Home Page Not Ranking for Brand
-
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 12+ years in SEO). A client's home page isn't ranking for their brand term. It's a medical spa in Las Vegas, so physical location that takes online appointments.
We have an online booking system (which isn't a good one) that originally had a booking page replacing our home page. My thought is that Google associated that page as our home page because it was a stronger domain and the booking page is most used. That tool didn't allow the booking page to be noindexed (I know, crazy)- so I changed the name inside the booking tool away from the brand name as to not have both the site and the booking site optimized for the brand.
Other things I've checked:
- The home page is indexed
- Home page canonical tag points to itself
- Title tag contains brand name at front (rest of site it's at the end)
- Robots.txt is accurate (allows home page)
- XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages)
To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with accurate URL.
Any other ideas that I may be missing?
-
Thank you for the screenshots. The first thing you need to do here is to edit the GMB listing title to reflect your real world business name. Right now, the title is what we call "keyword stuffed" and is in violation of Google's guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB) Nothing but your real-world business name belongs in the title.
So, basically, best advice here would be to clean up the GMB listing and any other citations that may have been built with the stuffed titles, and then build up the authority of the actual brand, both on and off the website. Right now, you're basically being outranked by your reputation on third party websites, which, if you're positive that no penalties are associated with the website, would indicate that the website lacks both authority and clarity.
-
Thanks for your response.
This is a newer site, so it's an ongoing issue since launch and we don't have a lot of links outside of social media, yelp etc. So obtaining links to the home page is on our list to tackle, I just wanted to be sure there wasn't a technical reason that I may be missing.
-
Hello,
I understand how frustrating this is. Have you been promoting the clients homepage with "Brand Term" content linking back to it? Is this a new issue that just started or has it been an ongoing issue?
If all your Robots.txt files and everything else is correct like you stated at the top, then I would just start really promoting the "Home" page as much as possible.
I would also check and make sure no manual actions have occurred that may have caused a ranking change if it is a new issue.
Here is a link to an article regarding your topic. I don't know if it will help, but it is an interesting article.
https://icecube.asia/ranking-companys-brand-name-google-seo-branding/
Best Regards
-
You got it all correct.
Here is a screenshot of search results. The right rail is correct, URL is accurate.
The 4th result has been changed away from the brand name (as of today- so it hasn't changed yet in the index). When we made the change inside the booking tool away from the brand, it changed the only page ranking from our site to a random subdomain (which we are 301 redirecting to the home page today).
Thanks for your help!
-
Hi KarmaDigital,
I want to be sure I understanding this. You are saying:
- _A client's home page isn't ranking for their brand term. _
- _We have an online booking system (which isn't a good one) that originally had a booking page replacing our home page. _
- if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with accurate URL.
So it sounds like you do have a knowledge panel showing up on the right for the brand name search, but what is CURRENTLY appearing in the number 1 organic spot for this search? You said the booking page was originally replacing your home page. Is it still outranking your homepage?
Also, is there any chance you are able to share the actual search with us? If not, due to client privacy concerns, that's okay, but if you can, it will likely improve the helpfulness of the responses you get from the community.
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
-
Content Page URL Question
Our main website is geared toward the city where we are located and includes the city name in content page URLs. We also have separate websites for three surrounding cities; these websites have duplicate content except the city name: MainWebsite.com
Local Website Optimization | | sharon75025
City2-MainWebsite.com
City3-MainWebsite.com
City4-MainWebsite.com We're restructuring to eliminate the location websites and only use the main website. The new site will have city pages. We have well established Google business locations for all four cities. We will keep all locations, replacing the location website with the main website. Should we remove City-IL from all content page URLs in the new site? We don't want to lose traffic/ranking for City2 or City3 because the content pages have City1 in the URL. Page URLs are currently formatted as follows: www.MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-2-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-3-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-4-City1-IL.html Thanks!0 -
Matching page for keyword doesn't show in search
Hello! I'm having an issue with my website Rooms Index, the website is in Hebrew so I'll provide examples in English for better understandings. When I'm searching Rooms by Hour in Haifa, google doesn't show the intended category page which is this, instead it shows my homepage in the results, this happens only for certain areas, while other areas are working well such as Tel aviv. For example if I searched day use in Las Vegas it'd show me the Las Vegas page dayuse.com/las-vegas, but searching for Brooklyn I'd only see dayuse.com. the pages are indexed and I can find them if I search site:roomsindex.co.il what could cause such problem?
