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.
Using Brand value for SEO: Can we use keyword with brand name?
-
Hi Moz community,
I am curious to know this. Let's say there is a brand value for a company. It has it's own popularity that it's been mentioned across the internet and social media directly with brand name without their service or industry keyword. Now if the company started promoting themselves like keyword along with their brand name, will it help them to rank for that keyword. For example, Moz is already famous, now they want to rank for "SEO" and related keywords, so they started calling themselves on internet "Moz SEO"; will this fetch them in ranking for keyword SEO? My ultimate question is, using primary keyword along with brand name will work out in ranking for that primary keyword or not?
Thanks
-
I agree with Robert. So of course with the Clarks examples pages may be:
Clarks Boots
Clarks Sandals
Clarks Slippers
And each of those pages would be different. Filled with contextually rich content surrounding those terms.
"It won't put you on the 1st page" - I don't agree with this. I have many clients who have been hoiked up to page one by adding contextually relevant content to a key phrase (Brand + Category) constructed the page. If you _are _the brand and you construct pages like this (With 300+ words contextual content) you will be No. 1 or 2 in Google, never mind just on the front page.
Just search 'Carousel Projects SEO'
Regards Nigel
-
Hey vtmoz,
Short answer: It will probably help your rankings for that keyword/phrase.
Longer answer: It won't put you on the 1st page, but it will go some distance in helping your rankings along with other established factors.
Potential issue: If your brand features other products or services for which they wish to rank that are irrelevant to the keyword you wish to rank for, be careful that you do not gain rankings for your selected keyword at the expense of others on your site.
For example, say you want to rank for "keyword 1" so you target "Brand" "Keyword 1". If you also have "Keyword 2" and "Keyword 3" that are not relevant to "Keyword 1" you have just shot yourself in the foot for those keywords in order to gain ground with "Keyword 1".
This may not be a problem for you, but something to be aware of.
Personally, I'd be more inclined to make internal pages for keywords I am attempting to rank for, and introduce the brand and specific keyword to those pages to help Google with context. The last thing you want to do is switch up Google's understanding of your site by "traffic hunting" (i.e. putting keywords into your site content to increase traffic rather than to serve your visitors). In this way you might even lose traffic by making the change you have highlighted.
Let me know if you'd like clarification on the above - always happy to help!
Cheers,
Rob
-
Hi vtmoz
It's funny you should say "so they started calling themselves on the internet 'Moz SEO' " because Moz used to be called SEOMOZ and they changed to just MOZ so that they could concentrate on building the brand. There is evidence to suggest that if an article is written about a subject and your brand is linked from that article that Google will recognise the contextuality of the article and associate your brand name with that subject.
For example, one would expect that Nike and 'sports', 'sports clothing' etc would occupy the same space. In the same way - if your brand sold Tennis Rackets, for example, Google would begin to associate your brand name with that range of products.
In the same way, when we SEOs are optimising a page we will use Keyword Explorer. The tool would give us contextually relevant keywords to use alongside a brand name in order to strengthen the SEO of a page.
So if I were writing an article on Nike and I hadn't used the words 'sports', 'sports clothing', 'sports footwear' or even 'Phil Knight', then MOZ will suggest these as relevant keywords to use to strengthen the page's SEO.
I wouldn't include them in the brand name but I would use them on a page. In this way, they become kind of 'baby anchor text' in that they surround the brand.
In order to strengthen that further, you might write an article that is submitted to a blog with a specific anchor text backlink which is not your brand name but the most relevant keyword. So if Nike wanted (and it does of course) to be found for the term 'Sports Footwear' then it would link back to its own page with that anchor text.
Very often when I am constructing Meta titles and heading for a brand page then I would use the subject after the brand as that is often the way someone may search for it in Google.
Example: I would title a page 'Clarks Boots' as the opening two words of the title and as the H1 on the page if I wanted that page to rank for the brand and the category. I would then fill the page with boot products along with a good 300 word + description of the types of Clarks boots, the gender, heels, ankle, mid, high and any other contextually relevant keywords.
I hope that goes someway to answering your question,
Regards
Nigel
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
-
Does using parent pages in WordPress help with SEO and/or indexing for SERPs?
I have a law office and we handle four different practice areas. I used to have multiple websites (one for each practice area) with keywords in the actual domain name, but based on the recommendation of SEO "experts" a few years ago, I consolidated all the webpages into one single webpage (based on the rumors at the time that Google was going to be focusing on authorship and branding in the future, rather than keywords in URLs or titles). Needless to say, Google authorship was dropped a year or two later and "branding" never took off. Overall, having one webpage is convenient and generally makes SEO easier, but there's been a huge drawback: When my page comes up in SERPs after searching for "attorney" or "lawyer" combined with a specific practice area, the practice area landing pages don't typically come up in the SERPs, only the front page comes up. It's as if Google recognizes that I have some decent content, and Google knows that I specialize in multiple practice areas, but it directs everyone to the front page only. Prospective clients don't like this and it causes my bounce rate to be high. They like to land on a page focusing on the practice area they searched for. Two questions: (1) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for SEO? The research I've done up to this point appears to indicate "no." It doesn't make much difference as long as the keywords are in the domain name and/or URL. But I'd be interested to hear contrary opinions. (2) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for indexing in Google SERPs? For example, would it make it more likely that someone searching for "anytown usa divorce attorney" would actually end up in the divorce section of the website rather than the front page?
