No longer in top 100 for branded keyword - How!?

[alpen]

Got a weird one here...

Won't give away actual URL but for this example let's say client's site is:

www.purplebananas.com

Many of the longtail keyword-targeted subpages/posts are still ranking pretty well.  We recently went through and optimized the site based on poor scores we found from crawl reports from SEO Moz, which included renaming some sub-pages, eliminating duplicate content pages, archives, etc (it's a wordpress site, about 4 years old).

This site used to rank at the top or near it for the search "purple bananas".

However, after we optimized the site it's almost completely fallen off the radar of Google, turns up way over 100 for the search "purple bananas".

Strangely, if we search "purplebananas" we're at the top still.

Any idea what's going on here?

Are we potentially over-optimized or something weird for our own brand!?

Any troubleshooting tips?

FWIW the changes were made about 6 weeks ago and while we're steadily building links, I don't think this is the standard "Google dance".

Thanks!

[CMC-SD]

Is Purple Bananas the company name or is Purple Bananas the main keyword you're trying to rank for?

[alpen]

Both.

URL is (not literally, fake example):  www.purplebananas.com

Trying to rank well for the search "purple bananas"

[TommyTan]

Hi Steve,

Could it be that while you are cleaning up your website for SEO such as changing the Title Tag and H1 headers that you removed the keyword "purple bananas'?  Did you have these keywords on some of your on-page factors and recently removed it?

[alpen]

Hi Tommy,

Thanks for the input.  I did an on-page analysis through SEO moz and just fixed a few issues I had (exact keyword was missing from a few elements, though I don't believe we touched these while optimizing the site 6 weeks ago).

The homepage now has a perfect score through the SEO Moz optimization check for "purple bananas" keyword, so I'm hoping that does the trick.

If not, any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks!

[michaelj_me]

Steve, it sounds like www.purplebananas.com is the same as the keyword you're needing to rank for, correct? A couple possibilities here:

1. SEOmoz's data is inaccurate.

2. There is a quality issue with your site on some level.

There has been some significant Google algorithm updates for exact match domains recently. It may require an inclusion request to Google after you've made some updates. If you haven't already, make sure you're using the latest version of Wordpress and install Yoast's SEO for Wordpress plugin. Make sure your XML sitemaps and Robots.txt are set up correctly. Also, make sure you're in compliance from the Google Webmasters Tools perspective (no notices or warnings).

If you find that you're not listed anymore for your domain name, it's possible you've been removed due to a trademark penalty, which means there's some significant issues with duplicate content or Google thinks you're trying to spam it in one way or another.

Having a pro evaluate the site and your various TLDs for major no-no's may be a good solution if you cannot resolve it with the steps above.

Hope that helps and best of luck.