Client is not ranking on Google For Brand Name Search but is on Yahoo and Bing
-
We have a mobile app development client that recently 6 months ago changed their domain name to www.FSStudio.com. So they are concerned that they don’t rank on the first page for the brandname phrase “FS Studio” On Google. They do rank on the first page for this phrase in Yahoo or Bing. But why is Google returning search results for stuff like Free Studio? I know this fairly obvious question which the answers may be that they need more authority or backlinks because their name happens to be a fairly competitive search for stuff that is unrelated. Any suggestions? We are going to be optimizing and creating a lot more content. Is this just that they need to mention their name FS Studio more frequently throughout their website? Here is a screenshot from Moz’s Keyword difficulty and SERP Analysis tool.
-
Just wanted to add my two cents and make sure you're all set. Pretty sure everyone here nailed it. The brand name is a little ambiguous and there are other things our there that could legitimately rank for that. It is a little curious how Google is not ranking it for the brand yet Binghoo is.
One quick example, the Twitter account still links to their old domain - https://twitter.com/fsstudiodev - fix a whole bunch of little things like that and in aggregate they should add up to more clear brand signals.
One thing I'll mention which no one else did ----> Rel Publisher - this connects the G+ page to the website and is probably THE most powerful brand signal you can easily send in Google's eyes. I would do that as high priority.
-
Well it sounds as though everything is in place then (assuming it is a 301 and not a 302 redirect). It may just be that they have picked a difficult brand name to rank for, which in that case, concentrate on building the brand and you should hopefully see the rankings sooner rather than later.
-
Hey Karl, Thanks a lot, say we checked webmaster tools their no penalties. The other name of the company before is call ed FlakaSoft which i guess is what the FS is abbreviated for. When you type in they rank for first and it redirects to the new site.
-
Wiqas,
Thank you also for your helpful suggestions.
-
Thank you very much for taking the time to look at this it was helpful.
-
Hi Andrew,
When they changed their website, did the ensure that the necessary redirects were put in place so that any authority from the old website was changed to the new one?
It may also be worth checking for any penalties, algorithm or manual. Check Webmaster Tools for any messages to double check. Have they ever ranked for their brand name? Did they rank for their old brand name?
It could be, as the other 2 comments say, just be a lack of authority and quality links but it is definitely worth checking that redirects and penalties aren't having an effect because you could be fighting a losing battle if it is one of these problems.
-
Hey Andrew,
This issue comes with new websites with low authority! Currently you have
- Just 21 Referring Domains
Try to link with more. Your Anchors are non-money which is a good thing in deed but you can use your Brand as Anchor "FS Studio" This will help to get visible on Google for your brand name.
Currently your anchors are not pointing to your Brand Name at all: http://screencast.com/t/nHfp4tjQpmb
Best of luck!
Regards
-
Andrew,
The site in question has low authority compared to the ones showing up in the first page. Google is somehow associating your brand with a software called "Free Studio" and sites with almost impossible to beat authority are ranking above.
Google, compared to Bing (and Yahoo! that serves results from Bing), uses different ranking mechanisms.
In order to "claim" your brand's name, I'd suggest you establish several business listings pointing to the site, such as:
- Facebook Page
- Twitter Profile
- G+ Page
- G+ Local
- LinkedIn Page
- Crunchbase
- Yelp
- etc.
Try to put your company out there, expose its name as much as you can without purchasing any "featured listing." Once you have all those steps completed, compare results and see if the brand name starts to show up.
Another approach would be to "extend" the brand name, removing the FS and using the actual significance of those 2 letters ("FS" means?). It should be easier to compete with other sites instead of the ones that are currently returned by your brand query: "FS Studio". Softonic, CNET, afterdawn are not easy targets.
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
-
Specific Ranking Mystery
Hello Mozzers I don't understand this specific ranking example, maybe somebody can help? For the serach term "elipslife" on Google Switzerland a client's page ranks around position 13. A competitor's page ranks at 9. And I don't get why: the competitor's page has no content and its DA is lower. Its PA is higher so I set a link in the client's homepage navigation a couple of weeks ago to lift the client's page PA above that of the competitor. This is not yet reflected in OSE currently however. Any ideas as to what may be the cause? Thx, Chris
On-Page Optimization | | ChrisCronimund0 -
Is there any benefit to removing brand name from the title tag?
I just signed up for Moz recently, and have noticed that in my crawl errors, I have hundreds of issues with my title tag being too long. My business is selling prints for landscape/travel/nature photography, and I've built these pages dynamically to where the title tag for pages selling individual photos has the title of the photo for sale followed by a hyphen and then the brand name. The same goes for gallery pages "Gallery Name | Brand Name". Would it be worth it to shorten the title tags by removing the brand name from these pages? Or will that actually harm more than help? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | shannmg10 -
Business Name is Meta Description
I would like to know what your opinion would be regarding the business name displayed in the meta description. Would you write your business name as: Business Name or BusinessName™ (no space with Trademark) I used MOZ example from here (Meta Descriptions Best Practice) and inserted the different business names. Welcome to Business Name in San Diego, California - the nation's largest urban cultural park. Home of 15 major museums, renowned performing arts venues... Welcome to businessname™ in San Diego, California - the nation's largest urban cultural park. Home of 15 major museums, renowned performing arts venues... I'm not sure which would be best for Google and other search engines. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
How does Google treat Dynamic Titles?
Let's say my website can be accessed in only 3 states Colorado, Arizona and Ohio. I want to display different information to each visitor based on where they are located. For this I would also like the title to change based on their location. Not quite sure how Google we treat the title and rank the site.... Any resources you can provide would be helpful. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
How does user behaviour signalled at Google affect rankings?
Hi, Just a quick question. How important are the signals received by Google on a websites user behaviour? For example: Bounce Rate, Avg Time on site, # of pages viewed, Geo of user etc Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | followuk0 -
Missing new pages in Search
Hi, We are on wordpress platform with category permalink structure site.com/category/categoryname. To pull in more SEO traffic, we created pages with structure site.com/categorynameand pulled in all the content from category pages to these new pages followed by applying no-follow on category pages within robots.txt. While it has been a week we applied these changes, we still see old category pages on google search with weird description ( A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt... ) How could we make search results to replace old categories links with the new pages? thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Google rel hell
So apologies in advance for this question, but: Can someone explain whether as a site we should be using the "rel author" tag or the "rel publisher" tag? 1. We don't really need to distinguish between the people who write our content. 2. We definitely do need to establish ownership of our content, as unfortunately it has been widely copied. We are spending quite a bit of time filing DMCA notices. 3. Do we need to apply either tag to every page? Or does "del publisher" just need to be applied to the homepage to cover the rest of the site? 4. What looks better in the search results? - a person's face or a company logo? If prefer a face, but understand we need to promote our brand. Thanks P
On-Page Optimization | | dexm100 -
What is causing Bing and Google Rankings to Differ by so much?
Does anyone know the trick to have Google Rankings to be as good as Bing/Yahoo Results?
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0