Does sharing same Business Name affect Google ranking?

[owengna]

Hey guys, We have been working for a client who is offering graphic design work almost 2 months. It is a new business and let's say the business name is ABC Graphic Design. So far all the pages are indexed, we built natural links through local directories, blog postings on relevant niche blogs and social media. We optimised the content and meta tags like we always do.

However, none of the target keywords appear on the first 10 pages. This is quite odd considering we had a client who was doing the same business and we managed to show some progress in the first 2 months. We did some research and noticed that there are 2 ABC design websites with similar domain names and offering same services. They have nothing to do with my client and they are located in overseas. When i search ABC Graphic Design, the results show other companies instead of my client.

My question is whether having a similar business name would affect the ranking. Obviously the other 2 websites have longer history and better ranking. Any suggestions?

[Tymen]

Hi Owen,

Is the site in Wordpress? I once had the same problem with a site and the reason was that on the backend in WP there is a box that says "block search engines" and that was on. Needless to say this was the reason for not ranking at all. Once turned off it took about a week before the first results to show up and definitely locally you should be able to outrank the overseas ABC's.

Good luck with all!

Tymen

[TimHolmes]

After you have checked out any possible WP issues suggested by Tymen, also look into Moz Local and check to see how many of the local ranking strong signal sites you have connected to your client. This will hopefully give your clients site an added boost by having additional confirmed NAP data to organically connect with their site.

Is the site appearing from branded keywords?

[RuthBurrReedy]

Having a similar name to another business might affect your ability to rank for the business name and other branded terms, especially if Google is having trouble figuring out that it's a separate business and not in some way affiliated with the other business(es) of the same name. To combat this, you should make sure you're building out your Google My Business profile, building up location signals, and branding your business well.

That said, there's no reason why having the same name as another business would keep your site from ranking for any keywords, especially for keywords you're targeting that the other ABC Graphic Design companies aren't. It shouldn't be affecting your non-brand terms at all. If you're not ranking for any of them, I suspect something else is the reason.

[owengna]

Thank you for the advice. It is a wordpress and we have double checked the meta robots and the setting in Wordpress back office. The are all follow. All pages are indexed by Google.

[owengna]

The branded keywords is appearing but on the 3rd page. Actually the site is based in Australia and the other 2 overseas companies are based in Singapore and USA (Florida). I am not able to use Moz Local tool since it is for US zip code only. Thank you for the advice!

[owengna]

We just managed to setup and verify Google My Business Profile few days ago so fingers crossed for now. We have also submitted the business to multiple local directories such as yellowpage and yelp.

Regarding to those target keywords, we have been scratching our head for a while.We crawl the on page issues almost everyday. No major issues with just couple of pages missing meta description (client updates his site quite often so we need to fix it every time.) The DA and PA are increasing as well but still nothing show up.

[RuthBurrReedy]

Understood - if you're ranking on the second and third pages, it may just be because it's a brand new baby website and needs to accrue more links and authority.