Any reasons why social media properties are ranking higher than the site's own name?

[SEO5Team]

The site below has social media properties and other sites coming up before it's own listing even for the exact search of the site name. Any ideas why this is happening?

Link

Any input is appreciated.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

When a site doesn't rank for their brand, but has done previously, this can often be attributed to a penalty of some kind. I searched for "Smartpress" and didn't find them in the first 2 pages. However, this can also happen if they are a new site.

Other times this can happen, are when they brand themselves based on an already well-used industry terms that others are already ranking for. Imagine me calling myself "SEO Company" and hoping that would appear first because it was my brand? It wouldn't work this way.

Looking at the penalty possibility first, do you know if there have been any manual or algorithmic actions taken against the site? Does Google Analytics show you anything like this? Has their traffic dropped?

-Andy

[johnny122]

I agree with Andy.

1/ According to SEMrush : feb. 2014 = 536 keywords in Google top. Only 269 in march 2014.

http://fr.semrush.com/info/smartpress.com+(by+organic)

Does Google Analytics show the same ?

2/ Did you modify website navigation/menus, template, server or htaccess file recently ? Probably not.

3/ Check Google Webmaster Tools for manual penalty. If you don't have a penalty message, look for an algorithmic penalty.

4/ No big change in 2014 algorithm according to MOZ yet : http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change#2014

But smartpress got a lot of new links recently :

https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/?target=smartpress.com

From 680 to 900 domains in few months; are all these links "natural" ?

I see that you did a lot of guest articles ; some are not really close to your niche. That may deserve you :

http://creditcard-lawsuit.com/credit-card-debt-management-and-related-ideas/

Matt Cutts warned people on jan. 20 2014 : "The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO"

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/

[SEO5Team]

Thanks Erwan, appreciate the insights

[johnny122]

You're welcome. I mean "I know you'll do that for someone else" ;).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-grant/pay-it-forward_b_4270340.html

[SEO5Team]

lol, nice one.