A competitor has a search term in their brand name - Can we outrank them for that search term?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have been putting a lot of work into ranking for a certain search term. We have managed to get our homepage to #3 for that search term.
#1 is a comparison site, so I am not overly fussed with beating them - we probably won't. But we do want to hit #2 and in all fairness, we have better content and have put more into our SEO efforts than the current #2. I think they are ranking so strongly because their brand name is exactly that search term with the word "go" in front of it. Google even spits out their extra links under the result as if it was a branded result.
I know EMD's don't hold much weight any more so I'm guessing this is all to do with their clever brand name choice.
My question is, can you outrank a competitor like that?
If you're selling wooden rocking horses and your company is called toybox.com for example, but your competitor is called GoWoodenRockingHorses and their domain is www.gowoodenrockinghorses.com, can toybox.com ever outrank them for the search term "wooden rocking horses"?
Hope this makes sense, please private mail me for more info if you need it!
Cheers,
Jamie
-
**UPDATE
We hit #2 last night and have held the position this morning. Hopefully a stronger link profile will now take us to #1!
-
Hi Jamie,
Mark Ginsberg is absolutely right "Despite the EMD update, EMD's do still have some advantages from my experience." and even I know list of the websites who is ranking for very competitive keyword by having EMD with very low number inbound links not even quality backlinks.
So it is not impossible to outrank them very easily but for that you must have more quality backlinks from authoritative websites.
Thanks
-
Cheers Mark I just wanted to make sure.
Our SEO and content is more on point than ever at the moment - as is site speed and errors - but from your response I am deducing we need to get a stronger link profile to knock them off the #2 spot.
That's where ill focus.
Thanks for that
-
You can absolutely outrank them, but you are starting out behind. Despite the EMD update, EMD's do still have some advantages from my experience. Specifically, they can get more keyword rich anchor text links "naturally" because people tend to link using the site name.
That said, if you have better on-page SEO or significantly more links than the EMD you're competing with, you should ultimately come out ahead.
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
-
Avoid Keyword in New Domain Name?
We are looking to rebrand our domain name. Our existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. We own www.metro-manhattan.com and were hoping to use this domain. The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. Is the fact that the new domain contains "Manhattan" a negative? I know that the fact that it has a hyphen is weak. Manhattan is part of such keywords as "Manhattan office space". Regarding the company name, is the fact that it contains the target phrase "Manhattan office space" bad? Our company name may sound like exact match anchor text and I am not sure what to do about this if anything. I would really prefer to keep our name but it is necessary to change it to improve SEO we will do so. Would it be better to change to a new name like "Integrity Real Estate" which does not contain target phrases or keywords ("real estate" is not a major target phrase as it is to generic) ? Or how something like www.mmos.com for the domain and leave the company name alone? How would I go about finding a company that would assist is in creating an SEO friendly domain name and perhaps a new corporate name if necessary? Thanks, Alan
Branding | | Kingalan10 -
Product expansion on website. Best practices for Retargeting Interior Pages with a high concern for brand.
For the past year, I've worked on a website that offered one product (Product 1). The homepage targeted both branded terms and the highest volume keywords for the one product. We've built a lot of strong links to the homepage using the natural variations of the targeted Keywords & the homepage ranks very well for these terms. The brand is now expanding its offerings to two products (Product 1 & 2). Thus necessitating the creation of two product subpages. I'm not concerned about ranking of Product 2's page, only Product 1. From a branding perspective, the homepage URL works wonderfully for the expanded offerings. And from an SEO perspective, offering two products allows me to target a very high volume group of keywords on the homepage that now makes more sense given the offerings. This new group of keywords will make even more sense if brand is able to roll out a 3rd product. The profitability of Product 1 & 2 are about the same. The profitability of potential product 3 is far greater 1+2 combined. Product 3 also has the most natural correlation with the group of KWs I plan to target on the homepage, i.e., I care more about the ranking of the homepage once Product 3 has launched. Product 3 will have its own interior product page as there is plenty of search volume for KWs specific to this product. I'm worried about hurting the rankings of the old product and URL confusion between the homepage & the to-be-created Product 1 page. I don't see myself having a lot of options. Options 301 - It does not make sense to 301 redirect the homepage to the Product 1 interior page. The homepage URL has strong branding and will be used in future marketing. I do not believe that I value the maintaining the rankings of Product 1 enough to push for making the new homepage example.com/home or similar to allow for the 301 redirect. Canonical - The content of the homepage will be changing, thus a rel=canonical to the Product 1 page does not make sense, nor does it make sense from a ranking perspective as I also want the homepage to rank for the new set of KWs I will be targeting The only real option I see is attempting to reach out to strong back links with Product 1 anchor text (or context) & asking them the switch the URL to the Product 1 interior page. Combine this with proper site-wide internal linking to the new Product 1 interior page & an anchor text link on the homepage to the new Product 1 interior page. Am I missing something? Am I dismissing either one of the above options too easily. Am I over-thinking this (yes probably)? Would love another set of eyes on this.
