change went to www.productwebsite.com. Basically we had about 7 of the SAME EXACT websites with a different root domain. So I explained to them the problem with having duplicate content on the web and how we are basically just self cannibalizing our online efforts. This problem is fixed now and I am just wondering if anybody has seen the results before? To tell you the truth we already do pretty well SEO-wise. Just wondering if this will make it even better? I am assuming that this will also take a little while to take effect? Thanks! Pat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatBausemer0 -
Keyword Stuffing if repeating word three times?
If one were to write something like this, "I cannot over-empasisize the importance of branding, branding, branding." on a marketing page that talked about all the types of Internet marketing, would Google consider it keyword stuffing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebWise10 -
How to Target Keyword Permutations
I have a client that wants to rank for a keyword phrase that has many permutations.. ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort", "Hill Country Resort Alaska", "Hill Country Alaska Resort" But I'm wondering if I should target these all on the same page or not. I'm assuming all of these permutations are actually valid searches because I did my keyword research for 'exact match' keywords and got results like this.. (let me know if I'm missing something here, or if this sounds right) [Alaska Hill Country Resort] - 230 Local Searches [Hill Country Resort Alaska] - 140 Local Searches [Hill Country Alaska Resort] - 30 Local Searches The phrase we're targeting is their main keyword phrase, so I've chosen their home-page as the page to rank for this phrase. My thought is to optimize for the most popular phrase (ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort"), and sprinkle in the other phrases throughout the copy. Next I would run a link-building campaign targeting the main phrase first.. then the next phrase, and so on, so that my anchor text is more heavily focused on the more popular terms, but I would also make sure to include the less popular terms. Do you think this is the best way to go about this? Do I really need to make individual pages for each of the permutations, or is it okay to target them all on one page since they are essentially the same keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560