1 domain dominating unbranded search terms?
-
Anyone have any insight or comments?
We’ve been negatively impacted by the last Google algorithm update - not by a penalization of our site but because another site is now grabbing the top 3-4 search results for long tail physician name searches thereby pushing us lower in the rankings. Being that we’ve never seen this happen with unbranded search terms, we’re not sure how to address it.
To see an example, click http://www.google.com/search?q=dr.+elizabeth+eads. You’ll notice that the top 4 results are all from 1 site - HealthGrades - with 2-3 of the 4 pages being canned, pre-written templates without any unique content (see malpractice & sanction pages). It seems that they are doing this by paginating their information into separate pages, thus appearing in multiple search results, instead of putting all the information on 1 page, as we do and Google’s best practices suggest.
Any advice or comments would really be appreciated.
-
Sorry; I assumed the first non-Healthgrades result was yours. Apologies. I agree with Nick P above that for a phrase like the doctor's name where there is little competition you should be able to out-rank them pretty easy. Use best of breed on-page SEO and then get a few links to your page with the doc's name as anchor text. It probably won't take more than a handful because the phrase (doc name) is so non-competitive.
I don't know that healthgrades is getting a free pass on anything but their sub-sub-sub pages probably are having just enough PR flow to them that they outrank a smaller site with a page on the same topic. But, again, you should be able to win this battle pretty easily with a tiny bit of focused attention. Now, if you have 50,000 doc names that you want to compete for then you may need a different strategy of external link building. You could always try it with 1 doc and see what it takes to outrank healthgrades. I'd actually be curious if 1 credible external link (on an indexed page with doc name as anchor text) does it, or if you need 5, or 50. Maybe you could run a one-doctor test and post results...?
-
If you are really keen to rank for Dr X then you'll be able to. Google isn't perfect, it does rank crappy sites for keywords that are almost irrelevant. However this is often the case when competition is low and no one has signalled Google to tell them what their content is about.
Feel free to PM me with your site details James, I might be able to help you out.
-
Thanks, but that is not my site you're looking at. Either way, are you saying it is acceptable by Google to have in its second and third results, pages with no data except "Dr X has no sanctions". There is a whole slew of competing web sites who have valuable and distinctive data. Is Heatlhgrades getting a free pass in Google because of their high PR and that they are keyword stuffing?
-
It looks like the page that is beating you has better on-page SEO for that phrase. They use the phrase in header tags, while you use it in SPAN and B tags. They have the term in a few IMG alt tags, you do not.
Have you run their page and your page through the On-page analyzer here at SEOMoz? That might give you a few suggestions to improve your on-page SEO.
Also, their root domain is PR7 while yours is PR6 (I know, toolbar PR is out of date and not a good indicator, but it may mean you need more external links to your subpages, for example), and might explain why they are higher than you if all other things are equal.
-
I'm a little confused. "dr. elizabeth eads" has no search traffic and is almost certainly beatable from an exact match title element and two or three anchored links.
When a search term's competition is so low, it makes it a lot easier for one website that Google deems as the most relevant to result in multiple listings. Are there any other examples you have?
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
-
Strange google search - help me mozzers
Hey Mozzers How Are You All? Hope You Are Doing Well. 🙂 I need your help. I have been having a very bad experience with Google. 😞 Do you know what is "Google Dance"? Somewhere I have heard about this. I don't have even clearance about Google Dance. BTW, the problem is that i have an adult video site about a porns tar. I was ranking at 3-6 position on a "particular keyword" on google. But about 20 days ago when i searched my "keyword term", I could not find it anywhere even on page 50 in Google search. 😄 My heartbeat was gone faster. As i was getting 25k visitors from google of that keyword. 🙂 Then i looked at my webmaster tools to check "manual spam action". There was no issue with spam or anything related to it. Then i checked my google analytics i was getting visitors from google but not from the 'particular keyword'. I was sure it was not "google hit or penalized". I could not find the exact reason why did it happen. I checked my sites everything seems to be fine. Then i did "fetch as google" and the strange thing was happened, my site pop up again in google on "that keyword". But this not the end. From that day my search keyword was getting vanish within 24 hours or more in google. And i do google fetch and it again comes to search results. 😄 I tried moz tools. no such issue. Though i cannot sort out the whole matter. What’s wrong going with google. Its an adult site, otherwise I would provide my site url and the keyword. By the way, I have attached some screenshots. I am waiting for your help. Thanks to all. 🙂 gyKIRVW
Competitive Research | | raja290 -
Abnormally high number of root domains linking to root domains
My client runs a very small business hiring out space in a single warehouse and rarely adds content to his incredibly badly optimised wordpress site. Can anyone make any wild guesses as to why my client has 2.9 million root domains linking to root domains? He also has a domain authority of 100. Strange when the number one competitor in warehouse space in this part of the world is Gumtree (equivalent of Craig's List) and that only has 9.25k root domains linking to root domains and site authority of 80. Is there any way of finding out where these links are coming from via Moz? Thanks
Competitive Research | | SocialStreets.Co0 -
Use abbreviations for domains?
