• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. On-Page Optimization
        4. How can I outrank a website whose brand is named specifically after a product / service (and mine is not!) ?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        How can I outrank a website whose brand is named specifically after a product / service (and mine is not!) ?

        On-Page Optimization
        4
        4
        1552
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • AlexTL
          AlexTL last edited by

          Hi everyone,

          I've been working hard on my on-page SEO lately so I can gain visibility for my website. The results have been great and I am now on top of the SERP for the services I propose.

          I think that my content is almost fully optimize and** I've respected all the best practices (both on-page and technical SEO)**.

          However, there is one problem I just can't deal with for I don't have the knowledge, hence this post. I'm pretty sure that this issue is quite common for SEO experts.

          Here the thing: I offer dental emergency services, which is my core business. I'm ranked 4th for that request in my area, which is good, but I'd like to rank 1st as** I have a better DA and content than the 3 websites outranking me**. Also, I'm the first result for any other related services such as "dental services" or "dentist".

          However, when it comes to the theme "dental emergency", I'm constantly outranked by the same 3 websites. I ran an audit on their website but **my content and technical SEO is way better **than theirs. I suppose that the only reason I'm behind them is because they used "dental emergency" in their **Brand name **and, therefore, in the Home page URL. Every time someone is looking up online for "dental emergency", these websites will be on top of the SERP as I think that Google is unable to know whether the users are specifically looking for their websites (aka Brand) or for "dental emergency" services.

          Here is an example of a competitor: https://www.urgencedentairedemontreal.com/ (urgence meaning emergency in French). His whole Brand name and URL have been built after the "dental emergency." service. On the contrary, **my Brand name does not mention "urgence". **

          I see that as a trick that is confusing Google. The fact that my competitors named their Brand after a specific service I also offer is real pain for my SEO.  I also think it's really unfair as I've put a lot of effort in designing a nice website with great UX and content. This is the kind of practice that should be penalized in my opinion.

          Please, does anyone know any way to resolve this issue?

          JJCristiano 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • sarahwalsh
            sarahwalsh last edited by

            You can often get a business to rank right at the top of Google, higher than some big brands, that's if you have a lot of really high quality back links.

            For example the business has back links from the BBC and other high-quality websites, such as the Independent newspaper, these links can help get a company on to page one.

            However the back links must be high quality. So if you hire a web designer or a search engine optimisation company, make sure they are building very high quality white hat do follow and no follow backlinks. The most important thing to remember is that the backlinks must be built in a white hat way. we do know what we are talking about, because we got our bristol garden room company onto page one.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • JJCristiano
              JJCristiano @AlexTL last edited by

              @AlexTL Hi Alex,

              I know this was asked some time ago but I believe it still holds relevancy in 2022 and many people asking a similar question can benefit from this.

              From my experience and an emd a.k.a exact match domain is incredibly powerful especially with age and even more powerful with off page brand building.

              When it comes to dental seo https://hip.agency/ a Juggernaut in the dental marketing space utilizes powerful local SEO practices that have include both these on page and off page core things.

              On-Page

              1. Keyword in the URL
              2. Keyword in the Title
              3. Keyword in the H1
              4. Secondary Keywords in the H2's and H3's
              5. A good amount of very informative and brand content for each heading.
              6. Optimized image File+ Geo+AltText
              7. Map Embed-Name Address And Phone number Mentioned
              8. Local Schema Markup

              Also make sure you are internal linking with relevancy.

              The important things on this list from my experience is 1-5 and if you are missing any of those it could be a factor. On the other hand you could use a tool like surfer to make sure your content is just as optimized for dental emergency services

              If you do not have an emd or an optimized url what I suggest you do is build a few pieces of content around dental emergency service and use a variation of exact anchors to internal link to the page that is stuck.

              Then be sure to look at your competitors link profile. Do they have good DR link and even more important anchor text. You want relevant power links that are indexed and pass not only juice but anchor text power.

              Hope that helps!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Nozzle
                Nozzle last edited by

                DA is not a ranking factor but it is a nice metric made by Moz to help us get an idea how we're doing compared to our competitors in terms of quantity and quality of links. So having a higher DA doesn't automatically mean you should rank higher than your competitors.

                Also, since the EMD (exact match domain) update back in 2012, sites can't rank better just because of the keyword in the domain name if their site authority and optimization isn't great.

                My main suggestion for you would be to acquire more backlinks with "dental emergency" as the anchor text (making sure they are linking to the correct page on your site, of course). Obviously, don't over do this and build hundreds of links with exact match keywords in the anchor text but don't be shy about it either.

                As an example, one of the owner's of my company has a personal site and I asked him to change the anchor text of the link in his footer to our company's homepage from "Nozzle" to "Keyword phrase - Nozzle".  After Google recrawled that page, our rankings jumped up 10 spots. To be fair, I'm aware that jumping 10 spots while on page 3 is different than trying to go from #4 to #1 though. My point is to not be afraid to use exact match anchor text sometimes.

