Website Name Before Search String in Google SERP
-
I'm curious to hear whether it's better to have your company name before the Search String, or after it?When I search for Church Management Software in Google, some results place the company before the string.
**In attached image
(Pink Squares : Company Name)
(Blue Squares : Search String)Please indicate in your response if there is any study, experiment, or evidence to back your answer. Thanks for your help!
-
Yes, that is what is happening. Google will often use the title that is on the page, but it does not always do that. It will use a different title if it thinks a different title is more relevant to the searcher's intent. This is especially true if the content on the page does not match the title. (For example, on the Elexio page, the words "Church Management Software" are not even present on the page, other than the title, description, and schema.)
-
Thanks Linda. Are you suggesting that Google is serving up this change on its own?
-
As far as a reference for the answer that the keyword should be near the start of the title, Moz's Beginner's Guide refers to this.
But what I find interesting is that if you look at those pages (not just the serp), only two of them actually start with the company name in the title on the page. The others are just displayed that way.
-
For sure. Any additional equity must be a plus.
-
Thanks for the feedback Luis. I agree that if this was a campaign on Brand Awareness, then leading with the company name may be preferable. I did some research into your "first 11 characters" reference, and had not realized that Nielsen was the authority behind that study. Thanks for mentioning that.
db
-
I typically use the keyword first and company/brand second. As a prospect will skim the serps, they typically are looking for the keyword entered, so prominence is import.
-
Hello there
1. First of all, place your main keyword at the beginning: Search engines assign more importance to the first word in the title tag than to the second one and so forth. From a usability perspective, since users understand just the first 11 characters of links, then it is important to make the most out of these characters by placing the most important content there.
2. And remember, don't put your company name on every single website page. The problem with this is that when Google comes along to index your site, it has no idea what your site is about, so it looks in the HTML for clues. One place it looks is in the page title, which is what you see in your tag on your browser. If you keep using your company name over and over again, you end up indexing your company name a lot in Google's search engine. This is great you say...so when someone Googles "My Company Name" I will be first. That's true, you will be. But unless you are Nike or Coke, you don't have massive brand recognition, so while you may get a bit of traffic from your name, you are missing out on people looking for your services. So my final advice here is put your company name on your home page only along with your industry and use the other pages for more product related keywords.
Mmm sorry no study here but reading a lot and watching some guru videos from time to time!!
Hope this helps!
Luis
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
-
Should I let 22-year-old website go or revamp it?
Hi, I’m trying to decide whether to renew annual hosting for my old website and hoping a wiser brain than mine in these matters might be able to advise me. The website was the home of a weekly website review column, e-newsletter, content writing tips and other web content/marketing related content so has lots of backlinks since 1997, though hasn't been updated for about 10 years. The domain email address is listed on some spam lists as I suspect it was harvested from the site by crawling spambots. I haven't bothered trying to de-list as don't use the address or website anymore. The site has never been used for PBN or sending spam (at least not by me). There's lots of good content in there, and some would still be relevant, but not sure if it's worth keeping for backlinks and for redirecting to my new website when it’s built. Plan to build a new WordPress website for my new writing as no longer in the content marketing business. It's a country-specific domain so can't really sell it as need to own the business name to own the domain name. I no longer use the business name either as plan to set up new brand for new website. But it might be useful to direct traffic to my new website domain once it's up and running if I cleaned up all the many broken links to expired websites in the databases of hundreds of website reviews. It's all on archive.org but I'm still very attached to the old site, even if it's no longer useful from a business point of view. Did a Moz check which showed: Domain Authority
Branding | | brizc
20 Linking Domains
89 Discovered in the last 60 days
1 Lost in last 60 days
4 Inbound Links
1.9k Ranking Keywords
0 My web host stats show the site gets between 300 and 500 visits a month. Had about 138,200 visits since October last year. And about 653,200 hits. Is that amount of traffic worth the time and expense of pruning the site of hundreds of expired links and fixing up other glitches? It's very dated in design and layout and is written in .asp I could send you the URL in private message if you would like to look at the website first. Been agonising over this decision for months as budget is very tight but don’t want to lose the site if it might have future value. Would greatly appreciate advice from someone who's up on this stuff as I've been out of the game for a long time and the deadline to renew the site hosting is very soon. Thank you in advance for your time and help.0 -
Copy/pasting the article from another website and referencing correctly not to get penalized
Hi all I am looking at copy/pasting an article from another website which is very relevant to my business, is there a standard practise/best practise for SEO to do this and ensure Google doesn't think i am plagerizing content etc.. Link to source down the bottom? Using Quotations... making a page noindex or no follow etc?
