A Reddit thread about generic keyword domains and SEO, received commentary from John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate.
The thread discussed the effectiveness of generic domains, such as Swimsuits.com, as sale points for the matching product, e.g. swimsuits:
“Does having a relevant keyword as the domain name do anything for seo? I have a domain like keyword.com for the exact item I am selling. Selling swimsuits and having the domain swimsuits.com. The keyword in my country has over 10000 searches monthly with medium comp.”
One of the comments was left by John Mueller, whose Reddit account reflects his personal opinions.
Said Mueller:
“If you’re planning on using this for the long run, I would not recommend using just a keyword domain name. It makes it weird to start targeting other terms, and it makes it almost impossible for people to find you by your name. A keyword domain name is not going to give you any recognizable SEO advantage on Google.”
Oddly, the original post and Mueller’s response have both been deleted since the exchange took place in December 2023; some commentary remains.
You can view the exchange on Search Engine Journal that preserved the post and comments in a screenshot.
While generic, keyword domains can generate direct type-ins, this navigation method has been taken over by Google searches of the “keyword near me” kind. In that sense, domains with good SEO rank better.