Local Website Optimization | | AviramAdar0 -
How to Get 1st Page Google Rankings for a Local Company?
Hi guys, I'm owning a London removal company - Mega Removals and wants to achieve 1st page rankings on Google UK for keywords like: "removals London", "removal company London", "house removals London" but have no success so far. I need professional advice on how to do it. Should I hire an SEO or should focus on content? I will be very grateful for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | nanton1 -
Site is not ranking, please help.
For some reason, we have been fighting and fighting to get a website to rank and no matter what we do- nothing seems to work. I'm just taking over the website handle it personally, but was curious if anyone here had advice on what the issue may be. It isn't even ranking for its brand name, any ideas? http://estesroofingtx.com/
Local Website Optimization | | spadedesign0 -
Landing page, or redirect? Looking for feedback.
If we have a section of our site that we have branded separately from the rest of the site, does it make sense to provide a landing page on our current, high authority site that has content and links off to the separate site, or would just a domain.com/keyword redirect to the page be a better route? Does it matter? I have an idea, but I'd like to get feedback on this. We are a newspaper, http://billingsgazette.com and we have an auto branded site called http://montanawheelsforyou.com. The URL and branding is fubar. We're wondering if we can increase the ranking if we swapped out the http://billingsgazette.com/autos from a redirect to http://montanawheelsforyou.com to a landing page with content and a link to http://montanawheelsforyou.com.
Local Website Optimization | | rachaelpracht0 -
Home page links -- Ajax When Too Many?
My home page has links to major cities. If someone chooses a specific city I want to give them the choice to choose a suburb within the city, With say 50 cities and 50 suburbs for each city that's 2500 links on the home page. In order to avoid that many links on the home page (or any page) I would like to have just the 50 cities and pull up the suburbs as an ajax call that search engines would not read/crawl. This would be better than clicking on a main city and then getting the city page which they then can choose a suburb. Better to do it all at once. Is it a bad idea to ajax the subregions on the home page and to code it so Google, Bing, other search engines don't crawl or even see anything on the home page related to the suburbs? The search engines will still find the suburb links because they will be listed on each main city page.
Local Website Optimization | | friendoffood0 -
Omitted Results city-queries for the same brand on different subdomains?
I've noticed on a few occasions where two subdomains share the same brand and are also attempting to rank for phrases specific to one city - the stronger subdomain tends to send the other subdomain to the "omitted search results" for those city specific queries. The subdomains do tend to have some duplicate content that they share but if the two pages on the different subdomains are unique for the search phrase in question wouldn't Google choose to surface both results? Or is this a question of domain diversity in the SERPs where the 2 results would just be too similar since they share the same root domain and have topically similar content? I've seen cases where they can share the first page of results but more often than not it seems that one is sent to the "omitted results". Any thoughts on strategy in this situation? The companies being described end up wanting to rank for the same city because they both serve a portion of the city in case anyone is wondering.
Local Website Optimization | | GSO0 -
Duplicate content question for multiple sites under one brand
I would like to get some opinions on the best way to handle duplicate / similar content that is on our company website and local facility level sites. Our company website is our flagship website that contains all of our service offerings, and we use this site to complete nationally for our SEO efforts. We then have around 100 localized facility level sites for the different locations we operate that we use to rank for local SEO. There is enough of a difference between these locations that it was decided (long ago before me) that there would be a separate website for each. There is however, much duplicate content across all these sites due to the service offerings being roughly the same. Every website has it's own unique domain name, but I believe they are all on the same C-block. I'm thinking of going with 1 of 2 options and wanted to get some opinions on which would be best. 1 - Keep the services content identical across the company website and all facility sites, and use the rel=canonical tag on all the facility sites to reference the company website. My only concern here is if this would drastically hurt local SEO for the facility sites. 2 - Create two unique sets of services content. Use one set on the company website. And use the second set on the facility sites, and either live with the duplicate content or try and sprinkle in enough local geographic content to create some differential between the facility sites. Or if there are other suggestions on a better way to handle this, I would love to hear any other thoughts as well. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | KHCreative0