Help! Odd SERP results on two branded terms.
-
We have had the ODDEST thing happen to our Branded search. Last week we started seeing our Women’s subdomain (women.duluthtrading.com) outranking our main Duluth Trading domain (duluthtrading.com) on searches for “duluth trading co” and “duluth trading company”.
Sample of odd results page: http://screencast.com/t/cKgkaYc1
As you can see- our Women's sub domain is ranking #1 then our main domain, THEN what used to be our organic site links are now listing 3-6.
If you search for "duluth trading" though, you will get the typically results page: http://screencast.com/t/qGLDWiM0f
We have been trying to figure out how or why this has happened.
Our website went out for 30 minutes on January 4th. We thought maybe that is what happened but it has now been 7 days.
Any help or suggestions would be great!
-
Hi There! Thanks for your response!!
I emailed our IT group about the sitemap observation.
The site went down on January 4th. It was only for 30 minutes. We noticed the odd SERP results on Wednesday- January 6th. According to Moz our Keyword rankings for 'duluth trading co" & "duluth trading company" have been all over the place. See here: http://screencast.com/t/Tgc3qZgYrd & http://screencast.com/t/uvgHeRGNy
I also noticed that "https" is showing up and not "http". I'm not sure why that is happening as well...
-
I'm not seeing anything obvious, but quick question: Did you do anything new recently with your sitemaps or canonicals?
One thing I noticed is that it looks like you have the same sitemap at http://www.duluthtrading.com/data/framework/sitemap/sitemap.xml and http://women.duluthtrading.com/data/framework/sitemap/sitemap-womens.xml, and they look fairly similar or identical to me. If you have the ability, one thing to try might be making the home page the first entry on http://www.duluthtrading.com/data/framework/sitemap/sitemap.xml and assigning it the highest priority. I'd then limit http://women.duluthtrading.com/data/framework/sitemap/sitemap-womens.xml to just women.duluthtrading.com URLs.
You mentioned that the site went down on January 4th. Can you give us any details on that? What HTTP code were you getting at the time? Etc. Did this start happening after that, or did you notice it before the outage? Did it impact the subdomain as well? (I imagine so, but it doesn't hurt to check). Any other changes you made on the technical side around the time you noticed the change?
There's going to be a better answer than your sitemaps and I'll keep looking, but restructuring them is something that you could try to signal your preference to Google. It's weird that it would impact just queries that include co./company though.
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
-
Anyone Willing or Able to Help Out For A Good Cause? Trying to help a very pleasant women and her son who have recently fallen on hard times
Hi all, Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you are interested in helping out, feel free to direct message me for more information. Earlier this week I received a call from a very pleasant women named Martha. Her son owns a small site dedicated to his work as a pianist (can see the site here). They are having issues gaining traction in Google, they are not tech/search savvy and are looking for SEO help. They really do not have much to spend so partnering with an agency or hiring an SEO is not really an option. The part that is eating me up is the fact that Martha recently lost her husband and that left both of them in a very tough spot emotionally and financially. They are trying to build up visibility for the site with the hopes of finding more work for her son to help support them. Frankly, the site needs a good amount of work. It is a small one-page squarespace website. New pages need to be created, the site needs to be optimized and backlinks need to be acquired. If anyone is willing or able to help, please let me know. I am trying to help them where I can (guidance for how to optimize, they provided me the squarespace login so I may start going in and making changes for them) but unfortunately I do not have the time to give this project the attention that it deserves. Even if it is something as small as throwing a link their way, it would be very much appreciated. It doesn't have to be SEO specific either, if you can help them on social I'm sure that would be appreciated as well. Again, I appreciate you taking the time to read this. If you are interested in helping or just learning more, feel free to message me. Thank you!
Branding | | Joe_Stoffel0 -
How to Measure Impact and Potential Strategies for Competitors with Similar Brand Name in the Same Industry
Hello Everyone, So we have a site (brand1.com) but one of our competitors has a very similar brand name and domain (brand2.org). They’re similar enough that could be confused by users and search engines and target the same topics. When you do a manual brand search they would come up and both have about the same Domain Authority. Assuming we can’t have them take their site down do any of you have any thoughts on how we could potentially measure potential impact they might be having or ideas on how best to approach this? Our thought was to track what they are and are not doing so we could do it at a higher level or fill in what’s missing. We would also emphasize differences with an emphasis on local optimization (they’re in a different area). We would love to be able to have some concrete data on whether they’re having an impact so thought we would find out if any of you have any experience or insight? Any help would be very much appreciated. Please let us know if there’s any further details we could provide that might help. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thanks in advance. Best,
Branding | | Ben-R0 -
Optimising for terms which are not in line with brand guidelines
Hi Fellow Mozzers, Happy New Year! - I have a client who run runs a leisure/recreation centre. The centre went through a change of name a couple of years ago. from XXXX recreation centre to xxxx youth and community centre. It is part of a wider organisation and so they have a 'content section dedicated to their centre. On the main landing page we have referred to the centre by both terms - however it seems from GA Search Console stats that the general public still refer to the centre by its old name. The manager would like the old term removed but I wonder whether this would impact on the SEO effectiveness of the page or not? Any Comments would be gratefully received.
