Does sharing same Business Name affect Google ranking?
-
Hey guys, We have been working for a client who is offering graphic design work almost 2 months. It is a new business and let's say the business name is ABC Graphic Design. So far all the pages are indexed, we built natural links through local directories, blog postings on relevant niche blogs and social media. We optimised the content and meta tags like we always do.
However, none of the target keywords appear on the first 10 pages. This is quite odd considering we had a client who was doing the same business and we managed to show some progress in the first 2 months. We did some research and noticed that there are 2 ABC design websites with similar domain names and offering same services. They have nothing to do with my client and they are located in overseas. When i search ABC Graphic Design, the results show other companies instead of my client.
My question is whether having a similar business name would affect the ranking. Obviously the other 2 websites have longer history and better ranking. Any suggestions?
-
Understood - if you're ranking on the second and third pages, it may just be because it's a brand new baby website and needs to accrue more links and authority.
-
We just managed to setup and verify Google My Business Profile few days ago so fingers crossed for now. We have also submitted the business to multiple local directories such as yellowpage and yelp.
Regarding to those target keywords, we have been scratching our head for a while.We crawl the on page issues almost everyday. No major issues with just couple of pages missing meta description (client updates his site quite often so we need to fix it every time.) The DA and PA are increasing as well but still nothing show up.
-
The branded keywords is appearing but on the 3rd page. Actually the site is based in Australia and the other 2 overseas companies are based in Singapore and USA (Florida). I am not able to use Moz Local tool since it is for US zip code only. Thank you for the advice!
-
Thank you for the advice. It is a wordpress and we have double checked the meta robots and the setting in Wordpress back office. The are all follow. All pages are indexed by Google.
-
Having a similar name to another business might affect your ability to rank for the business name and other branded terms, especially if Google is having trouble figuring out that it's a separate business and not in some way affiliated with the other business(es) of the same name. To combat this, you should make sure you're building out your Google My Business profile, building up location signals, and branding your business well.
That said, there's no reason why having the same name as another business would keep your site from ranking for any keywords, especially for keywords you're targeting that the other ABC Graphic Design companies aren't. It shouldn't be affecting your non-brand terms at all. If you're not ranking for any of them, I suspect something else is the reason.
-
After you have checked out any possible WP issues suggested by Tymen, also look into Moz Local and check to see how many of the local ranking strong signal sites you have connected to your client. This will hopefully give your clients site an added boost by having additional confirmed NAP data to organically connect with their site.
Is the site appearing from branded keywords?
-
Hi Owen,
Is the site in Wordpress? I once had the same problem with a site and the reason was that on the backend in WP there is a box that says "block search engines" and that was on. Needless to say this was the reason for not ranking at all. Once turned off it took about a week before the first results to show up and definitely locally you should be able to outrank the overseas ABC's.
Good luck with all!
Tymen
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
-
Penalized By Google
My site name is bestmedtour .it's in English. I also want to have the Arabic version of the site. If I translate it with Google Translate, is it possible that the Arabic version of the site will be penalized?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aalinlandacc0 -
Google has penalized me for a keyword,and removed from google some one know for how long time is the penalty
i have by some links from fiverr i was ranking 9 for this keyword with 1200 of searches after fiverr it has disappeared from google more then 10 days i guess this is a penalty someone know how long a penalty like this is how many days to months ? i don't get any messages in webmaster tools this is the gig https://www.fiverr.com/carissa30/do-20-unique-domains-high-tf-and-cf-flow-backlinks-high-da?source=Order+page+gig+link&funnel=a7b5fa4f-8c0a-4c3e-98a3-74112b658c7f
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexmuller870 -
How will canonicalizing an https page affect the SERP-ranked http version of that page?
Hey guys, Until recently, my site has been serving traffic over both http and https depending on the user request. Because I only want to serve traffic over https, I've begun redirecting http traffic to https. Reviewing my SEO performance in Moz, I see that for some search terms, an http page shows up on the SERP, and for other search terms, an https page shows. (There aren't really any duplicate pages, just the same pages being served on either http or https.) My question is about canonical tags in this context. Suppose I canonicalize the https version of a page which is already ranked on the SERP as http. Will the link juice from the SERP-ranked http version of that page immediately flow to the now-canonical https version? Will the https version of the page immediately replace the http version on the SERP, with the same ranking? Thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JGRLLC0 -
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
Hi everyone - hope you are well. I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page. What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page. Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Breadcrumbs not displaying on Google
Hello, We have set breadcrumbs on some of our pages (example: https://www.globecar.com/en/car-rental/locations/canada/qc/montreal/airport-yul) for testing purposes and for some reasons they are still not showing up on Google: http://screencast.com/t/BSHQqkP69r6F Yet when I test the page with Google Structured Data Testing tool all is good: http://screencast.com/t/Fzlz3zae Any ideas? Thanks, Karim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GlobeCar0 -
Why does our business directions page rank above business profile page
Hi All, We are having an issue at the moment where our business direction page is ranking above the main business profile page. Our website is zodio.com, similar to Yelp but for South East Asia. An example of each page is below: Business Profile Page - http://www.zodio.com/business/detail/126037914/chowking Business Directions - http://www.zodio.com/business/direction/126037914 On many of our long tail searches for particular businesses, the business directions rank above the business details. Does anyone have any idea of why this would happen? I have researched Yelp and they do not have this issue. A few search examples in Google are as follows (one is in Thai): agonos dental clinic เวิลด์ชาร์มมิ่ง kawanku elektrik I have been rattling my brain and search for answers but cannot find anything. The communities help would be much appreciated. Many Thanks, Neil W
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zodiothailand0 -
Updated My Business Profiles & Still Not Ranking in Local SEO... What Next?
I have used Get Listed and a few other services to update my profiles for my company Health Care Associates (its a home health care agency). http:healthcareassociates.net. I have added pictures, categories, descriptions, key words, etc. and it doesn't seem to help. We are still not ranking in the search engines for "home care grand rapids", "home health care" etc. What else can I do to optimize the local search? Todd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | t1kuslik0 -
Do onpage likes and shares affect Google ranking?
Hi All, I know that social bookmarks are considered to be a good thing when pointing to a specific page. Is that the same to simple facebook "Likes" and tweets? By Likes I mean on page and not on Facebook fan page. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0