We are being penalized for one specific key word (and phrases it appears in), how can we figure out why?

[absoauto]

Overall our SEO efforts have worked well, slow and steady increases in rankings across the board for all products and categories, EXCEPT for one particular brand name. Key words and phrases for that brand consistently under perform all other key words and phrases. Strategies etc. are the same, and we have not received any notifications about 'manual action' but I'm convinced there is something affecting our ranking on that brand. This has been going on for approximately two years, prior to that we ranked very well for this brand.

What sorts of tests can I run to try and find the problem?

[Lumina]

First, I'd note that using the same strategy for similar keywords doesn't necessarily mean they'll have similar results. Sometimes, keywords need very different strategies, content-association, and have different competition / difficulty.

Is it only you who are having ranking issues for this brand, or are other websites having the same issue?

[absoauto]

Only us, and the other websites which are ranking well for the same brand are competitors with us across many other brands, product types etc. where we are very competitive against those sites, and are ranked higher on most of the other key words/phrases.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would take a look at Google's algorithm changes and line up when you saw these rankings/traffic drops. That will inform you if you need to do a backlink audit or content audit. I would also take a look at the pages from a competitor standpoint to see what they may be doing that's helping them rank.

There are a lot of ways you can optimize for eCommerce. Here are some resources that will help you:
The Ultimate Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites (Kissmetrics)
Thin & Duplicate Content: eCommerce SEO (Inflow)
The Definitive Guide To Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization (Neil Patel)

I would also recommend Schema on every product, as well as breadcrumbs, reviews. This is an immense help when it comes to search! BuiltVisibile has a great resource here as well (thanks to Erica for the heads up!)

It may also be that the keyword/brand is a very competitive space and that's just the way it is. In that regard, I'd look into ways you can build your domain and page authority to give you a little more edge in competing for your desired keywords and queries.

Let me know if this helps! Good luck!

[ClaytonJ]

The above answers are excellent.  Cross checking algorithm updates would be first point of call. On a granular have you undertaken a backlink audit for the specific page that is not ranking ?  Reviewed anchor text, quality of links to that page etc? Have you made a comparison analysis of backlinks to competitors for the comparable page?

Hope that assists.

[MarieHaynes]

Problems like this can be really hard to figure out. But, in my experience it is quite uncommon for a site to get any sort of penalty or demotion for a particular keyword.

I think that sometimes it can look like a particular keyword is demoted when the page previously had rankings that were propped up by the power of links that are now being detected as unnatural.

Sometimes when there is just one keyword that is not doing well, I look at the possibility of keyword stuffing. The keyword stuffing algo runs continuously and can indeed cause a particular page to not rank well if it thinks it is keyword stuffed. And in my opinion, it's not always consistent how Google determines keyword stuffing. There are plenty of keyword stuffed pages that still rank. And often two pages that look similar can be affected in different ways. But still, this is something to consider.