The truth we all tend to believe in that keyword rich domains help in boosting search engine rankings has been proven to be a myth by Duane Forrester, Sr. Product Manager at Bing.
A couple of years back, I remember that used to work cos I got a whole bunch of keyword rich domains (the keywords were ones I actually targeted to rank for), and with little Off Page SEO stuff, I was able to easily rank for those keywords and pull in great organic traffic.
- Must Read: You Probably Forgot Bing and Yahoo in Your Blog’s SEO
But according to Duane, all that has changed as search engines are now fully aware of the fact that people are always trying to game the ranking algorithm. He says there are a whole lot of factors that determine site rankings order than keyword rich domains.
Infact, he made it clear on Bing’s blog that they’re still valuable because they’re easy to spell, easy to remember, and easy to pronounce. In other words they’re great for branding only.
Do you believe in this theory? What are your thoughts, please let us know using the comment box below.
10 Comments
I post on fashion trend, I belive on social network bookmarking site, I don’t relay on google nor bing, fro my rank, and I gain my pay via adsense even with out much traffic from google, I tell u am getting a stardard page view,on my blog from facebook as the mmajor source with little or Null from bing and yahoo, Google helping some how sha
I guess you meant social networking sites, and with your comment, it’s obvious you are not a believer in SEO. Anyway, stick to what works for you bro.
Hi Oscar,
Well, I feel keyword rich domain perhaps stand a better chance to improve their ranks, but not necessarily with the changing Google trends. It was the case certainly earlier, when SEO was a huge factor. Nowadays, with SEO being used in variations etc., there are many other factors which are more important and we need to cater to. I used to think about my domain name too, but not anymore. There are many domain names that don’t have keywords in their domain, yet they rank very well, which just proves the point.
Thanks for sharing, have a nice weekend 🙂
Hi Harleena,
You are quite right when you say you no longer have to worry about your domain name aha-now. This factor doesn’t necessarily affect rankings anymore as before. Thanks for your candid contribution.
Hi Oscar,
Keyword rich domain isn’t everything.
There are lots of things to improve rankings apart keyword rich domain.
Sure there are Shoukout. Keyword rich domains are no longer what to worry about anymore. 🙂
Cool question Oscar,
I’ve already made a comment concerning this on your Facebook status but, I will also say it here again. The issue of having the main keyword you want to target on your domain Is no longer as important as it use to be years ago and, people has also noticed that.
There are so many other things to put into consideration when building a site these days although, some people still believes that it still helps which might also be true but, it’s no longer as it use to be.
Thanks for Sharing.
Hi Theodore,
I believe it might have little or no effect in the today’s ranking algorithm, but sure used to help before. Thanks for your contribution pal.
It has already been discussed about a year ago that EMD are no longer helping in ranking, but they still play a major role 😀
This is proven by ME!
I believe domains like .edu and .gov do rank higher in search results.