I searched for available domain names for a few weeks. When I picked my domain name, many of the key words were already taken. This is great information for people who are just starting to put their plan together. So, I've been building from the ground up. Now I need to check the blacklist. Thanks!

This is really useful information.  I hadn't heard of poison words before and I am glad I lucked out with my domain selection.  However, I did happen to read Grinding It Out years ago.  Take care.

This idea of "poison words" came up just when I was getting going with SEO back in '99/'00, and it was quickly dismissed. Even Aaron's post from 18 months ago says there's no such list, and that there are numerous reasons certain types of sites seem to not rank well over the years.

Here are some Google SERPs that are incredibly competitive and have listings from domains with "blog" (mostly) and "forum" in the domain:

http://www.google.com/search?q=online+marketing

561 million results - #2 uses "blog"



http://www.google.com/search?q=copywriting

11 million results - 2 have "blog" in domain



http://www.google.com/search?q=make+money+online

203 million - 2 have "blog" in domain



http://www.google.com/search?q=link+building

418 million results - #5 has "blog" in URL



http://www.google.com/search?q=internet+business

1.6 billion results - #9 is from Blogspot



http://www.google.com/search?q=real+estate+marketing

147 million results - one has "blog" in domain, one has "forum" in domain

Two things about this post I'l like to comment on:

1) If you read Googles webmaster guidelines there has never been any mention of poison words.  They rank content and backlinks.  If your content sucks and you have no quality links then your exposure will suffer - as it should.  However, I'm certainly not the guru on poison words, I just read what google says to provide and then I do my best to give them what they want.

2) Consider adding dashes to your urls.  I always have and it has always seemed to help.  Software Engineers don't have all day to write code that can parse and make sense out of urls like this: "thegreatestsiteforinformationonplanetearth"  But it is easy to parse this: "the-greatest-site-for-information-on-planet-earth"

I knew this when I bought my other domain name (www.thesarasotamls.com) years ago. I figured I would rank better for any phrase with 'sarasota' and 'mls' in it. I spent a lot of time and effort on the site and as a result rank very well in Google.

Unfortunately, the Sarasota Board of Realtors wants me to shut the site down. They say I am duping the public and in violation of article 12 of the Realtor code of ethics. We shall see what happens.

Be careful with 'mls' and 'realtor' in your domain name.

I guess I got lucky, http://www.illinoisrealestate.com/ - ya think?  Seriously though #1 "illinois real estate" easily (I think).  In my keyword long-tail "illinoisrealestate.com" itself is my #8 term.

Brian

Nathan,

Yes a blog with a theorized poison word can do well, but it takes more backlinks and spends longer in the sandbox. Additionally, you are in Canada, not in America.  That is also a factor- poison words vary from country to country.  And, yes, of course, if they search for that term “blog” it is no longer a poison word for that search string.

Blogs are actually becoming less trusted due to splogging, blog farms and other black hat techniques that use the inherent juice of a blog.  In fact in the last algo update (Mar 31) the SEO community believes that they dampened the effect of links from one blog to another.