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Although I understand the desire to have clean fast loading sites, it is not the typical site and not in my experience representative of the best of the net.
To me even that, um, how should I put it, uh, "world" graphic of WW is a bit, uh, sparse or, uh, lacking? (no offense, big guy!) I know obviously that WW is a real quality site, because the content stands out. But it seems the exception that defines the rule...And...it seems to me the reason for it being that way is that WW is going with what search engines like. Titles in H1 Tag. Lot of text. Lots of content. Descriptive links. Not too much graphics.
But I think a dash of graphics doesn't hurt a site at all. Am I alone in thinking like this?
I know my example is only keyword-keyword, but how is Google supposed to know that ABC isn't a keyword? I imagine lots of people search for it.
I think we just have to put up with it.
Also,
Can't google figure out keyword.com = good. Keyword.net = ok. Keyword-Keyword-Keyword.com = bad?
Why should google rank widget.net over widget.com? That is pure commerce - google doesn't care about the commercial value of your domain name, only about the content of your website.
And keywords in domain is just logical. If I want to make a new domain about widget safety, I'm not going to call it www.foobar.com, I'm going to call it www.widget-safety.net.
It's true this can be, and is, abused, but in terms of finding out which keywords a site is about, I hold that it is perfectly valid. [And no, I don't like spam either]
It's almost impossible to compete with tricks like this so I guess I have to have faith in the spam reports :).
A theoretical case, maybe, but in practical terms this makes no sense whatsoever. Domains extensions mean next to nothing.
>>Can't google figure out keyword.com = good. Keyword.net = ok. Keyword-Keyword-Keyword.com = bad?
Google can't figure it out because it isn't true. What domain name someone bought is not taken as a reflection of the content of the site, and rightly so.
Using widget-widget-widget.com has no *direct* affect on Google rankings at all if you ask me. There are two things here. One is that people buying widget-widget-widget.com are using other SEO techniques too - it is these that are largely responsible for their good rankings. The second is that when people link to the site using just the domain name, they are using keywords anyway, so getting good incoming link text is easier.
Who looks at the domain name anyway, its the site that matters!
Visitors typing in your URL, for instance? From a branding point of view, widget-widget-widget.com is a disaster, although there are ways and means around this.
Me? Am I the only one who reads the url before clicking a link? And how about people addicted to aol? When they go to real internet and try typing "Widgets" into the search box and don't get AOL keyword Widget info, they are bound to try widgets.com? Search engine mentality just isn't there in many early stage internet victims.
Again its not my choice to buy these domains but you are limited, especially '.com'
Try and find a good keyword.com, its like trying to find a ice cube in the desert :)
I don't want to get into a banning debate, but many people on WW seems to want every known spam technique 'banned' or penalised, but as soon as this happens to their own sites all we hear about is how unfair and innaccurate such filters are. Google shouldn't have to 'ban' anything, they should just have to work on relevancy and spam that does not help the user will sink to the bottom. Penalising people for choice of domain name would be pretty extreme.
but as soon as this happens to their own sites all we hear about is how unfair and innaccurate such filters are
so true!
Everything is spam on this forum.
I am scared to look at what next is classed as spam.
I know! lets ban everybody!
It's no wonder everybody craps themselves when the update comes round!
>>And finally: buyers beware: as WebGuerrilla has reported from last SES all majors are looking into downgrading multiple hyphenated domain names.<<
"multiple hyphenated," meaning two, or more than two?
One of the sites that dominates the keywords I am trying to target is using 3 word hyphenated sub-domains AND a 3 word main domain.
Tell me that it isn't spam :).
Dave, I'm not telling you that it isn't spam. I'm saying that there are legitimate uses of subdomains that would be penalised if a filter was introduced.
What you are talking about is not that the use of subdomains is spam, but you have come across spam sites which also use multiple subdomains, the two things are not the same.
>>rehashed, keyword packed content
This is surely what you object to, not the fact that they are using subdomains?
if the intention is not to deceive, why not use static pages under a main domain?
If a person chooses to use a static page...great...if they choose to use subdomains...great. The fact is, the engines should not (and more than likely won't)penalize this. There are WAY more people using sub-domains as a way of structure than those who are using them to "spam".
