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A client asked me to host a website at www.drive-engagement.co.uk and I have linked it to search console and analytics and its showing as indexed. It appears on google if you type something like drive engagement oxon but my client is asking why it's not appearing if she types drive engagement or even drive-engagement. Is this just a case of competitive keywords? I thought drive-engagement might show it but don't think google uses the - in its search.

Note: It appears on yahoo and bing when searching drive engagment

Any guidance appreciated.

snookian
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The answer is pretty simple... get better rankings. Google used to put a lot more weight on sites with keywords within the domain but since every tom dick and harry started registering domains this way, Google took the notion to reward much less. In 2012 Google actually released a penalty for low quality sites with EMD (exact match domains).

Hyphens are treated as a word separators. If your customer wants to rank for drive engagement then they need to improve their rankings, I recommend: What are the best ways to increase a site's position in Google?

Simon Hayter
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That website doesn't have any backlink pointing to it. So I guess the client is expecting to rank it purely on the basis of the website name. As said in the previous answer, Google had rolled out EMD Penalty in 2002 for "Poor Websites". Since your website doesn't have any backlink, it's very hard to rank even for the exact name. Building backlinks targeting LSI keywords might rank it.

I have done an analysis of another website - alltechevent.com which is coming nowhere in search results event for the keyword "All tech event" because it has no backlinks pointing to it. No pain no gain!

dr. Joe
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"Drive Engagement" its not recognized as a business name and it will be challenging to rank for a keyword that google believe is a managemental outcome or discipline. Is like trying to rank a business name for "ice cream delivery". Do not tell your client this analogy ;).

If your client owns an brick and mortar business you can get Google verify the business existence via Google My Business. Here you can assign "Drive Engagement" as the business name and with some time and also providing other references to your client's business name via social media, business blog, etc Google will start showing the "business card" in the search results, like this "Brick and Mortar" example:

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Maybe no a good example as wikipedia is ranking obviously first.

Also, as long as the business name and address is displayed in the website (as it is now) you can use structure data using JSON LD. Test your script for validation using Google Structure data test tool.

I will also recomend to create or use more pages. Perhaps "Who we are" or the about us page should be in a complete separated page.

Make some noice and make sure all your citations referring to the business name contains the same exacts words: "Drive Engagement" for example: Drive Engagement provides excellent....Even when you build some links pointing to your website organically or by yourself (e.g. Business directories, Yellow Pages). consistency is the key.

Opening a Business page in LinkedIn, or a business Facebook page will help as well.

Good Luck!

Raul Reyes
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