SEO Ranking & Brand Names
-
I have several situations where one of my sites rank organically in 4th or 5th place for a specific search term relating to a 'big brand' .. I usually fall in behind the brands main website .. commercially this is very good for me.
Let me give you an example .. in google.co.uk type in 'thomas cook exchange rates'. I rank position 4 (comparecurrency.co.uk). Position 1-3 are thomas cook's own pages. Naturally.
However, my question is .. could I outrank them and how could I initially measure the effort involved in getting to position 1?
I noticed Google recently put me into position 1 for this term and then quickly (within a few days) pulled me back down to position 4.
Does anyone have any experience of this type of search positioning and have any information that may help me?
My gut feel is that I have maybe maxed out the economically viable potential of these keywords and that I should invest my SEO $s into other phrases?
Thanks in advance
Olly
-
My experience with competing for my own brand name against myself....
Bulwarkpest.com was the established authority and brand for Bulwark Exterminating and Bulwark Pest Control. Time had come for a major site overhaul. We revamped the site and decided to go with the longer domain, bulwarkpestcontrol.com. No matter how hard I tried I could not dethrone bulwarkpest.com. Traffic on bulwarkpestcontrol.com was 10x that of bulwarkpest.com. More links, better SEO, more pages, I even threw PPC into the mix. The only way I was able to beat my own domain was to 301 bulwarkpest.com to bulwarkpestcontrol.com. I took it back out of the 301 out of curiosity, but the new ranking domain, www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com, stayed on top.
Once you have achieved that glorious position of "brand" or authority for a search, it is near impossible to dethrone it.
Even if you were to beat the algorithm, if your site ever got a human evaluation, which google does do on a regular bases, you would be dethroned because searchers want to find the brand website when searching for a brand.
-
It's always tough to outrank a website for their brand name, because of the associated anchor text.
And for my Google search (US), you ranked 7th.
I would put your money in other ventures.
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
-
Google ranking penalty: Limited to specific pages or complete website?
Hi all, Let's say few pages on the website dropped in the rankings due to poor optimisation of the pages or hit by algo updates. Does Google limits the ranking drop only to these pages or the entire website will have any impact? I mean will this cause ranking drop to the homepage for primary keyword? Will Google pose the penalty to other pages in the website if few pages drop in the rankings. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Http vs Https Related Rankings Drop?
I've noticed in a number of keyword ranking tools (Moz included) that our rankings have dropped substantially for a number of our top performing keywords precisely 7 days back. When you view the attached screenshot you'll see there was a drastic drop in the overall organic impressions as well as a drop in keyword rankings. I also noticed that all the keywords which have dropped in rank now show with the https version of our home page url. I've read up on this and it believe that this should not cause a drop in rankings but we have even added https as a domain in webmaster tools with no improvement. Quite simply, has Google de-indexed our http home page url which was previously tied to our higher rankings for our core keywords? How can we get this back without "disavowing" our https version of the site. We're not doing anything to game search results so I dont think we're being penalized, simply there is some sort technical glitch taking place between recognizing HTTP vs HTTPS versions of our site. Our home page is goo.gl/qVPRwf and an example keyword is "wedding ring sets his and hers" Can anyone recommend further debugging steps or have an understanding of what can be done at this point? Also, if it helps, I have studied the Help Center, read the FAQs and searched for similar questions with no success.wedding ring sets his and hers impressions%20-%20ranking%20drop.png?dl=0
Algorithm Updates | | punitshah0 -
Ranking Well in Google But Not Bing - Why?
Hello Moz Community, I'm ranking well in Google (#2-#6 for various keywords) but on the second page of Bing. Are there certain differences that I should be aware of? Thanks, Cole
Algorithm Updates | | ColeLusby0 -
What is the best SEO solution for pagination?
Dear all, What is the best SEO solution for pagination? for example, what code do I need to put on these individual pages? /page-1 /page-2 /page-3 (final page) Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | HMK-NL0 -
Is it still possible for small businesses to rank well in google
Hi I've been playing around with ecommerce sites for a few years now and although I am no expert I'm not a complete novice. We used to do quite well in google but recent changes have halved our number of hits. I have noticed that over the last year google has given priority to large brand names as opposed to relevancy. For example, if you search for the term 'bridal jewellery' (google UK) you will see that apart from one or two the majority of placements are taken by big compnies who offer very little bridal jewellery. One or two pages at most. My question is, is it still possible to rank well against these brand names or has google made it impossible for small companies. PS we only practice ethical seo as suggested by seomoz. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks www.kerryblu.co.uk
Algorithm Updates | | Dill0 -
Does Search Volume Directly Effect Organic Search Result Rankings?
For example, if 20,000 people searched for "seomoz toasters," do you think a page on seomoz.org that mentioned toasters would begin to rank well for the query "toasters"?
Algorithm Updates | | tatermarketing0 -
Google Places/Points of Interest Rankings?
Does anyone have an idea on how Google ranks or determines the 'Points of Interests' that come up when searching about places/cities?
Algorithm Updates | | CarlLarson0 -
Changing Wordpress Permalink Structure, 301s, and Possibility of Rank Loss?
I have to change the permalink structure in wordpress, as using /%postname%/ in conjunction with a couple thousand pages triggers verbose rewrite rules, which further triggers about 5,000 requests per page load. The permalink structure must change as wordpress development probably won't change this in the near future. Now, changing the permalink structure worries me quite a bit, as about 25% of my traffic is attributed to my blog posts -- the rest is covered through CMS-like-use of pages (75%). blog posts will change permalink/url structure, pages won't The website is very respected in my niche and has quite a few links going to most of my posts and pages, as well as the homepage I've noticed in the last year that anything I post starts ranking on page 1 of Google for very competitive kws in 1-3 days, often with top 3 rankings PR4 / decent Alexa / Moz ranks not too shabby either / quality content / decent social media linking (mainly Facebook) / no penalties I provided the factors as to not gloat, but rather to get the best answer from those who have fairly established websites and perhaps had to change their URLs and noticed some or no changes to their rankings. How long of a hit am I going to take / how much my posts might drop down in SERPs if I change the permalink structure, properly 301 them, and implement all changes in one swoop? Info for WordPress users Benefits of changing the permalink structure to /%post_id%/%postname%/ -- for example -- include: way faster load times, not having 5,000 requests per page load, avoiding verbose rewrite rules trigger, finally modify the site without worrying about crashing the website and using a local server to make changes on thousands of pages (the database backups, the ritual of changing the settings in the local database, changing the post/page, saving the local database, loading the locally saved db on live server, and crossing fingers and pray it works -- just takes so darn long.) Ahh..yes, huge time saver. ** this issue occurs when using WP as a CMS with several hundred pages + and using the /%postname%/ or /%category%//%postname%/ or /somethingstatic/%postname%/ -- IF USING the date based way /%year%/%postname%/ or /%post_id%/%postname%/ you should be fine.
Algorithm Updates | | pepsimoz0