One of the sites that dominates the keywords I am trying to target is using 3 word hyphenated sub-domains AND a 3 word main domain.Tell me that it isn't spam :).
Why is this spam? It is only spam if Google says it is spam, and they don't say that this is spam.
And finally: buyers beware: as WebGuerrilla has reported from last SES all majors are looking into downgrading multiple hyphenated domain names.
If they do this it is more likely to target four or more hyphens in my opinion. There are tens of thousands of legitimate single hyphen combinations in the English language.
If you combine two of them e.g. pre-owned and top-hats with one unessential hyphen you get pre-owned-top-hats. Theoretically this could be considered spam only if one illegitimate hyphen is considered spam.
There are even examples with three essential hyphens like ex-mother-in-law.
I have thought about this a lot and placed my bets, safe with one, two or three in my opinion.
It was easy to accomplish high rankings and great traffic w when Yahoo was delivering there search results directly from the directory listings...man was there ever (and there still is) a bunch of crap domain names being deployed (and, yes, doing well for what Yahoo was delivering)..I think Yahoo saw a devaluation in their traffic and ad revenues and dedided to ride Google's coattails to better ad revenue based on Google's brand popularity and search results quality (NOTE: There is plenty of cheap and easy spam showing up in the Google SERPs)
The best approach these days is to come up with a creative, thoughtful brand type domain name and if you can incorporate your primarly keyword, great...that's for the visitors and building an audience...not for the bots anymore...in Google's case...it's the body content and inbounds that really count...
If graphics are deployed...try making them tasteful and balanced and make sure you optimize the **** out of them so they will load fast and not affect your server bandwidth usage too heavily...and make you block the spiders from crawling your images folder (unless you want you images to be catalogued)....also...trying to name your images with keyword phrases is meaningless (unless it is for your own site maintenance purposes)...
Then you seem to be contradicting yourself heini, at least as regards Google. If there is no direct boost from a multi-hyphen domain name, and any benefits derive from the actions of other webmasters linking to you, then the multi-hyphen domain name owner himself isn't gaining any direct advantage that Google needs to downgrade.
Note that the anchor text has the keywords of the domain name in it.
<a href="http://www.foobar.com">foobar.com : Your best source for widgets</a>
Compare with the above... the domain name has no keywords, it may get well listed for `foobar`, but it is lacking on the widets and widgits keywords.
These effects in themself may be enough to explain away a significant proportion of the boost from keyword-in-domain [see [webmasterworld.com...] on subject of anchor text].
What say ye?
Since Google has no easy way of preventing this exploit, it might make sense to just dampen down such domains a little bit.
Remember, to my knowledge this is all hypothetical at this point.
The problem here is that this would cause innocent collateral damage to legit sites. Penalizing a site based just on domain name seems improper. One possible strategy would be for Google to tweak the algo to do special scrutiny of multi-hyphen domain names, to see if they really are part of a network of sites linking together.
>Compare with the above... the domain name has no keywords, it may get well listed for `foobar`, but it is lacking on the widets and widgits keywords.
It may be simpler than this. Often links will just be in the form [widgets.com,...] with no anchor text specified. Thus, in this case [foobar.com...] only gets a boost for "foobar", and none for "widgets". This is the main reason why keyword domain names are better than brand names. The other is that some webmaster may link to you:
<a href="http://www.foobar.com">Foobar.com</a>
Again no anchor text boost.
What's behind this phenomenon? It just seems that if a site owner is going to put lots of effort into building a brand, requiring the user to type multiple hyphens isn't usually a great idea. The site owner risks the surfer entering the domain without the hyphens. And, if the site owner controls both domains, why not promote the unhyphenated version (other than SEO reasons)?
If Google and other SEs can improve the quality of results by tweaking algos, they will do so even if there is occasional collateral damage. (I hasten to add that the last statement is just an opinion, not inside info, but it's based on seeing legit sites occasionally get caught in spam sweeps.)
what it means it that even if they don't use `keyword in domain` AT ALL, `keyword in domain` will still benefit due to `domain in anchor text`
