Searches for company name don't show any results but products do

[oliverm]

Hi all

I hope you can help answer something for me.

We have a site selling board games. Searches for our company name don't show us in any results (I've gone through several pages). However searches for our company name with a product name show our results on page 1, which would imply that google has us in its index.

Our company is [company name], and the site is [company url]. If you search for "[company name]" (no speech marks) then you get nothing. If you search for "[company name] ninja" (no speech marks) we're #2.

I've added a PPC ad for now so that people can find us but I'd like to know why searches for us don't show, but searches for us and another word do.

Any ideas?

Olly

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 4:35 pm (utc) on Feb 26, 2015]
[edit reason] Avoid site specifics per the forum terms of service. Thanks! [/edit]

[bwnbwn]

I assume you have the company name in text on the home page and on the page with ninja.

[oliverm]

Yep. The company name is on the home page. Clearly we have more instances on the site of product names than of the company name.

[goodroi]

Trying to better understand the situation:
How many times is the company name mentioned? Is it in the title tag? Is it on every page? Is it in plain text or part of a image? Is it mentioned in the anchor text pointing to the website?

[Robert Charlton]

Have you ever ranked for the company name? If either yes or no... what's the time frame been like?

Is the company name a unique name (word or phrase), which shouldn't have much competition, or is it a common word or phrase, that's frequently used and might therefore be competitive? The EMD (exact match domain) suggests it might be a desirable term to rank on.

I've seen common exact match domain names not rank at all (say a travel site for the name of a vacation destination)... probably because enough link building had gone on, say, with the same anchor text. That doesn't sound like it should be the case here, but it's worth considering.

[minnapple]

Try putting this in the search to see if the homepage appears at the top of the results.

"yourcompanyname.com" site:yourcompanyname.com

[oliverm]

Minnapple, yes, if I do "example games" site:examplegames.co.uk then the root page appears at #1.

Just to clarify, it's the name of the company rather than the domain name that I have the issue with. If you search for [example games] (no brackets) we never ever appear anywhere, at all. In no pages. If you search for [example games ninja] then you get a product page on our site.

People search for us by company name because they see us at places or mentioned on sites, or on amazon, and they can never find us. Clearly our site is being indexed, webmaster tools shows no errors, but just our company name, which is on every page of our site, never brings back any results.

.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:38 am (utc) on Feb 27, 2015]
[edit reason] replace company name with "example" - forum Charter does not allow specifics [/edit]

[roshaoar]

How new is this site

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: oliverm - The Google Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com...] does not permit posting of specifics that can lead to a site review, so I've needed to replace your exact name with the word example.

Very briefly, as it's quite late where I am, in the course of making this edit, I also looked at your site, and can pass this on to all members. I don't usually do this, but I can see that you're not getting how to describe what's going on by using examples.

- the phrase "example games" turns out to be almost a generic kind of phrase, and may offer some real competition. I can't tell without looking at it more closely.

- goodroi's question is one you should have answered, as he guessed the situation. The company name (which I've replaced by "example games") is not prominently mentioned in html text on the home page. It appears once only, in the footer section of each page.

This scarcity on a page of html text that you're targeting can very often prevent the page from ranking. I would add several instances of it... two or three, in actual text, not graphics, and see if that helps. Make sure it reads well and that you're actually talking about games on your home page. Right now, there's scarcely a list of categories.

- the company name is in your page title...

- please answer the other questions we've all been asking, about inbound links and the age of the site, so we can get a sense of what you're dealing with

- "example games" and "example games" do not rank... but "examplegames.co.uk" does rank.

- your company name is not in your page title elements after the home page - I'd add it at least at the end. Again, you've got a graphic of your company name up top on each page, but no text until the footer, an area to which Google gives some weight, but not much.

I suggest you also try adding a bit more text to your home page and your category pages overall, and seeing what happens.