A competitor has a search term in their brand name - Can we outrank them for that search term?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have been putting a lot of work into ranking for a certain search term. We have managed to get our homepage to #3 for that search term.
#1 is a comparison site, so I am not overly fussed with beating them - we probably won't. But we do want to hit #2 and in all fairness, we have better content and have put more into our SEO efforts than the current #2. I think they are ranking so strongly because their brand name is exactly that search term with the word "go" in front of it. Google even spits out their extra links under the result as if it was a branded result.
I know EMD's don't hold much weight any more so I'm guessing this is all to do with their clever brand name choice.
My question is, can you outrank a competitor like that?
If you're selling wooden rocking horses and your company is called toybox.com for example, but your competitor is called GoWoodenRockingHorses and their domain is www.gowoodenrockinghorses.com, can toybox.com ever outrank them for the search term "wooden rocking horses"?
Hope this makes sense, please private mail me for more info if you need it!
Cheers,
Jamie
-
**UPDATE
We hit #2 last night and have held the position this morning. Hopefully a stronger link profile will now take us to #1!
-
Hi Jamie,
Mark Ginsberg is absolutely right "Despite the EMD update, EMD's do still have some advantages from my experience." and even I know list of the websites who is ranking for very competitive keyword by having EMD with very low number inbound links not even quality backlinks.
So it is not impossible to outrank them very easily but for that you must have more quality backlinks from authoritative websites.
Thanks
-
Cheers Mark I just wanted to make sure.
Our SEO and content is more on point than ever at the moment - as is site speed and errors - but from your response I am deducing we need to get a stronger link profile to knock them off the #2 spot.
That's where ill focus.
Thanks for that
-
You can absolutely outrank them, but you are starting out behind. Despite the EMD update, EMD's do still have some advantages from my experience. Specifically, they can get more keyword rich anchor text links "naturally" because people tend to link using the site name.
That said, if you have better on-page SEO or significantly more links than the EMD you're competing with, you should ultimately come out ahead.
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
-
Domain Name Change
Hello fellow Mozzers! Quick question:
Branding | | David-Kley
We have been looking into changing our domain name into something a bit easier to read and recite. I think that we have found one, and it has a very long history. The issue is that the new domain name removes one of our keywords. Example, current domain name:
webdesignandcompany.com
We have built a lot of branding around this name. Example of domain we are considering:
BLANKdesign.com (blank is to protect the domain name we are considering) The new domain is over 20 years old, whereas ours is only around 7 years. I am wondering if we are shooting ourselves in the foot by removing the word "web" since that is a primary focus of our business. The issue is that the current domain and business name are not very catchy, and hard to say in a phone call and remember. Feels keyword heavy and generic, but it ranks well. Really well. We would be doing a 301 redirect if we decide to change it, and we have Yext and Moz to help clean up all the listings. My question is: Is it worth it to switch? Would the removal of the word web make it harder to rank number 1 or two, since people search for web design? Or since we would be leaving all the titles and meta the same, and that the domain is older than ours make that not an issue? THOUGHTS?0 -
Google detects wrong information to compnay's knowledge graph on search index - Please help
This issue is about website properties' information showing on Google's search index with brand keywords. We have 8 different domains that operated separately in 8 countries. All are responsible for their individual domain. When I Google it with our brand name 'Flight Centre' in Google.ca, Google's search index shows company website link with flightcentre.com and detects all information, social profile etc.. from Flight centre Australia. Please see the screenshot. How to change this information that Google shows or detects website link and all other properties from flightcentre.ca? Anybody about with a quick answer would be awesome? IqWeymZ
Branding | | flightcentre200 -
Rebranding: How Can We Continue to Be Found by Searching the Old Name?
Our company was acquired and we are working toward an entire re-brand, including name change and new url. We plan to appropriately 301 redirect the old site to the correct pages on the news site, etc. The question is, if users continue to search the old company name on search engines, will it appear in SERPs for the new site? I'm guessing that our company name is associated to the old url and will that pass along the branded company name to the new url? My thoughts are to include the old company name in the sitemap.htm file and in the About Us section, particularly in the news release when the change occurs. Aside from that idea is to include social posts on G+, LinkedIn, our Blog, and Twitter as appropriate talking about the name change, all linking to the new website. Any input would be most appreciated!
Branding | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Is it OK to choose a Domain Name with Brand-name followed by keyword? Part 2
Last month I have posted a question about choosing the right domain name for a website which is currently popular in india, which also needs to be popular in USA. Here's the link to that question (http://moz.com/community/q/is-it-ok-to-choose-a-domain-name-with-brand-name-followed-by-keyword) As you can see the question got 3 helpful responses from experts. But if you scroll down and see.. there is a 4th response which I myself posted throwing some extra doubts, (This was left unanswered.) Could someone please check that thread and clarify my doubt ( the 4 response)
Branding | | PaulineRose0 -
Need advice on old brand names
A couple of years ago my company put all effort into one brand name, closing multiple sites with good names. All traffic going to ie OldBrandName.com is now redirected to www.newbrandname.com/OldBrandName. Here our customers are being told about the fusion/merge and we are linking to the key-products of OldBrandName, on our new age. We have 4 of these pages for 4 different brandnames. These pages still get a lot of traffic. Now to my question: how do I get as much juice as possible out of these OldBrandNames? They have high page authority and many inbound links. But I would like to pass the juice and the links to our frontpage or other relevant pages. What is optimal? Should I just redirect all the traffic to www.newbrandname.com? The redirects was made approximately 2 years ago. We are in the travel & leisure business, so customers often visits numerous times a year, closing deals 1-2 times a year. All 4 OldBrandNames have their own specialities (family, low budget, off-the-beaten-track, wellness). Any recommendations on how to approach this?
Branding | | alsvik0 -
Subject: Brand anchor text distribution. Does the HP url classify as brand anchor?
Hi guys, I just wanted to know what your take is on this and whether anyone knows if google has published any info on this. I am wanting to analyse a fairly large backlink profile. The idea is to discover how far it correlates alongside recent SERPS ranking data (based on anchor text distribution) information that has been published across the web. There is so much data to categorise and segment. This is due to overlaps in categorisation, (which is possibly a good thing as it appears more natural) though I often it difficult to decide which goes where. My question today relates to brand anchor text - in determining the % of overall brand distribution for a backlink profile - Which out of the below do you think rings true? 1.) Should I be considering the homepage url anchor text as a branded link anchor? 2.) Should the brand % just be 'pure brand' anchor text? 3.) Should it contain partial brand + KWD data? 4.) Should it comprise of all of the above elements? 5.) Should I divvy up / segment partial brand, pure brand, brand + kwd, citations etc into new sub categories and see how this individual data correlates to current ranking factors in the SERPS? (Not sure if there is any recent published data in this amount of detail) Anyway, I just wondered what you guys thought about this in the eyes of Google., and also to find out how you go about classifying and segmenting backlink profile data. Thanks for now
Branding | | Turkey0 -
What can i do to regain top 3 for local map listings if I already created a bunch of citation link to my site?
I got hit by a penguin refresh on Oct 5th and lost over 10 #1 rankings. I'm currently #4 on the places listing for my main keyword and really trying to regain top 3 position. I created a bunch of local citation with matching info and really piped out my map listing since it is 100% complete. I'm quite stumped on how to further optimize my map listing to where i can hit top 3 positions. Does anyone have any recommendations on this issue? Thanks Sam
Branding | | junkcars0