Home Page Not Ranking for Brand

[karmadigital]

I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 12+ years in SEO). A client's home page isn't ranking for their brand term. It's a medical spa in Las Vegas, so physical location that takes online appointments.

We have an online booking system (which isn't a good one) that originally had a booking page replacing our home page. My thought is that Google associated that page as our home page because it was a stronger domain and the booking page is most used. That tool didn't allow the booking page to be noindexed (I know, crazy)- so I changed the name inside the booking tool away from the brand name as to not have both the site and the booking site optimized for the brand.

Other things I've checked:

• The home page is indexed
• Home page canonical tag points to itself
• Title tag contains brand name at front (rest of site it's at the end)
• Robots.txt is accurate (allows home page)
• XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages)

To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with accurate URL.

Any other ideas that I may be missing?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi KarmaDigital,

I want to be sure I understanding this. You are saying:

• _A client's home page isn't ranking for their brand term. _
• _We have an online booking system (which isn't a good one) that originally had a booking page replacing our home page. _
• if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with accurate URL.

So it sounds like you do have a knowledge panel showing up on the right for the brand name search, but what is CURRENTLY appearing in the number 1 organic spot for this search? You said the booking page was originally replacing your home page. Is it still outranking your homepage?

Also, is there any chance you are able to share the actual search with us? If not, due to client privacy concerns, that's okay, but if you can, it will likely improve the helpfulness of the responses you get from the community.

[karmadigital]

You got it all correct.

Here is a screenshot of search results. The right rail is correct, URL is accurate.

The 4th result has been changed away from the brand name (as of today- so it hasn't changed yet in the index). When we made the change inside the booking tool away from the brand, it changed the only page ranking from our site to a random subdomain (which we are 301 redirecting to the home page today).

Thanks for your help!

2rPYS

[Dalessi]

Hello,

I understand how frustrating this is. Have you been promoting the clients homepage with "Brand Term" content linking back to it? Is this a new issue that just started or has it been an ongoing issue?

If all your Robots.txt files and everything else is correct like you stated at the top, then I would just start really promoting the "Home" page as much as possible.

I would also check and make sure no manual actions have occurred that may have caused a ranking change if it is a new issue.

Here is a link to an article regarding your topic. I don't know if it will help, but it is an interesting article.

https://icecube.asia/ranking-companys-brand-name-google-seo-branding/

Best Regards

[karmadigital]

Thanks for your response.

This is a newer site, so it's an ongoing issue since launch and we don't have a lot of links outside of social media, yelp etc. So obtaining links to the home page is on our list to tackle, I just wanted to be sure there wasn't a technical reason that I may be missing.

[MiriamEllis]

Thank you for the screenshots. The first thing you need to do here is to edit the GMB listing title to reflect your real world business name. Right now, the title is what we call "keyword stuffed" and is in violation of Google's guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB) Nothing but your real-world business name belongs in the title.

So, basically, best advice here would be to clean up the GMB listing and any other citations that may have been built with the stuffed titles, and then build up the authority of the actual brand, both on and off the website. Right now, you're basically being outranked by your reputation on third party websites, which, if you're positive that no penalties are associated with the website, would indicate that the website lacks both authority and clarity.