                Also make sure that your page that is ranking #4 also has internal links from other pages of your website pointing to it with the keyword in the anchor text.

                Test out things like moving that phrase to the front of your title tag and even trying to get it in there twice if at all possible. These will be tests and can be changed back if your rankings drop, so don't be scared to test. Pay attention to your CTR as well inside of Google Search Console to make sure you don't drop in CTR because of the changes too. Also, test out adding that phrase more times in the content of the page.

                Good luck!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Browse Questions

                Explore more categories

                • Moz Tools

                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                • SEO Tactics

                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                • Community

                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                • Digital Marketing

                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                • Research & Trends

                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                • Support

                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • maghanlinchpinsales

                  City Name in URL structure

                  I have a client whose site was built when they only served one market, and they now have that city in the majority of their URLs. I'm suggesting we redo the URL structure to remove this location from the main URLs (think homepage, about, etc.) since they have now expanded to three markets. They are seeing a lot of great organic traffic in that original market but are struggling in the new ones they've added so I'm helping to optimize their site. How critical do you think that removing that location from the URL is? I know we would need to implement 301 redirects, but wanted to get thoughts on this.

                  On-Page Optimization | | maghanlinchpinsales
                  0
                • IcanAgency

                  XML Sitemaps for Property Website

                  Hi all, I was hoping that someone might have a link to a good example of an XML Sitemap for a large property (real estate) website? Thanks in advance to anyone who does! 🙂 Gavin

                  On-Page Optimization | | IcanAgency
                  0
                • Ron_McCabe

                  Any idea how Google is doing this? Is it schematic? http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/google-adds-full-restaurant-menus-to-its-search-results-pages/

                  Google is now showing menus on select searches.  Any idea how they are getting this information? I would like to make sure my clients get visibility this way.

                  On-Page Optimization | | Ron_McCabe
                  0
                • pikka

                  Pagination for product page reviews

                  Hi, I am looking to add pagination on product pages (they have lots of reviews on the page). I am considering using rel="next/prev, to connect the series of review pages to the main product page. I unfortunately don't have a view-all page for these reviews or the option to get one - the reviews refresh on the same product page (by clicking whatever number page of reviews). This means each page has the exact same description content and everything else, but with different reviews. In this case is rel=next a good option? The format currently would be: On example.com/product link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p2" On example.com/product?review-p2 link rel="prev" href="http://example.com/product, link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p3 etc. Would this be a good format for product page reviews? I see rel=nextprev commonly used on ecommerce category/list pages but not really on the paginated reviews on product pages, so I thought I would see if anyone has advice on how best to solve this. I'm also wondering if it would be best to not combine this with a canonical tag on all the different review pages pointing to the product page, seeing as the reviews are actually different (despite the rest of the content being identical). I am hoping to pick up longer tail traffic from this, I figure by connecting the pages and not using canonicals that this way I could get more traffic from the phrases used in the reviews. By leaving out the canonicals, is it possible a user searching for phrases that might be deeper in the series, to land on, say, ?review-p4? Any thoughts if this would drive more traffic? Thanks!.

                  On-Page Optimization | | pikka
                  0
                • csmithal

                  Hyphens in Domain Name

                  I have a client who is a business broker. I have just begun working with them, and they are trying to determine the best domain name to use - they have several. business-broker-alabama.com vs businessbrokeralabama.com Which one of these has more value? I know that search engines have somewhat devalued keywords. The first one probably has a little more SEO value, but is going to be a drag in terms of marketing -- saying "business hyphen broker hyphen alabama" is going to get old for them. Thanks!

                  On-Page Optimization | | csmithal
                  0
                • nux

                  Related products - random products or static

                  Hello, I was curious about where to get related products from.  Currently I just grab some random products from the same category. Would there be any benefit to always linking to the same related products on a product page? Thanks

                  On-Page Optimization | | nux
                  0
                • EssEEmily

                  Image Optimization - File Name Important?

                  I am currently working on a site with 100+ recipes that all have image file names that are relevant, but not optimized for keyword purposes. I'm wondering - from an SEO perspective - would it be worth my time to go back through all of the images and rename them with keywords in mind? On my own site I have always done this as a "best practice" but I'm curious - does it make a difference to search engines? Does anyone have any recent research/experiences that they would like to share? Thanks!

                  On-Page Optimization | | EssEEmily
                  0
                • VebianWebandMobileDevelopment

                  My Domain Name - short vs relevant

                  I'm creating a website for my new web design company in Vancouver. I'm looking to target such keywords as "Web Design Vancouver", etc. I have another company with a hyphenated domain name which is terrible when I'm on the phone and my client asks me for my domain (hard to say, always spelling it out). Also I wanted to have a good snappy name for my new business so I found a 6 letter .com and matching .ca for my company. My question is: is it best to use a short domain name or is it better have my keywords in the domain name? eg. xyz.com vs xyzvancouverwebdesign.com Thanks

                  On-Page Optimization | | VebianWebandMobileDevelopment
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.