Branding | | IsaCleanse0 -
Getting Google Plus Page to Appear
I've recently been making changes and updates to my company's verified local Google + page--my question is when and/or how do I configure it to appear in the search results? When I type my business into Google (Exchange Capital Management), it's not even within the results displayed. The page isn't accessible unless someone were to Google "Exchange Capital Management Google Plus." As mentioned, the page has been verified, updated, and has about 8,000+ views. Any advice or feedback is appreciated! All best, Lauren McLaughlin
Branding | | LMcLaughlin0 -
Is it ok to correct someone who spelled and styled our name incorrectly in a blog post?
A writer recently recommended my company, Swiftype, in a blog post. However, he called us Swift Type, which adds an additional t, splits our name into two words, and uses an additional capitalization. Would it be out of line to email him and gently correct him? I appreciate the recommendation, and will absolutely focus on thanking him for that, complimenting his content (which is fairly good), and just add the correction at the end of the email. While it isn't a huge deal, a search Swift Type brings up the Swift programming language and SwiftKey as first page results, while Swiftype only displays our content (he also didn't link to us, so a user would have to search to find us - reaching out could also be a chance to spur him to link to us).
Branding | | alecfwilson0 -
Is there a ranking report for SERPs not specific to a URL
Is anyone aware of a tool or service that's available that will report on SERPs no matter what the URL is? Meaning, if I ask it to give me the top 50 results for a certain keyword, I would like it to give me a report on each URL that is ranking for that keyword.
Branding | | GrandOptimizations0 -
Which industry has the HIGHEST % of awful looking websites! ??
I have an auto upholstery client that wants a new website and some SEO work done here locally. I take to Google to check out the competition in some other states to get a feel for whats other sites are doing and I just spent 30 minutes looking at 53 different websites and I swear not a one of them is worth $20 Have you run into any industries that historically have terrible websites? Have a great Christmas everybody! Matthew
Branding | | Mrupp440 -
Should I create a Google + account for the brand for Rel=Author
Hi, What I meant is should I use the above mentioned account as rel=author for category pages etc? It seems to me improper to use my account (with my picture) in a category page and to show my face in the SERPS for searches like "Toshiba Laptops". On the other hand, if in the SERPS it will show our Logo it might increase CTR... Any thoughts? Thanks
Branding | | BeytzNet0 -
Brand SERP Domination
Hi Mozfans, I've been asked by my management to try and "Dominate" our Branded SERP (I've also posted this question as a private question to the Moz staff but would love to know what the community thinks of this or if anyone has "Brand SERP" experience); For our brand name, the first page SERP currently looks like this; ================================ Current SERP 1 (Google UK): Our homepage (with the 6 pack of prominent pages beneath it) An advert that we control An advert that we control An advert that we control An advert that we control One of those random business directories - we don't control the listing Something not related to us at all Something not related to us at all One of those random business directories - we don't control the listing Something not related to us at all ================================ As you can see from the above list, we are already dominating the top 50% of our branded SERP page, however management would like 100% (of course). Now two obvious things that are missing from our Branded SERP page are our Facebook Page and our Twitter Profile, however, how do I get those to rank? I believe I read somewhere (it might have been on the SEOmoz/YOUmoz blog) that the answer is to build links to those profiles (with your brand name as the anchor text). Would that work? We currently use an external SEO company for our link building so could it help if we asked them to build links for us pointing at those two social profiles? Also, are there any other methods for dominating a branded SERP? What would you recommend? Thanks in advance everyone! Regards, Ash
Branding | | AshSEO20110