Branding | | 2uinc0 -
Google displays the wrong store hours. Can anyone help lead me to the fix?
When doing the following search on Google "Ticket King Milwaukee hours" we see the wrong hours displayed at the top of the page. Just to the left of our places page, you will see "Tuesday hours 8:30-1:00 pm." That 1 pm closing comes up for every weekday, even though we are open until 6 pm weekdays, and 3 pm on Saturdays. I have checked the hours listed on our G+ page, our "Places for Business" page, our "about us" page on our website, and can't find where they are getting this incorrect data. I even went out and checked most of the "List your business" sites that I have registered with.
Branding | | Ticket_King
I have submitted this to Google, but have not heard back. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can fix this, or at least find out where this bad data is coming from? I did find a company blog post from 2010 that listed our ours in a somewhat confusing way, but it was still correct. (I have since fixed that old post.)0 -
Should we create content for a competitor?
We've got an opportunity to create video content for one of the highest authority news sites in our region. It's a great opportunity for links - PR8, DMR 7.84, DMT 8.86 and also to build our brand. However the site is also one of our main competitors in the SERPs, and we would be providing content to them that serves some of our most important seasonal and year-round keyphrase targets. So my dilemma is whether it is better to create the content and get the links, keep the content for ourselves and aim to make our site the authority for those keyphrases, or place the content with another (less authoritative) site that doesn't compete in our space?
Branding | | GBC0 -
Is Google having trouble determining between two of my brand sites
I have a couple brand sites that our company uses and a couple of weeks ago one started to suddenly show up in the #1 position while searching for the other site via its brand. If I search for "collegexpress" our other site careersandcolleges.com is in the #1 possition. If I search for "collegexpress.com" it shows carrersandcolleges.com's title and description but links to www.collegexpress.com Could I have something messed up or is google confused with our two sites? In the past I am told that CollegeXpress referred to the careersandcolleges.com page but that has been there for many many years and this SERP change only started to show the first week in march of this year. I looked and there are a handfull of anchor text links from external sites using some form of the "CollegeXpress" brand linking to www.careersandcolleges.com but not that many, and they are not new. If I do a search the other way for "careersandcolleges" I see it correctly return is own site #1 but www.collegexpress.com is shown to me as #3. I checked and we dont have any redirects or mod rewrites between the two sites. They are on two different IPs Any help that can point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Branding | | GeorgeLaRochelle0 -
BRAND STACKING!!!1!11! (angry fist)
I have been noticing a pattern with my highest ROI keywords. The company I work for sells a ton of different brands. Over the last month one by one my ranks are droping down by about three to the parent companys brand stack. Now I know that Google favors brands but it seems in the last month they have become much more aggressive with brand stacking. Has anyone else noticed this problem or has there been some action on the part of Google to make this happen?
Branding | | Brother220 -
What are the best/ your favourite brand pages?
I've got a meeting today where we are looking to come up with some ideas to redesign our brand pages which are currently a bit rubbish www.schuh.co.uk/brands/converse Does anyone have some great pages that I could look to for inspiration? Idealy i'd like to get not only get SEO benefit, but also be able to use them for PPC landing pages as well as the page giving some good info on the brands we are selling. It would be great to get video on the page but this always serves to either push the product further down or get lost at the bottom. Any ideas or examples would be much appreciated!
Branding | | wp20130 -
Will the word arse in a domain name cause a problem
I have a customer that wants to use the domain name cooksarse.com, what my concern is that the word arse may cause him problems with search engines, even get flaged as Adult content, or family filters. The site is a fun social site and nothing about it you couyld not talk about in church except the name of the site and domain. "cooks arse" am i being overly concerned or could this be a problem
Branding | | AlanMosley0