Do keywords in domain names still work these days?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  James Maabadi: Not so much. Better to pick something your visitors will like and remember.
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  Rajesh kumar: yes if you have a keyword in your domain name then it would be work in keyword searching searching. I have blog which is related to online business directory and my domain name is also online business directory and my blog ranking are good. so for me its still working.
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  Martin Gram: It still works a little, but not as much as it use to. However it is important that you have quality content and provide a good user interaction.
  
  If it is a long domain, then I would either find a related keyword pick up something that your visitors will remember.
  
  Your rankings in Google also depends on your back link profile, and if you have your keyword in your domain, you really need to be careful not to use it to much in your anchor texts.
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  Charles Lee: Thanks +James Maabadi +Rajesh kumar +Martin Gram for your views!!
  
  If I may ask another question..
  (I'll try to amend my original text above and add this question in)
  
  Do you guys know if Google can see all these words "korea", "korean" and "lifestyle" as 3 separate keywords if I have the word "koreanlifestyle" in my domain name?
  
  note: that is not my blog or a url I'm trying to promote, I just swapped the country name for the question :)
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  Dave Elliott: Nope, as far as I am aware without hypens between the words the entire thing as read as one word. ;
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  Charles Lee: Thanks +Dave Elliott !
  Man! It means I've gotten the technique wrong! I don't have hypens between my url!
  
  Ok, I guess I will have to concentrate on driving traffic with contents instead (or purchase another domain name and redirect it to my current one?)
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  Martin Gram: It is not a mistake that you do not have hyphens in between. you can rank for both korealifestyle and koreanlifestyle, where the one that is in your domain name would likely be the easiest one to rank, depending on the competition.
  
  If your domain looks like koreakoreanlifestyle it will start to look to weird and could raise a red flag.
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  Charles Lee: Ok +Martin Gram . I understand now
  
  What I was trying to achieve initially was - I thought I could rank with "countryname" (yes, not korea), but my domain name I bought was "countrynameeanlifestyle"
  
  When I googled countryname or countrynameean I cannot find my blog, but if I search countrynameean and lifestyle, I'm there in the search result..
  
  But I really want to rank well for countryname
  
  Guess it's difficult Ya..
  
  Thanks for your comments mate!
  
  
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  Dave Elliott: here is the google guidines on the subject.
  
  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en
  
  To be honest thought domains are becoming less of a ranking factor these days(cause everyone was abusing it!) so I wouldn't worry too much just make sure everything after the .com(or whatever) is hyphen or slash separated!
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  Charles Lee: Thanks +Dave Elliott !! That helps! 
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  Dave Elliott: I would assume that country name would be almost impossible to rank for!(unless its a very small,  ;non news worthy country!) Surely it will all be wikipedia and news and government sites?
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  Charles Lee: Yes +Dave Elliott
  I guess I'm trying to rank up against the government!
  
  It'll be difficult to even compete against Wikipedia.
  
  Ok, I'll just concentrate on trends and lifestyle instead.
  
  Thanks so much for the input! You guys are great!! 
• 
  Lisa Fausey: I think it has some value and works well in a rural area. However, I would focus on many other factors from an optimization perspective. 
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  Dave Elliott: Bare in mind that just because you can't rank for the country name(or any other difficult to rank for phrase) doesn't mean you shouldn't include it within your page.
  
  You will almost certainly find some value in long tail key phrases containing the word. Things like 'top 10 tech gadgets in korea' or 'best korean karoke bars' etc. ;
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  Ian Dixon: Everybody is still abusing the 'keywords in domain names' approach +Dave Elliott ;judging by the amount of email that i get that tells me to do just that.
  Yeah, it is a strategy doomed to failure but they still promote it.
  I think the key thing is to create a relevant site domain name that may then match the content. My main site has exactly zero keywords in the domain name. Others that I am involved with have what could be considered keywords in there yet those words are not heavily used on the sites concerned.
  Essentially +Charles Lee ;I think the answer is to build quality content that matches with the name. So, using your koreanlifestyle example, then the content should use the words 'korean' and 'lifestyle' but in moderation. As an example there, one thing not to do is to have every paragraph on every page include that phrase. And I've seen enough keyword stuffed pages that do just that and they make for an awful visitor experience.