Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Company name causing Google penalty?
-
Hi all,
Once of my clients has a keyword as part of their company name, and it seems like the website is being given a penalty in the keyword SERP because of the amount of websites linking back using the company name?
Is there anything i can do to prevent/balance this out?
Thanks,
Anthony
-
It can be tough to turn an exact match domain (EMD) into a branded domain sometimes. I would be careful of labeling this as any certain algorithmic filter / penalty. Back when EMDs were being devalued I'm sure there were a lot of false positives. This could be one example. It could also have to do with anchor-text over-optimization that isn't specially "penguin" related.
I guess my first question would be: Why do you think this is related to the use of the client's brand name? Is it just those keyword/s that have lost rankings? Is it limited to certain landing pages, keyword phrases, etc... ?
What is the domain / keyword? And if you can't provide that, how about a close example? For instance, is it something like:
Or more like:
Or like:
or ???
The first example is difficult to turn into a brand. The second one is doable. The third shouldn't be seen as an EMD at all.
-
Thank you all for your replies.
There is no manual penalty in play - checked with request to Google via Webmaster Tools.
The company has claimed its Local+ page.
My thoughts are that it is Penguin. The majority of links back to the website are retailers that sell the products of my client, so these links are out of my control unfortunately.
All the links i have setup to my clients website are setup like Scott suggests.
Bit stuck really : /
Is there anything else you guys would suggest?
Thanks,
-
I know a lot of people get their backs up if you call Panda or Penguin a penalty but to me it's all the same. If or some reason Google is causing you to rank significantly lower then in my mind it's a penalty. But really it's all semantics. If the site is truly ranking lower because of branded links then there's either a manual penalty or penguin at play.
-
Marie, that's true. When talking "penalties", you'd want to first check in Google Webmaster Tools if there truly has been a manual action taken against the site. Otherwise, it would probably be better to refer to it as a "devaluation", correct?
Scott
-
I've seen this happen where a site buys an EMD and then names their company after it and then subsequently gets links that are branded but in reality they are only branded because they were lucky enough to buy an EMD. Does that make sense? For example, if someone wanted to start a house painting company in Anycity and they see that anycityhousepainters.com is available then they name their company "Anycity House Painters". The branded links that come to them are indeed branded...but they're also an attempt to manipulate the serps.
I think that if you have a brand name that is the same as a keyword Google may not look at it as a brand name.
As far as "balancing this out" goes, it depends on whether or not you've really been penalized. If there is an unnatural links penalty then that needs to be dealt with. If there's a drop on a Penguin refresh day, that's a whole 'nother issue.
It's also possible that the drop has nothing to do with the branded links.
But, I think that Scott gave you some good advice on ways to link to your brand.
-
Hi Anthony,
Has the business claimed its Local+ page? Perhaps a verified listing would help. Also some downstream local citations could possibly give it a boost. Scott also has a great point about making your link profile look more natural too, even though it's completely justified to have lots of links on the company name.
-EEE3
-
I would suggest adding keywords before and/or after the company when linking. For example, if the company name is "Milwaukee Roofing LLC", you could make the anchor text "visit the Milwaukee Roofing LLC website"... perhaps this will give enough variety and make the link profile feel more natural.
Scott O.
References:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/click-here-seo http://www.seomoz.org/blog/beyond-exact-match-anchor-text-to-next-generation-link-signals-whiteboard-friday http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization
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
-
Company Name in Home Page Title? If and Where?
