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
-
Not ranking
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharonEKG
so our website (www.18brandz.com) has been up for 8 months now and has not been ranking yet, we are indexing, moz crawler SEO issues are regularly fixed and we are down to about 25 non major issues, i started using google lighthouse to optimize and had made changes. we post GOOD quality in house written unique content, we follow an SEO templet of guideline i wrote for titles/meta title tags, structure, site speed has been optimized and as for the moment we rank A OR B with no major issues on all speed checking sites possible (gtmetrix/google speed insights/ webspeed... etc) but nothing. and i cant figure out why we wont rank, our field of digital marketing is a tough one and very competitive , i know, yet not ranking for so long seems odd. our only know fact major disadvantage is the lack of links and no link building strategy. any suggestions? any idea?1 -
Is it possible to rank in google mexico when you don't have a local site?
Hello, someone is asking me why we don't rank in google mexico search engine. I mentioned we don't have a google mexico site, but have a USA site, so we may rank, but not as well as if we had the mexico site. IS there anyway to improve rankings or tips? THanks! Laura Robinson
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson321 -
How to improve my rankings?
Hi guys, I'm targeting a specific country NZ to start off with as my site is only new 3months old - whilst I'm trying to rank for various keywords such as - psychic readings, online psychic readings, love psychics, clairvoyant, astrology, tarot card readings etc I can see I'm slowly ranking around 18, 20,30,40 through my blog page, but nothing from the site. I know the site is content thin and were currently working on improving this, is there anything else you can suggest that perhaps I might need to be aware of? Or any tools I could use to go about getting information that could help put me ahead lol Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
GEO IP Redirects affecting Organic Rankings
Not sure if anyone has ever had this problem. We have a client who is a UK based retailer with a large retail presence in Canada and a U.S site as well. For the past year while keeping track of their rankings, they steadily ranked #1 for their brand term on Google.CA. At the end of June we implemented a GEO IP redirect for U.S visitors to be redirected to the U.S site if they clicked on the .CA listing. Over the next two weeks the ranking for the single branded keyword went from #1 to completely off the top 50. Could this have possibly happened due to the GEO IP redirect? The .CO.UK site has always been top 3 in the organic listing and is still #1 but in Google.ca the Canadian site has dropped off completely after consistently ranking #1.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | demacmedia0 -
Google is displaying my pages path instead of URLS (Pages name)
Does anyone knows why Google is displaying my pages path instead of the URL in the search results, i discoverd that while am searching using a keyword of mine then i copied the link http://www.smarttouch.me/services-saudi/web-services/web-design and found all related results are the same, could anyone one tell me why is that and is it really differs? or the URL display is more important than the Path display for SEO!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ali8810 -
Single, high ranking pank disappears from Google?
Hi all, The question I have concerns a high ranking page on my site that has disappeared from Google. It was in the top 5 for the target keyword and it currently ranks 3 on Bing. I recently migrated my domain (one month ago), but it seems to have gone very well. No other pages have taken a hit like this. The 301 redirect is in place and working well. I've used the Moz Tools to see if anything is weird, but it all looks fine. Oh, and yes, I did check Google Webmaster Tools - no messages and other related pages on my site are ranking on the second and third pages for the terms. Also, the site is consulting services - nothing dodgy. Any ideas? Why just this one page? What are my options? Thanks for any advice you may have. John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendlymachine0 -
New Domain name vs Low Ranked Existing Site
I am going to build a new site. I could hang it off an existing site with similar content or buy a new keyword rich domain and start over. The existing site does not have much trust or authority beyond the domain being registered for 5 plus years. I would prefer to start over and build linksfrom scratch but I realize we are starting at the bottom. The keywords we will be competing against are not super competetive so I think we can get ranking within 6 months or so. These post Panda days I am rethinking everything so any input is appreciated. I did a similar niche site a few years ago and found the site ranked well fairly quickly for its little nice. Today though it may be different. I have no experience in buying domains and would have no idea where to start there. New or existing? Thanks for any input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reportcard0 -
How to increase rankings?
I know to increase rankings involves link building, but what kind of link building is worth it and what type is not? At the moment most of my link building effort is focused on guest blogging, which has worked well for me, I have seen some good movement on a range of keywords using this tactic but I cant help but think I could get a lot more movement in the serp's if I mixed it up a little. A few other link building techniques I know of are below, but I don't really use them, so my question is what ones should I be using combined with my guest blogging to give my rankings that little extra help. 1. Directory Submissions 2. Article Submissions 3. Press Release Distribution 4. Forum Signatures 5. Blog Comments 6. Social bookmarking 7. Social Sites (Squidoo, Weebly, Wordpress, blogger) If I have missed something please let me know. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0