Are there diminishing returns of keyword stuffing domain names?
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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?
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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."
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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.
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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?
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