Joe Hawkins, a renowned local SEO specialist, published a case study describing how the presence of keywords in a company name affects placement in the results of a Google search query.
Moz s research on ranking factors in local Google searches shows that keywords that include the name of the product / service being offered or the name of the city ranked fourth and fifth in importance, respectively.
In order to find out how much the presence of keywords in the company name has on the position in Google, Hawkins team conducted a small experiment.
The experiment was carried out on the example of a restaurant GMB profile, which was practically not mentioned on the network and did not have its own website.
Added the phrase “Salad Bar†to the company s name on Google My Business (it should be emphasized that the restaurant that participated in the experiment did not have a salad bar). A few days later, the name of the company was changed to the previous one, and a week later these keywords were added again.
The chart below shows the positions for the query «salad bar [?????] [????]”:
Should you add keywords to your company name?
Google My Business rules prohibit adding information about the services provided or the goods sold, as well as the location of the company to the name of the company. Exceptions are cases in which this information is part of the official name of the organization. Violation of this rule may result in profile blocking.
Providing information about competitors who violated the rules
Sometimes it makes sense to provide information about violating Google My Business users. Below are some examples of how companies positions have changed after a complaint from Hawkins team that Google removed keywords from their names.
- Addiction rehabilitation center. The company was based on the first position in the ranking for the term that figured in its name. Two days after Google removed the keywords, the center came in at number seven.
- Another rehab center, ranked fourth for the term added to its name, moved up to fifth position three days after Google removed the keywords.
In the case for legal services, the removal of keywords from the title entailed the following changes:
From all of the above, we can conclude that the presence or absence of keywords in the company name really strongly affects the position taken in the ranking results.
Source: SterlingSky
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