Branding | | musthavemarketing0 -
How to get an Updated Logo in Search Results?
I'm having trouble getting a new logo in search results. My company, RealSelf, updated our logo over a year ago and both Google and Bing continue to show our old logo in image results. Worst of all, this means that when people look for our logo, they find the wrong one and include that in new, external content. Here's a list of what we've tried: We've modified all the logos on our site with the new one (not including a few PDF whitepapers from before the redesign Added schema.org logo and organization markup Featured a high resolution image on our "Logos" page (top result for "RealSelf logo") Verified wikipedia has the proper image Modified all social profile logos: Twitter, Facebook, G+, etc.. Begun outreach efforts to have high ranking image results update our logo I'm wondering if there are other ideas besides getting more creative/successful with our outreach tactics?
Branding | | RealSelf0 -
Knowledge Graph for brand term has stopped appearing
Hi everyone Our brand has an active G+ page (updated daily).
Branding | | bfrl
Our G+ is also linked to our site, verified, and we were lucky enough to get a vanity URL of our choice after our Google overlords confirmed it for us. When searching a specific brand term within Google UK, Knowledge Graph appeared with a link to our G+ page, logo and links to our last two G+ posts.
Much like if you search 'seomoz' This has now mysteriously vanished.
It could be a coincidence but it vanished roughly around the same time as we got our vanity G+ URL. I asked about on Google product forums but to no avail. Anyone else experienced this? Or even know how to get Knowledge Graph back to how it was? Thanks!0 -
Is having two websites that sell most of the same products a good idea?
Hi - Please read this in full before you answer. I currently own a website that sells kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities that match the kitchens. This website has been operational since Arpil 2009 and we have built good rankings over the past 3 years. The site is operated on the Volusion platform (my mistake from the beginning, but we're kind of stuck now). We are in the process of designing a new website on the Magento platform - everything will be 100% different from look, speed, the way our customers shop, content, product skus, etc. The original plan was to keep the same domain but implement 301 redirects for subpages (subpage urls would have to change) and shut down the Volusion site and transfer the domain name to the Magento site. Our current website does make money right now and we would hate to lose rankings (even if only temporarily) during the switch or have something go wrong. What I am now thinking is keeping our current website on Volusion where it is currently making money and having the new Magento site have a new name/domain. The sites would sell most of the same products (the Magento site would sell more types of vanities and accessories though). The two sites would have different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Is it a bad idea to try and rank two websites selling pretty much the same thing? We have competitors out there that sell the same products as us, I would just prefer to compete with myself rather then someone else. Another issue is our name, one of our competitors names is extremely close to ours and we rank for pretty much all of the same keywords and customers get us mixed up all the time. This other site would have a different name (one that makes more sense). I want to make a decision that will not come back and bite us later. I know there are a lot of bigger sites that operate tons of niche sites, and of these website could eventually be similar to that. I really appreciate your help and guidance! Thanks
Branding | | tyler7560 -
Using mlm and 'scammy' websites to identify brand/reputation management opportunities
I think this almost warrants a youmoz post, but I was wondering if anyone has used MLM or 'shady' industry companies to see where they place their reputation/brand links to dominate the first 2-3 pages of google for things like 'company name + scam' 'company name + reviews'. On a side note what is your opinion of a company that goes to great lengths to create a very strong push to control those keywords? Would you recommend your clients dominate the first 2-3 pages with 'honest review about company x' and 'the truth about company x' fakeditorials? Do you guys think people see right through them. Take any MLM..for instance legal shield scam (not my company, but an MLM that I am very wary of) as professionals what do you think of their reputation management build out......what do you think consumers would see when they read this? is there such a thing as going to far to refute false claims and building sponsored reviews? I'm personally against doing sponsored reviews and spamming with them, but maybe I am naive.
Branding | | ilyaelbert1 -
Need a quick simple report comparing popularity of two brand names...
CURT Manufacturing compared to Reese Products. curtmfg.com and reeseprod.com Both sell towing and trailer hitch products. What is the best approach you can recommend using the Pro tools? I perform lightweight analytics using Google Analytics, and some keyword tools here, and also Majestic SEO and Compete - but not a pro and would LOVE it if someone can give me best course direction. Thank you, M Adelman
Branding | | CURT-20817
CURT Mfg.0