undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Company name causing Google penalty?

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?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
5
8
1.2k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • AnthonyHall
    AnthonyHall last edited by Mar 19, 2013, 11:28 AM

    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

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Everett
      Everett @AnthonyHall last edited by Apr 15, 2013, 4:01 PM Apr 15, 2013, 4:01 PM

      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:

      buy-blue-widgets.com

      Or more like:

      bluewidgets.com

      Or like:

      bluewidgetsincorporated.com

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,26 days
      • AnthonyHall
        AnthonyHall last edited by Mar 20, 2013, 7:57 AM Mar 20, 2013, 7:57 AM

        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,

        Everett 1 Reply Last reply Apr 15, 2013, 4:01 PM Reply Quote 0
        • MarieHaynes
          MarieHaynes @OrionGroup last edited by Mar 19, 2013, 2:24 PM Mar 19, 2013, 2:24 PM

          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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • OrionGroup
            OrionGroup @MarieHaynes last edited by Mar 19, 2013, 1:53 PM Mar 19, 2013, 1:53 PM

            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

            MarieHaynes 1 Reply Last reply Mar 19, 2013, 2:24 PM Reply Quote 1
            • MarieHaynes
              MarieHaynes last edited by Mar 19, 2013, 12:51 PM Mar 19, 2013, 12:51 PM

              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.

              OrionGroup 1 Reply Last reply Mar 19, 2013, 1:53 PM Reply Quote 3
              • EEE3
                EEE3 last edited by Mar 19, 2013, 12:45 PM Mar 19, 2013, 12:45 PM

                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

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • OrionGroup
                  OrionGroup last edited by Mar 19, 2013, 12:36 PM Mar 19, 2013, 12:36 PM

                  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

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • seoelevated

                    Old brand name being suffixed on Google SERP listings

                    At the end of some of our listings in Google search results pages, our old brand name is being suffixed even though it is not in our title tags. For context, we re-branded several months ago, and at that time also migrated to a new domain name. Our title tags have our current brand name suffixed, like "Shop Example Category | Example©". In the Google search results, but not in Bing nor Yahoo, about half of our pages have titles whcih instead look like this: "Shop Example Category | Example© - oldBrandName". The "dash" and the old brand name are not in our title tags, but they are being appended, even when our title tags are fairly long. For example, even with titles at 54 characters (421 pixels), the suffix is being appended. BUT, not with our longer title tags. We are actually OK with the brand name being appended if our title tags are on the shorter side, but would prefer that our current brand name be appended instead of the older one. I realize we could increase the length of all our title tags, and perhaps we may go that route. But, does anyone know where Google would be getting the old brand name to append onto the URLs? We've checked and it is not in our page source (the old brand name is used in our page source in some areas of text and some url paths, but not in any kind of meta tag). Per Google's guidance (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-do-not-put-organization-schema-markup-on-every-page/289981/) we only have schema for the "Organization" on our home page, and not on every page. So, assuming this advice is correct to not add schema to every page, how can we inform Google of our current brand name so that it stops appending our old brand name on pages?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 18, 2020, 6:34 PM | seoelevated
                    0
                  • MattBarker

                    Does a 302 redirect pass penalties?

                    I'm having problems finding a definitive answer to this question, there is a lot of rumour and gossip out there but nothing I can rely on. I'm working with a site that received an unnatural links notice followed by a massive drop in search traffic. Looking at the link profile it's pretty much jacked beyond repair and I have recommended that we move over to a fresh domain. However, it's an established brand with many more sources of traffic than organic search. There's no way we can burn all their repeat visits, loyal customers, brand recognition that they've built up over the years so I want to redirect from the old domain to the new.  This is not to try and make any SEO gain from the previous site, frankly we don't give a crap about that. We just want to maintain the brand. A 302 is a temporary redirect, this will be a permanent move BUT a 301 will pass on the penalty.  So can we safely use a 302 redirect in this situation or is there a better alternative (meta refresh?) Thanks for your help! MB.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 24, 2013, 9:49 AM | MattBarker
                    0
                  • Avinashmb

                    Buying a domain banned by google

                    Hi , I came across a super domain for my business but found out that it was a great domain with 100s of link backs but is now banned by Google search engine meaning Google does not index content from that domain. Since the domains linkbacks are from my domin does it make sense to but that domain and redirect those link backs to another (301) and hope that the new domain gets some juice ... I know it is sounding crazy and may not be the best thing to do ethically but still wanted to check if its possible to get some juice.. Rgds Avinash

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 26, 2013, 6:44 PM | Avinashmb
                    0
                  • fablau

                    Is Google indexing Mp3 audio and MIDI music files? Can that cause any duplicate problems?

                    Hello, I own virtualsheetmusic.com website and we have several thousands of media files (Mp3 and MIDI files) that potentially Google can index. If that's the case, I am wondering if that could cause any "duplicate" issues of some sort since many of such media files have  exact file names or same meta information inside. Any thoughts about this issue are very welcome! Thank you in advance to anyone.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 24, 2013, 7:37 PM | fablau
                    0
                  • MaartenvandenBos

                    Google penguin penalty(s), please help

                    Hi MozFans, I have got a question out of the field about www.coloringpagesabc.com.
                    Question is why the rankings and traffic are going down down down the last 4 months. Costumer thinks he got hit by google penguin update(s). The site has about 600 page’s/posts al ‘optimized’ for old seo:
                    - Almost all posts are superb optimized for one keyword combination (like … coloring pages) there is a high keyword density on the keyword titles and descriptions are all the same like: <keyword>and this is the rest of my title, This is my description <keyword>and i like it internal linking is all with a ‘perfect’  keyword anchor text there is a ok backlink profile, not much links to inner pages
                    -  there are social signals the content quality is low The site to me looks like a seo over optimized content farm Competition:
                    When I look at the competition. The most coloring pages websites don’t offer a lot of content (text) on there page. The offer a small text and the coloring pages (What it is about :-)) How to get the rankings back:
                    What I was thinking to do. rewrite the content to a smaller text. Low keyword density on the keyword and put the coloring pages up front. rewrite all titles and descriptions to unique titles and descriptions Make some internal links to related posts with a other anchor text. get linkbuilding going on inner pages get more social signals Am I on the right track? I can use some advise what to do, and where to start. Thanks!!</keyword></keyword> Maarten

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 13, 2012, 5:33 PM | MaartenvandenBos
                    0
                  • RyanKent

                    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 | Jan 16, 2012, 6:39 PM | RyanKent
                    0
                  • pbhatt

                    301 Redirects After Company Acquisition

                    We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 11, 2011, 7:23 PM | pbhatt
                    1
                  • hellemans

                    Check Google ban on domainname

                    Hello all, If I wanted to know if a domainname has a google ban on it would the following be a good idea to test it. Place an article on the domain page with unique content and then link to the page so its gets indexed and then link to the article from a well indexed page. If it doesn't get indexed there might be a ban on the page, if it does get indexed there is no ban on the page... Or are there other points I should keep in mind while doing this. All help is very welcome. Cheers, Arnout

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 30, 2011, 8:06 PM | hellemans
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.