Ranking for a brand term with "&" (and) in the name?
-
Hello Moz community.
We have a company that rebranded their name to "Bar & Cocoa" with the URL https://barandcocoa.com/. It's been about 3 months, and the website has yet to show up organically anywhere within the first 50 results foer their brand terms. It seems that Google pretty much ignores the "&" or "and" word when typing in bar & cocoa, or bar and cocoa in search. You'd think with that with the exact domain name, it would at least move the needle a bit, but it has not helped.
Even being in Denver, I'm getting results for a "Bar Cocoa" business located in Charlotte, NC, and the secondary pages that belong to that business, and then a bunch of other companies, products and irrelevant search results (like a parked domain)!
Any suggestions or ideas, please help!
-
Hi Pashmina,
It looks to me like the problem is that Google doesn't yet understand that "Bar & Cocoa" is a brand in and of itself. Until they receive the signal that "Bar & cocoa" (or "bar and cocoa") is a different query intent than "bar cocoa", this will continue to be an issue. Focus on building your brand online; in particular, I recommend researching the Knowledge Graph to understand how Google catalogs entities. Some things to try:
- Roman's suggestion to implement Schema markup is a good one; I actually recommend implementing markup both inline and via JSON-LD in your header (you can also use Google Tag Manager to implement JSON-LD schema markup; check out this awesome post by Chris Goddard for more on how to do that: https://moz.com/blog/using-google-tag-manager-to-dynamically-generate-schema-org-json-ld-tags). Make sure you use Store markup on your home page to mark up your business name, logo, contact information, and other important details about your business, and mark up as much information about your products as you can.
- Spend some time doing some online-focused PR (that's public relations, not page rank); the goal should be to get mentions of your brand name alongside relevant words about your products (like "chocolate shop") in reputable news outlets. It would be ideal if this coverage resulted in links back to your site, but news coverage without a link will still provide something of a brand signal.
- Start planning your content calendar; think about what's unique about your products and create some content around it that you can then, hopefully, promote to earn links back to your site.
- Make sure you're behaving like a brand online in other ways. Build out your social media profiles, and start trying to build a following on e.g. Facebook and Twitter. With a highly visually-appealing product like chocolate, you might have success on Pinterest and Instagram. Make an effort to engage with your followers - don't just talk about yourself, but really start a conversation and respond when people talk to you. Having a robust, active social media presence sends search engines and users alike the signal that you are a real, reputable business. Claiming social media profiles under your brand name will also provide additional pages that use your brand name in conjunction with your business.
The good news is, all of these activities are worth doing to promote your business online anyway; the bad news is, they will probably take some time to really establish your brand. In the short term, it might be worth investing in some paid search ads to make sure your site shows up for your brand terms.
-
Hi Roman,
It looks like Bar & Cocoa is an online-only chocolate shop. (Virtual businesses should not optimize their websites for local search.)
-
jajajaja thank you james wolff I will take as a recognize
-
Let's define your problem into smaller pieces
1- bar & cocoa, or bar and cocoa
Stop words (a, the, of, for) are usually filtered out by Google in a search queryI will suggest to check this List of stop words
So we can asumme that you have a problem with the stop word, but I think this not your main problem.
Your main problem is, From Google perspective your website is not relevant for the search querys that you want to rank.1 - _Do you have an old url or website? if you have it a good idea make a redirection or Add cannonical Tag _Basically you will transffer the authorithy of your old domian to the new one.
_2 - Make Topic Research (Yeah, I'm talking about Topic not keyword) if you made a research you will notice that google classified __the keywords by topic. So if you are a bar in Denver research all the terms related such as: happy hours, special drinks, ect. _Choose the right keywords and start a link building campaign.
__3 - Add schema to your website. In this way Google will have a better understanding that you are a Bar or Restaurant in a Specific Location (The best way to add schema is json, you just need to add some code to your header)
Example 1
http://schema.org/RestaurantOn schemas you can add as many info as you can open hour, price range, geo location, description and so on
I will assume that you are registered on Google Small Business if not, now is the right moment.
Here are 2 list of business directories on USA, so is a good idea to register your website
Hubsopt
localseoguidesIf my answer were useful don't forget to mark it as a good answer
Cheers
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
-
Are HTML Sitemaps Still Effective With "Noindex, Follow"?