My guess is you want to do the {title} | {company name} format as I would suspect Google gives slightly more weight to the words at the beginning of the title? (This is assuming your company name isn't a generic word or you are specifically trying to rank your home page for your company name when it isn't ranking well already) But what about cases where you have like 5 or 6 keywords that are really important and used in the title gives you like 50 characters and your company name pushed it up to like 65 increasing the chance Google will use some other source to list the name of your home page in the search results? Obviously one can experiment, but wondering what the general consensus is - long keyword title, or longer title with company name? The company name can be included in the meta description and the domain name of the url displayed also gives the indication to the company. But maybe the algo "respects" long itles that have company name more than ones without as then it looks more like a keyword stuffing title? So many factors to consider. Yes - on page SEO isn't just about the title, but for this thread I'm just talking home page title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wizkids9641 -
Brand name not ranking in Google
Hi Moz'ers, Could you help me with something I cannot seem to figure out by myself. In June 2017 my company started a rebranding campaign. We've changed our brand name and launched a new website: https://spotler.com. Everything is going fine, but if you Google our brand name "Spotler" our website doesn't show up. How can it be? Our domain authority is 38. It would be wonderful if you could help me. Let me know if you need more information. Best, Simone
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spotler0 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
My site shows 503 error to Google bot, but can see the site fine. Not indexing in Google. Help
Hi, This site is not indexed on Google at all. http://www.thethreehorseshoespub.co.uk Looking into it, it seems to be giving a 503 error to the google bot. I can see the site I have checked source code Checked robots Did have a sitemap param. but removed it for testing GWMT is showing 'unreachable' if I submit a site map or fetch Any ideas on how to remove this error? Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Sitelinks to Sister Companies
Hi We have a number of sister companies and link to them via a drop down in the footer - are these links as dangerous as anchor text links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
How does google recognize original content?
Well, we wrote our own product descriptions for 99% of the products we have. They are all descriptive, has at least 4 bullet points to show best features of the product without reading the all description. So instead using a manufacturer description, we spent $$$$ and worked with a copywriter and still doing the same thing whenever we add a new product to the website. However since we are using a product datafeed and send it to amazon and google, they use our product descriptions too. I always wait couple of days until google crawl our product pages before i send recently added products to amazon or google. I believe if google crawls our product page first, we will be the owner of the content? Am i right? If not i believe amazon is taking advantage of my original content. I am asking it because we are a relatively new ecommerce store (online since feb 1st) while we didn't have a lot of organic traffic in the past, i see that our organic traffic dropped like 50% in April, seems like it was effected latest google update. Since we never bought a link or did black hat link building. Actually we didn't do any link building activity until last month. So google thought that we have a shallow or duplicated content and dropped our rankings? I see that our organic traffic is improving very very slowly since then but basically it is like between 5%-10% of our current daily traffic. What do you guys think? You think all our original content effort is going to trash?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | serkie1 -
Google is mixing subdomains. What can we do?
Hi! I'm experiencing something that's kind of strange for me. I have my main domain let's say: www.domain.com. Then I have my mobile version in a subdomain: mobile.domain.com and I also have a german version of the website de.domain.com. When I Google my domain I have the main result linking to: www.domain.com but then Google mixes all the domains in the sites links. For example a Sing in may be linking mobile.domain.com, a How it works link may be pointing to de.domain.com, etc What's the solution? I think this is hurting a lot my position cause google sees that all are the same domain when clearly is not. thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabrizzio0 -
Bing Penalty
I am working with a client who apparently has been penalized by Bing. The site has been around for many years and they are an industry leader in their field. The site was previously indexed and received a substantial amount of traffic from Bing. Last week the site disappeared from Bing's index. A site: and url: search both show no results. Does anyone have a significant amount of knowledge or experience related to Bing penalties? Here is what I have done so far: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2009/03/19/getting-out-of-the-penalty-box.aspx This 2009 article states Bing's Summary Tool offers a "Site Status" section with a "Blocked" indicator which informs webmasters if a site is penalized. I have seen it before a long time ago, but apparently the field no longer exists. Is there a definitive means of determining if Bing has manually penalized a site besides a response from their Content Inclusion Request? Danny Sullivan wrote a great article about how Bing removed some sites for thin content last month. It seems two of the sites which were a focus of the article have been re-included in Bing's index. Bing claims an algorithm change where Danny seems skeptical. Either way this could be the same issue. http://searchengineland.com/bing-bans-holiday-deals-sites-102856 there are two recent complaints on Bing's forums about a similar issue where various webmasters shared their sites have been removed. There are no responses to these posts from Bing: http://www.bing.com/community/webmaster/f/12252/p/670360/9665163.aspx#9665163 and http://www.bing.com/community/webmaster/f/12252/t/670550.aspx?PageIndex=1 (the comments are relevant but not the initial post). Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0