1 domain dominating unbranded search terms?
-
Anyone have any insight or comments?
We’ve been negatively impacted by the last Google algorithm update - not by a penalization of our site but because another site is now grabbing the top 3-4 search results for long tail physician name searches thereby pushing us lower in the rankings. Being that we’ve never seen this happen with unbranded search terms, we’re not sure how to address it.
To see an example, click http://www.google.com/search?q=dr.+elizabeth+eads. You’ll notice that the top 4 results are all from 1 site - HealthGrades - with 2-3 of the 4 pages being canned, pre-written templates without any unique content (see malpractice & sanction pages). It seems that they are doing this by paginating their information into separate pages, thus appearing in multiple search results, instead of putting all the information on 1 page, as we do and Google’s best practices suggest.
Any advice or comments would really be appreciated.
-
Sorry; I assumed the first non-Healthgrades result was yours. Apologies. I agree with Nick P above that for a phrase like the doctor's name where there is little competition you should be able to out-rank them pretty easy. Use best of breed on-page SEO and then get a few links to your page with the doc's name as anchor text. It probably won't take more than a handful because the phrase (doc name) is so non-competitive.
I don't know that healthgrades is getting a free pass on anything but their sub-sub-sub pages probably are having just enough PR flow to them that they outrank a smaller site with a page on the same topic. But, again, you should be able to win this battle pretty easily with a tiny bit of focused attention. Now, if you have 50,000 doc names that you want to compete for then you may need a different strategy of external link building. You could always try it with 1 doc and see what it takes to outrank healthgrades. I'd actually be curious if 1 credible external link (on an indexed page with doc name as anchor text) does it, or if you need 5, or 50. Maybe you could run a one-doctor test and post results...?
-
If you are really keen to rank for Dr X then you'll be able to. Google isn't perfect, it does rank crappy sites for keywords that are almost irrelevant. However this is often the case when competition is low and no one has signalled Google to tell them what their content is about.
Feel free to PM me with your site details James, I might be able to help you out.
-
Thanks, but that is not my site you're looking at. Either way, are you saying it is acceptable by Google to have in its second and third results, pages with no data except "Dr X has no sanctions". There is a whole slew of competing web sites who have valuable and distinctive data. Is Heatlhgrades getting a free pass in Google because of their high PR and that they are keyword stuffing?
-
It looks like the page that is beating you has better on-page SEO for that phrase. They use the phrase in header tags, while you use it in SPAN and B tags. They have the term in a few IMG alt tags, you do not.
Have you run their page and your page through the On-page analyzer here at SEOMoz? That might give you a few suggestions to improve your on-page SEO.
Also, their root domain is PR7 while yours is PR6 (I know, toolbar PR is out of date and not a good indicator, but it may mean you need more external links to your subpages, for example), and might explain why they are higher than you if all other things are equal.
-
I'm a little confused. "dr. elizabeth eads" has no search traffic and is almost certainly beatable from an exact match title element and two or three anchored links.
When a search term's competition is so low, it makes it a lot easier for one website that Google deems as the most relevant to result in multiple listings. Are there any other examples you have?
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
-
Strange google search - help me mozzers
Hey Mozzers How Are You All? Hope You Are Doing Well. 🙂 I need your help. I have been having a very bad experience with Google. 😞 Do you know what is "Google Dance"? Somewhere I have heard about this. I don't have even clearance about Google Dance. BTW, the problem is that i have an adult video site about a porns tar. I was ranking at 3-6 position on a "particular keyword" on google. But about 20 days ago when i searched my "keyword term", I could not find it anywhere even on page 50 in Google search. 😄 My heartbeat was gone faster. As i was getting 25k visitors from google of that keyword. 🙂 Then i looked at my webmaster tools to check "manual spam action". There was no issue with spam or anything related to it. Then i checked my google analytics i was getting visitors from google but not from the 'particular keyword'. I was sure it was not "google hit or penalized". I could not find the exact reason why did it happen. I checked my sites everything seems to be fine. Then i did "fetch as google" and the strange thing was happened, my site pop up again in google on "that keyword". But this not the end. From that day my search keyword was getting vanish within 24 hours or more in google. And i do google fetch and it again comes to search results. 😄 I tried moz tools. no such issue. Though i cannot sort out the whole matter. What’s wrong going with google. Its an adult site, otherwise I would provide my site url and the keyword. By the way, I have attached some screenshots. I am waiting for your help. Thanks to all. 🙂 gyKIRVW
Competitive Research | | raja290 -
Why is this site at no.1?
In the last 2 months, a previously unranked/unheard of website jumped straight to no.1 position for a particular keyword when searched from USA and is even ranking over many other big brands or stronger DA/PA sites. I did notice some very strange JavaScript popup links that are heavily keyword linked from the first mention of the keyword on the page content. What are they trying to do here? Otherwise they don't seem to have much PA/DA or seo going on. Why are they doing so well?!
Competitive Research | | emerald0 -
Subdomain vs Root Domain Metrics
My site has everything in the root - test.com. www.test.com is redirected to test.com and all content is in the root; there are no subdomains. So I'm completely confused as to how the mozrank and moztrust are different. They have the same number of links yet: Subdomain: MozRank - 3.72
Competitive Research | | Optimise
MozTrust - 3.23 Root Domain: MozRank - 3.05
MozTrust - 2.79 This seems consistent with all my competitors too so just wondered if someone could explain why the root domain is usually/often lower? Surely the root domain numbers should always be equal to or higher than the subdomain?0 -
Why my site doesn't come on top even though search terms are very similar or exact?
For example, when I search in google for "Kookaburra Pro 600 wheelie kit bag", my site comes 9th on 1st page but 3rd link doesn't even match the exact key word rather it has few of the words. Can one of you expert please explain how it works? Thanks, CricMax
Competitive Research | | cricmax0 -
Use abbreviations for domains?
hi, can i use abbreviations for domain, if i want to purchase a long keyword domain like 29 characters? abbreviations are good for SEO or GOOGLE appreciate it or not? and use that keyword in description of the site or title of the site need your help..
Competitive Research | | parallelseo0 -
What's the best way to discover my business and search competitors?
I am trying to figure out who the real competitors are for the domain that I have been recently handed. Other than the client's references, which I don't think are the real competition (they are his benchmarks), how do I go about discovering the true competition? What the simplest, most effective way to go about discovering my business and search competitors? Given that this is a web portal, aren't both of the latter the same?
Competitive Research | | amit20760 -
How does TTH have only 220 Domain Backlinks?
Was looking at these guys today http://www.tentonhammer.com/ One of the orginal games websites, an authority in its niche and 7 years old (about as long as that niche has existed) Its all unique, high quality content but it has a only 220 linking domains, including BBC etc It doesnt make any sense to me that this website should have so few linking domains. Anyone have a thought as to whats going on here? S
Competitive Research | | firstconversion0 -
Site in top 3 with a 1-day old domain and no backlinks
Hi everyone, I'm trying to understand some searchresults, when searching in the netherlands for 'online casino':
Competitive Research | | iwebdevnl
http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=online+casino&pws=0 You'll see as position 3 result this website: http://bit.ly/qhRsUT, it's obviously that this site is there because of blackhat. But how did it come there such high for a keyword with high competition? I don't see anything wrong in the website? It's not like Google did something wrong, because it happened already a few times for this keyword with different domains from that owner. Regards, Yannick0