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.
-
I can't say for sure, but my experience with Google recently would suggest that having it on the page will not matter. You could remove instances of it, but there are probably external signals that will let SEs understand that you used to go by name. Same how they understand that a vehicle, car, and auto are generally the same thing.
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
-
Local branding messed up - advice needed
Note: not real names, services, locations used: So we are a single health clinic in Vancouver. Our natural name is GSF Health Clinic. As the most important search term is Health Vancouver by far, we decided to kind of change our brand name to 'GSF Health Vancouver' years ago. Our main competitors name is Health in Vancouver and had had a hard time getting above them in local SERP. But actually, since the change in name, we haven't really improved. As there are also searches for Health Clinic Vancouver, some of our citations are actually GSF Health Clinic Vancouver just to get that keyword in. This variation even happens on our site. Now, looking back, we should have just kept our natural sounding brand name and more importantly, kept the same exact one everywhere. However I'd like advice going forward. So the decision is whether we need city in the brand name - does it make much difference? The options are: GSF Health Clinic Vancouver ("Health Vancouver" is not together, but we still have city name. Current citation on G+ and a few other places. A bit of a mouthful) GSF Health Clinic (Sounds nice, but poor SEO and also no exact citation matches currently so this is a major name change) GSF Health Vancouver (very targeted SEO, sounds okay but not amazing when in a sentence) BTW our domain name is health-vancouver.ca
Branding | | Cooper10 -
Auto Complete misspells our brand. Can we do anything about it?
Howdy! Let's say our French client's name is "Something Réseau". When we type in "Something" in Google, we're suggested "Something Réso" which sounds the same but is incorrect. In the past year, the correct name has sent +21,000 branded keywords visits, whereas the incorrect has sent shy of 800. The brand is not new. Anything we can do about it? Thanks!
Branding | | AxialDev0 -
Drop In Branded Traffic
Hi, We took on a new client in March. Over the last few months I have noticed that their Branded Organic Traffic has dropped off considerably, around 20%. On further investigation I discovered that the drop off occurred between Jan & Feb this year (prior to us taking over). In Jan they launched a new site, the drop off seems to coincide with the launch of their new website. I also found out that their Page Rank had disappeared before the launch of the new website, and is still a PR/na. My first thought was that they have been penalised. How likely is this on a very well known site which gets roughly 170K visits per month? Could the drop in Branded Traffic be due to a decrease in advertising budget elsewhere (to compensate for the cost of the new website, leading to less brand exposure)? Could it be that there are just fewer people searching for their Brand? I guess the questions I am trying to find out are: 1. What are the reasons for massive drops in Branded organic traffic? 2. As an seo I am tasked mainly for optimising for non-branded organic traffic, is there anything I can suggest to the client to help get this traffic back? 3. If it is an algorithmic penalty (Panda, Penguin), how do I know which one? I have started with their links and disavowed known toxic links, fixed crawl errors, optimised their top pages etc etc. If it was a penalty and I mange to fix it, will their branded traffic return? Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated. Jon
Branding | | JonRaubenheimer0 -
Long term risks of using .org for commercial websites
Hi everybody, I'm having a 'heated' discussion with a collegae about .org domains. Originally .org domains were created for non-profit organizations and it was fairly difficult to get a .org domain ( like .gov and .edu still are). Nowadays it's easy to register a .org domain and i see plenty of commercial .org emd's ranking well. We are planning on launching a new white label in the Netherlands (.nl) and have several domains in our portfolio that we can us for this. I recommend using an exact match .org domain (.nl and .com are already taken) for the new white label www.exactkeyword.org. **My collegae says don't use www.exactkeyword.org, because we aren't a non-profit organizaton and we can't garantuee we won't lose our rankings over the next 3 to 4 years. He would recommend going with the available www.exact-keyword.info. ** Who right and who's wrong and why? Can i garantuee no risk with .org for a commercial organization?
Branding | | PrizeWize0 -
How can I increase my brand signal for a common phrase?
We are having trouble with SEO branding. When I search for "designquotes" with the quotes, our site appears with sitelinks and it's great. However our brand name is Design Quotes. Which sometimes we aren't even first for. If I search for designquotes without the quotes, still no luck. Should we do lots of link building for Design Quotes or should we start calling ourselves DesignQuotes and build links with that as the anchor text? website is designquotes.com.au
Branding | | designquotes0 -
List Quick and Dirty places to seo-tag images/content for new brands
I'm helping a new brand (service industry) to try to dominate the first page for their own name. They have a name that also exists in another state AND a negative Yelp review which (shows up #4, whilst they show up #1 on google unpersonalized search). Aside from Linkedin/Facebook/twitter, what are good places to Tag Images and have them show up under the search for this company's name. This is a picture/heavy industry (jewelry) and I'm looking to create profiles on several sites that would immediately show up if I tag the content properly. Are quora/pinterest good choices? I need to grab-bag as many properties as possible. Secondary question: would these properties on quora etc, respond well to exact-match anchor text links to shoot them past the negative yelp rating that is showing up #4 for their brand?
Branding | | ilyaelbert0 -
Capturing Brand Search
Hi, How do you capture as much brand results as possible in search results? I know Mike from Koozai recently did a video about brand reputation, but this is slightly different. The current issue i'm having that the client's brand name is also a specific geographic destination, hence the confusion in SERP's. This means non-related industries are eating up the client's potential market share and traffic. My objective would obviously be to capture as much traffic as possible for brand related keywords for the site, so that we can focus more on long tail product terms. Any help would be appreciated. Obviously re-branding is out of the question. Regards, Vahe
Branding | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
What are the best ways to improve/trigger "Brand Signals"?
Google considers some companies "brands" or stronger "brands" than other sites. What are the best ways to show Google you are an actual brand, not a fly by night eCom?
Branding | | zachc_coffeeforless.com0