hi, can i use abbreviations for domain, if i want to purchase a long keyword domain like 29 characters? abbreviations are good for SEO or GOOGLE appreciate it or not? and use that keyword in description of the site or title of the site need your help..
Competitive Research | | parallelseo0 -
What's the best way to discover my business and search competitors?
I am trying to figure out who the real competitors are for the domain that I have been recently handed. Other than the client's references, which I don't think are the real competition (they are his benchmarks), how do I go about discovering the true competition? What the simplest, most effective way to go about discovering my business and search competitors? Given that this is a web portal, aren't both of the latter the same?
Competitive Research | | amit20760 -
How hard could it be to outrank a huffington post article with PA:1 ?
or what would be the quick way to find out? Page Authority 1 mozRank 0.00 mozTrust 0.00 Total Links 0 Internal Links 0 External Links 0 Followed Links 0 Nofollowed Links 0 Linking Root Domains 0 On-Page Analysis Grade A Broad Keyword Usage in Title Yes Broad Keyword Usage in Document Yes Keyword Used in URL Yes KW in Domain No KW Exact Match No Exact Anchor Text Links 0 Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text 0 Partial Anchor Text Links 0 Partial Anchor Text Root Doms. 0 Domain Authority 100 Domain mozRank 7.6 Domain mozTrust 7.9 DmT/DmR 1.0 External Links to this domain 40443657 Linking Root Domains to this domain 223797 Linking C-Blocks Domains to this domain 40697 Tweets 6 FB Shares 20 Google Plus One Shares 0
Competitive Research | | antoniorigo0 -
Should I move my brand under our corporate domain to boost Domain Authority?
Dear Community, I am seeking your expert advice on this situation: We have these assets as a starting point: a long-existing and well-linked Corporate Website (CW) with good metrics, a Brand Website (BW) with low/medium metrics, and some Brand Competitor (BC) websites with very similar metrics to BW. We will launch a new version of BW very soon with a well SEOd structure and copy (the old one was not SEOd at all) which I hope itself will bring SERP advantages. My dilemma emerged after checking the domain level values of our Corporate Website: CW / BW / BCs Domain Authority: 48 / 28 / 24-27 Domain mozRank: 4.79 / 3.15 / 2.6-3.25 Domain mozTrust: 4.73 / 2.79 / 2.47-3.06 My understanding is that based on seoMoz consensus domain level values give about 1/4th of the total pie. Based on these what do you think I should to win over competitors rankings? Should I keep running the service under BW (in an neighborhood with nearly identically valued competitors) Should I redirect BW to a sub-folder of the Corporate Website? (e.g.www.corporate.com/brand) with 301 redirects and enjoy the advantages of the much better domain values Alternatively, I could also build valuable and keyword-optimized content under our CW linking back to our BW. My understanding is that Option 1 has the least advantages among the three. Option 2 and 3 compete with the following advantages: Option 2: We could quickly rank higher as domain values elevate us from the mediocre BW and BC values (offsetting a little loss on 301 redirects) Option 3 would allow us to occuppy more positions for the important keywords on SERPs thus attract more "deep-browsing" visitors (and possibly BW could also get some advantages by receiving links from CW) Which direction would you proceed from here? Cheers, Andrew
Competitive Research | | andrew12120 -
Page Linking Root Domains vs Root Domain Linking Root Domains
Hi all, I am new on seomoz and I am not getting which is the difference between "Page Linking Root Domains" and "Root Domain Linking Root Domains". Could anyone please give me a clear explanation? An example would be excellent. Thank you Christine.
Competitive Research | | Cristina-Candin0 -
Advanced yahoo search
Is it possible to see backlinks to a particular site with the parameters: only .edu backlinks page updated in the last 3 months I've tried using the yahoo advanced search at http://uk.search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8&fr=siteexplorer&p= but it just redirects me to yahoo site explorer and doesn't give the results I ask for. Cheers, Peter
Competitive Research | | PeterM220