Algorithm Updates | Nov 21, 2015, 7:15 PM | micromano0 -
Having 2 domains with same name - Impact on SEO
Hi AllAs we still dwindle with the rankings not coming in line with the efforts.I have a question: We have 2 websites 1. http://www.example.com/ (which lost traffic and rank in Jan 2013). So we assumed that it was due to some penguin penalty. So we worked on disavow extra but nothing actually helped.Though there was no manual penalty mentioned in the GWT. Frustrated with this we thought of having another website 6 months back: 2. https://example.org/ - we did all the right things and by the book. But we are not seeing ranking here too. We did backlink analysis on all competitors and worked on only quality links they had. So all our links are highly highly relevant. But still the ranks are not moving beyond third page...in fact they moved to 6-7 page in last 2-3 days. Please suggest .. 1. is it due to same name of domain (our brand name) causing the issue. If yes should we go for 302 or 301 redirect to save ourselves from any penalty that our last website may have got. We can not leave that name unattended as our cataloges etc have that website mentioned. i will expect a scientific reply here not gut feeling please. 2. Is it to do with .org domain extension that it should not be with commercial organizations like us Kindly reply at the earliest Regards Aman
Algorithm Updates | Mar 29, 2015, 1:59 AM | Aman_1230 -
Where can I find a breakdown of google search volume by specific industry/vertical? For example, what % of people searching in google are looking for housing? Cars? Restaurants?
I"m looking for specific breakdowns of search volume in google by: #1 Vertical (Shopping/restaurants/Services etc). For example, how many people are searching in google for information pertaining to restaurants per month? Search volume for all of 2012, 2013, 2014? #2 More granular categories within verticals, people searching for: books,apartment rentals,cellphones) Is there a breakdown of google search somewhere online that gives this type of information? Thank you MOZ community, really appreciate it!
Algorithm Updates | Jan 15, 2015, 12:38 PM | AppleSauceRules0 -
I thought META KEYWORDS tag was dead?
http://www.wpkube.com/wordpress-seo-plugin/ this article just came out as a one of the many guides to Yoast's Wordpress SEO. I am surprised it mentioned: Use meta keywords tag: Google reportedly doesn’t use the keywords that your enter for your posts but as Google isn’t the only show in town, you might want to check this box.Recommendation: check I stopped using meta keywords tag because Google doesn't use it any more, plus if you are in a competitive field by using keywords you are giving free keyword research to your competitors? Does any one still use meta keywords here? If so why? Google doesn't use keyword tags, has anyone experienced a dis-benefit to meta-keywords tag from Google ie. dropped rankings etc.?
Algorithm Updates | Mar 7, 2014, 6:52 PM | vmialik2 -
Does Word Order Matter in Local Keywords?
We do a lot of local SEO, and we're wondering if it's better to target "keyword location" or "location keyword"? Does it affect ranking and keyword difficulty if we're trying to rank for "plumbing appleton" or "appleton plumbing"? Any insight would be great.
Algorithm Updates | Oct 24, 2012, 6:45 PM | optimalwebinc0 -
Confused About Addon Domains and SEO
I find addon domains really confusing. Everyone I've asked so far says that they don't affect SEO but I find that really hard to believe considering the same content is on both a subdomain and a subfolder and also has it's own unique domain. PLUS (in my case) completely different niche sites are sharing the same hosting. I really don't want to pay for hosting for all of my different sites but at the same time, if it's better/safer to do so for Panda/Penguin reasons I'm happy to do that. Thank you for your time. I look forward to your opinions/suggestions!
Algorithm Updates | Jun 27, 2012, 12:44 PM | annasusmiles0 -
Plural vs non-plural domain name
I'm sure this question has been answered and asked a 1,000 different ways but what would be the best domain name to use in the long term (2 years +)? The plural versions (examples.com) which has a decent domain authority and is ranking 1st in Google search results yet has less search volume or the singular version (example.com) that has no current SEO value for the search term that we'd like to target however the singular version of the keyword has a much higher search volume? so basically will it be better to have the exact match that has more volume or the plural form that has better rankings after 2 years of doing SEO for each domain? My guess is that using (examples.com) with the better domain authority and tightening the grip on its dominance in Google will still be more effective than having the exact match domain with more search volume for that keyword while performing the same amount of SEO even after two years. Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | Feb 13, 2012, 3:59 PM | ydop0 -
To use the same content just changing the keywords could be seen as duplicate content?
I want to offer the same service or product in many different cities, so instead of creating a new content for each city what I want to do it to copy the content already created for the product and service of a city and then change the name of the city and create a new url inside my website for each city. for example let say I sell handmade rings in the USA, but I want o target each principal city in the USA, so I have want to have a unque url for ecxh city so for example for Miami I want to have www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-miami and for LA the url would be www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-la Can I have the same content talking about the handmade rings and just change the keywords and key phrases? or this will count as a duplicate content? content: TITLE: Miami Handmade Rings URL :www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-miami Shop Now handmade rings in Miami in our online store and get a special discount in Miami purchases over $50 and also get free shipping on Miami Local address... See what our Miami handmade rings clients say about our products.... TITLE: LA Handmade Rings URL: www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-la Shop Now handmade rings in LA in our online store and get a special discount in LA purchases over $50 and also get free shipping on LA Local address... See what our LA handmade rings clients say about our products.... There are more than 100 location in the country I want to do this, so that is why I want to copy paste and replace.. Thanks in advance, David Orion
Algorithm Updates | Sep 28, 2011, 4:38 PM | sellonline1230