Why is my website not ranking for it's brand name in SERPs but has been indexed by Google?

[Timmy3]

The website https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com has been live for a couple of months but is not being found in Google search results - even when searching for it's own brand name 'crowne plaza christchurch.'

Google has indexed the site - but we are still not showing - https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fchristchurch.crowneplaza.com&rlz=1C1NHXL_enNZ735NZ735&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i58j69i59l2j69i65.896j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Any ideas as to why? I think it may be because their are two versions of the site, http and https, both with their own rel=canonical tags. Could this be the cause?

Any help much appreciated.

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Timmy 3

I think this might have something to do with it:

https://www.crowneplaza.com/hotels/gb/en/christchurch/chccs/hoteldetail and this
**https://www.ihg.com/crowneplaza/hotel**s/gb/en/christchurch/chccs/hoteldetail (which is the above page's canonical)

You have set up a sub-domain and built a website on it https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com

But there are already two main domains with directories for the hotel (note the gb/en part is because I am searching from the UK) So you have basically set up a duplicate website to the two that exist already which will affect the ranking of them both.

However - I have this https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com at position 16 in Google so not all is lost despite the duplication. Note that I am searching from the UK

Solution:

Put the canonical on the top two pages as: rel="canonical" href="https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com"/>

You also have these HTTP pages in search which must be 301'd to the https versions and the wp-admin URLs no indexed in robots.txt

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com+inurl:http&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB760GB760&filter=0&biw=1920&bih=949

That should sort it

Regards

Nigel

[Timmy3]

Hi Nigel,

Thanks very much for your response and your feedback.

The IHG.com and Crowneplaza.com site we have no control over - so we cannot add rel=canonical tags to them.

We will start 301 redirecting all the http URLs to https. In regard to the robots.txt, our developers have disallowed wp-admin pages, is this different to no indexing? - https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com/robots.txt - and should we also no index /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php ?

We have built a sub domain before for auckland.crowneplaza.com and it is ranking first in Google for its brand name 'crowne plaza auckland.' We didn't have these ranking issues with that sub domain like we are having currently.

Thanks again,

Tim

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Timmy3

That's a problem but it is not insurmountable. Clearly, you will have an issue with duplicate content so what I would do is create more content. Put in a section about Auckland with some photos of the city and name them appropriately.

The main image Alt text should be Crowne Plaza Aukland but then put further images in with Alt text, Auckland City, Aukland New Zealand, Crowne Plaza Hotel - Aukland New Zealand. The additional images with Alt text (essentially baby anchor text) will enhance your page and make it feel really local. If this is combined with say 500 words of local information and facts about the city and your hotel/the city then you will create a really rich local page.

Then head over to whichever local citation service you use - I use Bright Local but there are versions on Whitespark and MOZ and make sure all your NAPS list your page as the one to go to first.

Bright Local allows you to do a 'citation burst' which will cover the top 25 local citation sites (Yelp, Yell etc) along with Factual for around $85 USD. It is totally worth it.

I think if you do this you will outrank the more generic booking pages within a month or so.

More on local citations here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/local-citations

Robots.txt - Yes it performs the same function as noindex, the pages will not be crawled.
"and should we also no index /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php "- Yes noindex that too.

If you are blogging then no index tags, archive & author pages. You can do this in Yoast.

Regards

Nigel