Does sharing same Business Name affect Google ranking?
-
Hey guys, We have been working for a client who is offering graphic design work almost 2 months. It is a new business and let's say the business name is ABC Graphic Design. So far all the pages are indexed, we built natural links through local directories, blog postings on relevant niche blogs and social media. We optimised the content and meta tags like we always do.
However, none of the target keywords appear on the first 10 pages. This is quite odd considering we had a client who was doing the same business and we managed to show some progress in the first 2 months. We did some research and noticed that there are 2 ABC design websites with similar domain names and offering same services. They have nothing to do with my client and they are located in overseas. When i search ABC Graphic Design, the results show other companies instead of my client.
My question is whether having a similar business name would affect the ranking. Obviously the other 2 websites have longer history and better ranking. Any suggestions?
-
Understood - if you're ranking on the second and third pages, it may just be because it's a brand new baby website and needs to accrue more links and authority.
-
We just managed to setup and verify Google My Business Profile few days ago so fingers crossed for now. We have also submitted the business to multiple local directories such as yellowpage and yelp.
Regarding to those target keywords, we have been scratching our head for a while.We crawl the on page issues almost everyday. No major issues with just couple of pages missing meta description (client updates his site quite often so we need to fix it every time.) The DA and PA are increasing as well but still nothing show up.
-
The branded keywords is appearing but on the 3rd page. Actually the site is based in Australia and the other 2 overseas companies are based in Singapore and USA (Florida). I am not able to use Moz Local tool since it is for US zip code only. Thank you for the advice!
-
Thank you for the advice. It is a wordpress and we have double checked the meta robots and the setting in Wordpress back office. The are all follow. All pages are indexed by Google.
-
Having a similar name to another business might affect your ability to rank for the business name and other branded terms, especially if Google is having trouble figuring out that it's a separate business and not in some way affiliated with the other business(es) of the same name. To combat this, you should make sure you're building out your Google My Business profile, building up location signals, and branding your business well.
That said, there's no reason why having the same name as another business would keep your site from ranking for any keywords, especially for keywords you're targeting that the other ABC Graphic Design companies aren't. It shouldn't be affecting your non-brand terms at all. If you're not ranking for any of them, I suspect something else is the reason.
-
After you have checked out any possible WP issues suggested by Tymen, also look into Moz Local and check to see how many of the local ranking strong signal sites you have connected to your client. This will hopefully give your clients site an added boost by having additional confirmed NAP data to organically connect with their site.
Is the site appearing from branded keywords?
-
Hi Owen,
Is the site in Wordpress? I once had the same problem with a site and the reason was that on the backend in WP there is a box that says "block search engines" and that was on. Needless to say this was the reason for not ranking at all. Once turned off it took about a week before the first results to show up and definitely locally you should be able to outrank the overseas ABC's.
Good luck with all!
Tymen
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How will canonicalizing an https page affect the SERP-ranked http version of that page?
Hey guys, Until recently, my site has been serving traffic over both http and https depending on the user request. Because I only want to serve traffic over https, I've begun redirecting http traffic to https. Reviewing my SEO performance in Moz, I see that for some search terms, an http page shows up on the SERP, and for other search terms, an https page shows. (There aren't really any duplicate pages, just the same pages being served on either http or https.) My question is about canonical tags in this context. Suppose I canonicalize the https version of a page which is already ranked on the SERP as http. Will the link juice from the SERP-ranked http version of that page immediately flow to the now-canonical https version? Will the https version of the page immediately replace the http version on the SERP, with the same ranking? Thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JGRLLC0 -
Google Penalty or Not?
One of my sites I work with got this message: http://www.mysite: Unnatural inbound linksJune 27, 2013 Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank are violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to mysite.com/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site. But, when I got to manual actions it says: Manual Actions No manual webspam actions found. -- So which is it??? I have been doing link removal, but now I am confused if I need to do a reconsideration request or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Rank on specific Google
Hi folks, a website is hosted with a TLD like .com in the USA. The content etc. is obviously all english but now we want to focus on a specific Google like .co.uk What must be necessarily be done to rank better? Is it enough just to buy a .co.uk domain and set the nameserver up or do we need to get a british hosting? Thanks in advance. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KillAccountPlease0 -
What time to expect until onpage change is reflected in google ranking?
Most pages on our site are crawled by google about once per week. We plan to implement a new navigation structure with much more interlinks among our pages. I would like to test it first just for a few pages to measure impact. How long may it take approximately until an onpage change related to link structure is reflected in google rankings? Any experience?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Not ranking on Bing but is on Google?
Hi What are the main differences between Bing and Google in terms of ranking sites? My site is ranking well in Google but in Bing it is very low down and does not deliver much traffic. In Bing webmaster tools there are no warning messages and I had sent in a sitemap back in 2011 and 77 pages are listed, but I had not submitted a URL could this be why my pages are not ranking highly? Or does anybody have a checklist on what a site should offer to get ranking on Bing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0 -
Why my blog ranks poorly on Google ?
Hi 🙂 I need help for my blog, my blog http://www.dota2club.com/ for many keywords it is not in first 50 results on google. What am i doing wrong ? Can you tell me what errors / mistakes i have made and what can i do to improve my blog ? Thank you !!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wolfinjo0 -
Rankings Dropped
Hello, I wonder if anyone can point us in the right direction. Our main domain name has got a good SEO profile the domain is 12 years old and we have some good reputable links. On the 7th of Jan our website dropped in the rankings from 3rd to 10th for one of our main keywords and from then onwards some of our other keywords have dropped. We have a lot of landing pages that target specific keywords which look like a template page but just with the content changed. Can anyone pin point what could of caused this problem or has anyone experienced this before and knows how to fix it. I personally think we have been hit by the panda. Thanks, Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Google plus
"Google+ members, and to a lesser extent others who are signed into Google, will be able to search against both the broader web and their own Google+ social graph. That’s right; Google+ circles, photos, posts and more will be integrated into search in ways other social platforms can only dream about." What is meant by " and to a lesser extent others who are signed into Google" ? Does it mean that non-google plus members won't be able to view Google+photos, posts ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050