Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
-
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+.
For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx.
We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work.
We appreciate any advice you can provide to us.
Thank you!
Meghan -
By the way, has the blog ever ranked for instabill?
-
Not knowing how much traffic the blog gets or how much of that converts to new business, you might try experimenting with some things.
If you're thinking of moving the site, you might first see if your problem is domain related by just copying and rel=canonicalizing the whole blog to the new domain and seeing if it eventually shows up for "instabill", while keeping the original in place. If it does, you can then put in your 301s and eventually delete it. If it doesn't then it's likely architecture or content related. Personally I think it's content related.
If the new domain doesn't rank for instabill, delete the blog software on the new domain and remove the rel=canonicals to it from the old domain, throw up a wordpress blog, and put a couple of posts on it with a link from your website's homepage and see if that works.
-
We are now considering changing the url from blog.instabill.com to something like instabillblog.com. I have following concerns about the change;
- Will changing the domain really be that helpful (i.e. will the change get our blog on page one for the term instabill)
- We have over 350 pages of content on our blog. Will changing the domain have possible negative effects ( I was thinking of using url updater in webmaster tools and creating a permanent 301 redirect from the older url to the new)
- Having never changed a url for a site with this much content and seo value for my company I would like to know the following from someone who has made mistakes here before;
- what not to do
- what steps you would take to make the transition easier
Any help here will be greatly appreciated.
cheers,
-
We still cannot get our blog to rank on page 1 for the term Instabill. Thank you all for your previous input, but I am marking this question as answered.
-
Don't control your own anchor text - you'll get yourself into trouble.
-
Don't mention it : )
You may also want to look at anchor text for your links pointing from instabill.com to blog.instabill.com. It would probably be better to use "Instabill Blog" vs. just "blog" and even better might be simply "Instabill", if you could get away with it.
-
Again, I appreciate your feedback, but it is a technique we have tried in the past.
Originally, we were not optimizing the Instabill Blog for the keyword Instabill and it was ranking poorly. We found resources that encouraged us to use our company name more, so we added static content, an about page, and blog posts with Instabill in the title and heading tags.
For a short amount of time, our blog fluctuated between pages one and two for our brand name. Now, although our technique has not changed (and we even update our static content regularly), our blog does not rank at all for our brand name.
We will keep what you have said in mind, but it has failed us in the past. Oh, and thank you for your helpfulness within your snide remark.
Cheers!
Meghan -
Funny.
While you're twittling your thumbs waiting for some actual traffic, keep what I said in mind.
-
Thanks for your comment. I dont feel your feedback has any scientific value. We are still waiting for an answer.
-
I see "instabill" used 58 times on the default page and a whole bunch of blog posts about Instabill. Google's seen this before and as I recall, they came up with a couple algorithm tweaks in order to push website owners to make real websites with information that real people might possibly want to read. Try doing what everybody else has to do--tone down the heavy handed SEO and invest in copy that's focused on a specific audience, not on you.
-
Hey Meghan,
Any particular reason you 301 http://blog.instabill.com to **http://blog.instabill.com/index.php
?
http://blog.instabill.com** has more authority and backlinks. You should 301 http://blog.instabill.com/index.php to http://blog.instabill.com instead and see if that helps.
-
That was one of our theories, but we wanted to research additional possibilities before deciding the real reason for the poor ranking. Thanks!
-
Google decided that your main site represents your company.
Type "instabill blog" and you rank for people searching for your blog.
Same with my site.
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
-
Google treats pages from main website and sub folder/sub directory differently?
Hi all, We have a sub directory like website.com/help/. This is a differently hosted and served content. So I wonder how Google treats pages from this sub directory. Will the same priority will be given for these pages compared to main website pages? Will there be any ranking difference when same page is from main website or sub directory. I mean like below page. Page from main website: www.website.com/page1/ Page from sub-directory: www.website.com/help/page1/ So which page will have more importance in search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Why Google isn't indexing my images?
Hello, on my fairly new website Worthminer.com I am noticing that Google is not indexing images from my sitemap. Already 560 images submitted and Google indexed only 3 of them. Altough there is more images indexed they are not indexing any new images, and I have no idea why. Posts, categories and other urls are indexing just fine, but images not. I am using Wordpress and for sitemaps Wordpress SEO by yoast. Am I missing something here? Why Google won't index my images? Thanks, I appreciate any help, David xv1GtwK.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Worthminer1 -
What can you do when Google can't decide which of two pages is the better search result
On one of our primary keywords Google is swapping out (about every other week) returning our home page, which is more transactional, with a deeper more information based page. So if you look at the Analysis in Moz you get an almost double helix like graph of those pages repeatedly swapping places. So there seems to be a bit of cannibalizing happening that I don't know how to correct. I think part of the problem is the deeper page would ideally be "longer" tail searches that contain the one word keyword that is having this bouncing problem as a part of the longer phrase. What can be done to try prevent this from happening? Can internal links help? I tried adding a link on that term to the deeper page to our homepage, and in a knee jerk reaction was asked to pull that link before I think there was really any evidence to suggest that that one new link made a positive or negative effect. There are some crazy theories floating around at the moment, but I am curious what others think both about if adding a link from a informational to a transactional page could in fact have a negative effect, and what else could be done/tried to help clarify the difference between the two pages for the search engines.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | plumvoice0 -
Website No Longer Ranking In Google:
My website was on first page google couple of months ago, now nothing. Shows up in Bing page one. Some queries/pages still showing OK, but some not at all. Example "residential elevators illinois" found nowhere. http://www.accesselevator.net is the website. Have found 900 poor quality links and used disavow tool. Any further suggestions? Their Page Rank also went from a 3 to a 2. Implemented nofollow on all outgoing links. Need advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trailblazerzz90 -
If I had an issue with a friendly URL module and I lost all my rankings. Will they return now that issue is resolved next time I'm crawled by google?
I have 'magic seo urls' installed on my zencart site. Except for some reason no one can explain why or how the files were disabled. So my static links went back to dynamic (index.php?**********) etc. The issue was resolved with the module except in that time google must have crawled my site and I lost all my rankings. I'm nowher to be found in the top 50. Did this really cause such an extravagant SEO issue as my web developers told me? Can I expect my rankings to return next time my site is crawled by google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pete790 -
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 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Blog - on the domain or place on separate site, now that Panda ranks for bounce, TOP, depth of visit
Over 10 years ago, we decided to run our blog external to our main website. contrary to conventional wisdom then, we thought we’d have more control/opps for generating external anchor text links, plus working in a bona fide blog software environment (WP). As we had hoped, the blog generated alot of strong inbound links, captured inbound links of it own from other sites and I think, helped improve our SERPs and traffic. Once the blog was established and with the redesign of the website, we capitulated, and finally moved the blog onto the main domain. After reading a number of pieces on Panda and the new reality of SEO, sounds like bounce rates (in particular), time on page, and other GA measures may have a more profound influence on google rankings now. Given that blogs are notoriously for high bounce rates (ours is), low time on site, depth of visit, seems logical that it adversely affects our site averages for the main domain). Is it time to re-consider pulling our blog off the main domain to reassert the ‘true’ GA measures of the main domain? I guess it still gets down to the question... is the advantage of all the inbound links to the blog on the main domain of greater value than moving the blog off-site and reasserting better 'site stats' for google's pando algo? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ahw0