Problem ranking page with a double name and an "&"
-
I have a client with a double name and a & like: Jones & Jones. I and using all in one SEO on a Wordpress site. Their home page is not ranking even though I have Jones, Jones & Jones and Jones and Jones listed in the keywords. Interestingly enough other pages where I did not list the home page rank when you do a serach for "Jones & Jones" I have not had this issue with other sites but have never had a name repeated and and & in between... any advice woild be appreciate.. I just signed up for a trial of MOZ...
-
Both Ryan and Linda have great answers for your specific issue.
As a new customer, I highly suggest signing up for our webinars that walk you through how to use the tools and real life examples with them.
-
When you say you have Jones, Jones & Jones and Jones and Jones listed in the keywords, what do you mean? In a keywords meta tag? That is not used by Google anymore. When you say "other pages where I did not list the home page", do you mean you do not use a keyword tag?
Neither a double name nor an ampersand should be a problem, though there might be a lot of competition for a common name. You could try the Moz keyword tool to see how difficult your term is to rank for.
-
Hi Alan. Welcome! I hope you get a lot out of your trial. As for the Jones & Jones problem, it could look like keyword stuffing to the search engines and thus the page may appear over optimized when it's meta keywords tag is, "Jones, Jones & Jones..." Etc. Imagine if a search engine saw the same behavior for a different word. It'd look like a spam attempt.
I would go through the site and minimize the business name mentions to something that reads naturally, delete the meta keywords tag (if anything it's a negative signal if not otherwise completely ignored by the search engines) and then submit Jones & Jones to a large number of business listing websites--local and otherwise--to solidly register the company as being named Jones & Jones. Cheers!
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
-
I have followed all the steps in google speed ranking on how to increase my website http://briefwatch.com/ speed but no good result
My website http://briefwatch.com/ has a very low-speed score on google page speed and I followed all the steps given to me still my website speed doesn't increase
Local Website Optimization | | Briefwatch0 -
Meta descriptions in other languages than the page's content?
Hi guys, I need an opinion on the optimization of meta descriptions for a website available in 6 languages that faces the following situation: Main pages are translated in 6 languages, English being primary >> all clear here. BUT The News section includes articles only in English, that are displayed as such on all other language versions of the website. Example:
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
website.com/en/news/article 1
website.com/de/neues/article 1
website.com/fr/nouvelles/article 1
etc. Because we don't have the budget right now to translate all content, I was wondering if I could add only the Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions in the specific languages (using Google Translate), while the content to remain in English. Would this be accepted as reasonable enough for Google, or would it affect the website ranking?
I'd like to avoid major mistakes, so I'm hoping someone here on this forum has a better idea of how to proceed in this case.0 -
Using posts to make static pages - A best practice or a bad idea?
I have started working with a few law firms this year. They already have websites and I am doing various marketing tasks such as copywriting, redesigns, and, of course, SEO. In a couple of cases I was surprised to find that they had made the pages describing their various practice areas post content. I'm not sure why. But I suspect that the idea might have been to have the phrase: /practice-areas/ as a part of their URL. I didn't really like the idea of treating pages like posts. It seems a bit like working the system. But apart from that, wouldn't pages have a higher value as "permanent" content? As posts - their publish date has more weight, right? And they'd get old? But maybe the previous developers were on to something and the category/post approach to listing practice areas is the way to go? I am starting a new site for a new firm and I'd like to feel more confident about the right structure to choose for this kind of website before I start. Does anybody know the right answer? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Dandelion1 -
Difficulty Ranking Two Locations in the Same City
We are in the self-storage business and have locations through the Pacific Northwest. As we grow, there are cities where we've added multiple (2-3) locations. But we're discovering that we're having a great deal of difficulty ranking for all of these. For instance, we have two locations in Vancouver, WA. One is West Coast Self-Storage Vancouver, and the other is West Coast Self-Storage Padden Parkway. Both are in Vancouver, WA, but for the most part, only West Coast Self-Storage Vancouver is getting ranked. In fact, on those searches where Vancouver ranks, Padden Parkway doesn't show up anywhere. Not in the top 10 pages anyway. Each location has an outer landing page and an inner details page. On each page, we've placed unique, city-optimized keywords in the URL, Page Title, h1s, content. Of course each location has a separate NAP. Each location also has its own GMB page. Each location has a decent amount of reviews across multiple sites (Google, Yelp, GetFiveStars.) Both locations were previously on their own domain until a year ago when they were redirected to their current URLs. Both of those original domains were close to the same age. With the Padden Parkway location, we've tried to be even more hyper-local, by including the address in the URLs and in the h1 of the outer page. We've also created an h2 that references local neighborhoods around the business. We're also running into this situation in at least one other city, so I'm wondering if this has something to do with our url structure. Other businesses in our space use the URL structure of domain.com/state/city/location. We only go down to the state level. What are we missing?
Local Website Optimization | | misterfla0 -
Accurate rankings data? software? tools?
Hello, While I am aware that Google rankings are subject to a number of variables, I still need to be able to provide the most accurate rankings data for my clients in their reports. Most recently, I have been using the Google Adwords Planner and modifying by location and/or device. Now, having found discrepancy in the MOZ rankings, I started trying to again find the most accurate tools or software. Could someone please suggest the most accurate tool, and also how the accurate rankings are achieved? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer0 -
Home page links -- Ajax When Too Many?
My home page has links to major cities. If someone chooses a specific city I want to give them the choice to choose a suburb within the city, With say 50 cities and 50 suburbs for each city that's 2500 links on the home page. In order to avoid that many links on the home page (or any page) I would like to have just the 50 cities and pull up the suburbs as an ajax call that search engines would not read/crawl. This would be better than clicking on a main city and then getting the city page which they then can choose a suburb. Better to do it all at once. Is it a bad idea to ajax the subregions on the home page and to code it so Google, Bing, other search engines don't crawl or even see anything on the home page related to the suburbs? The search engines will still find the suburb links because they will be listed on each main city page.
Local Website Optimization | | friendoffood0 -
Local Ranking Power of a Multi-Keyword URL?
Here is a site that is sitting at number 1 on Google UK (local results) for a number of its keywords: http://www.scottishdentistry.com/ If you look at the links in the navigation many of them have urls such as this: http://www.scottishdentistry.com/glasgow-scotland-dentistry/glasgow-scotland-hygienists.html These have clearly been created to be keyword rich. For example, there is no publicly-available page at: http://www.scottishdentistry.com/glasgow-scotland-dentistry Do you think this tactic has helped with the site's rankings? Is it worth imitating? Or will it ultimately attract a penalty of some kind? Remember this is in the UK where Google seems to be slower at penalising dodgy tactics than in the US. Thanks everyone.
Local Website Optimization | | neilmac0 -
How do I fix duplicate content issues if the pages are really just localized versions?
Does this still hurt our SEO? Should we place different countries on their own respective domains (.co.uk, etc)?
Local Website Optimization | | fdmgroup0