A site we're working on has hundreds of thousands of inventory pages that are generally "orphaned" pages. To reach them, you need to do a lot of faceting on the search results page. They appear in our XML sitemaps as well, but I'd still consider these orphan pages. To assist with crawling and indexation, we'd like to create HTML sitemaps to link to these pages. Due to the nature (and categorization) of these products, this would mean we'll be creating thousands of individual HTML sitemap pages, which we're hesitant to put into the index. Would the sitemaps still be effective if we add a noindex, follow meta tag? Does this indicate lower quality content in some way, or will it make no difference in how search engines will handle the links therein?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner0 -
List of SEO "to do's" to increase organic rankings
We are looking for a complete list of all white hat SEO "to do's" that an SEO firm should do in order to help increase Google/Bing/Yahoo organic rankings. We would like to use this list to be sure that the SEO company/individual we choose uses all these white hat items as part of an overall SEO strategy to increase organic rankings. Can anyone please point me in the right direction as to where we can obtain this complete list? If this is not the best approach, please let me know what is, as I am not an SEO person. Thank you kindly in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RetractableAwnings.com0 -
Does Google View "SRC", "HREF", TITLE and Alt tags as Duplicate Content on Home Page Slider?
Greetings MOZ Community. A keyword matrix was developed by my SEO firm. I am in the process of integrating primary, secondary and terciary phrases into the text and am also sprinkling three or four other terms. Using a keyword density tool (http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php) the results were somewhat unexpected after I optimized. So I then looked at the source code and noticed text from HREF, ALT and SRC tags that may be effecting how Google would interpret text on the page. Our home page (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) contains a slider with commercial real estate listings. Would Google index the SRC, HREF, TITLE and ALT tags in these slider items? Would this be detrimental to SEO? The code for one listing (and there are 7-8 in the slider) looks like this: | href="http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf" title="Lease a Prestigious Fifth Avenue Office - Manhattan, New York">Class A Fifth Avenue Offices class="blockLeft"><a< p=""></a<> href="http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf" title="Lease a Prestigious Fifth Avenue Office - Manhattan, New York"> src="http://dr0nu3l9a17ym.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/fsrep/houses/125x100/305.jpg" alt="Lease a Prestigious Fifth Avenue Office - Manhattan, New York" width="125" height="94" /> 1,340 Sq. Ft. $5,918 / month Fifth Avenue Midtown / Grand Central <a< p=""></a<> | Could the repetition of the title text ("lease a Prestigious Fifth...") trigger a duplicate content penalty? Should the slider content be blocked or set to no-index by some kind of a Java script? We have worked very hard to optimize the home page so it would be a real shame if through some technical oversight we got hit by a Google Panda penalty. Thanks, Alan Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags
Given that google have stated that duplicate content is not penalised is this really something that will give sufficient benefits for the time involved?Also, reading some of the articles on moz.com they seem very ambivalent about its use – for example http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questionsWill any page with a canonical link normally NOT be indexed by google?Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
Is it a bad idea to have a "press" page and link to press mentions of our company?
We've recently been getting quite a bit of press. Would it be wise to create a "press" page and link to mentions of us or would this devalue the links on the press pages as Google may think they reciprocal?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JenniferDacosta0 -
Yahoo Store, Is Name ranked higher that headline?
For Yahoo stores. The template built by 1choice4yourstore has Name which Yahoo tells me is the H1tag. There is also an option of Headline. Name works as the title for the page without headline. If you enter anything in Headline it overrides Name and becomes the visible title for the page. So if Name is: 11 and Headline is: 22, the viewer sees 22 as the visible title. Do the spiders see Name and Headline differently? Is there a clear advantage to duplicating and having both Name and Headline identical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wales0 -
Why my site is "STILL" violating the Google quality guidelines?
Hello, I had a site with two topics: Fashion & Technology. Due to the Panda Update I decided to change some things and one of those things was the separation of these two topics. So, on June 21, I redirected (301) all the Fashion pages to a new domain. The new domain performed well the first three days, but the rankings dropped later. Now, even the site doesn't rank for its own name. So, I thought the website was penalized for any reason, and I sent a reconsideration to Google. In fact, five days later, Google confirmed that my site is "still violating the quality guidelines". I don't understand. My original site was never penalized and the content is the same. And now when it is installed on the new domain becomes penalized just a few days later? Is this penalization only a sandbox for the new domain? Or just until the old URLs disappear from the index (due to the 301 redirect)? Maybe Google thinks my new site is duplicating my old site? Or just is a temporal prevention with new domains after a redirection in order to avoid spammers? Maybe this is not a real penalization and I only need a little patience? Or do you think my site is really violating the quality guidelines? (The domain is http://www.newclothing.co/) The original domain where the fashion section was installed before is http://www.myddnetwork.com/ (As you can see it is now a tech blog without fashion sections) The 301 redirect are working well. One example of redirected URLs: http://www.myddnetwork.com/clothing-shoes-accessories/ (this is the homepage, but each page was redirected to its corresponding URL in the new domain). I appreciate any advice. Basically my fashion pages have dropped totally. Both, the new and old URLs are not ranking. 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | omarinho0 -
Will Linking To "Offical Sites" Increase My SEO?
I own a movie trailer website. (Where you can watch movie trailers) Will having links on each page that are for "offical website" of each movie, increase my SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhysmaster0