Member Avatar for Sam_837

I used to rank my brand as number one ranking for many years. Two years ago, I closed Google Business Profile for a year, reopened the profile, and verified it. I no longer rank number one with my brand and have no manual penalties.

My domain is the exact keyword match, and I used it for over eight years, but I got beaten by the other domain whose page and domain authority are higher than mine. We are not in the same industry and share only the first word in the domain. In addition, their home page contains little text.

Do you have any suggestions for me to make a comeback, SEO Experts?

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Dani AI

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Brief summary and priority: lost a long-held brand top spot after a year-long closure of the Google Business Profile and re-verification. Since there is no manual penalty, the work should start with a disciplined triage to find whether this is a technical indexing/canonical issue, a loss of off-site signals, or simply a shift in how Google now interprets the query intent.

Immediate technical triage (do these first):

  • Confirm the homepage returns 200 OK (no unexpected redirects) and that there is no noindex or stray rel="canonical" pointing somewhere else.
  • Check the title tag and H1 for a clear, unambiguous brand signal (brand near the start).
  • Use quick site checks (e.g., site:yourdomain.com "BrandName") to see which page Google currently attributes to the brand and whether duplicates exist.
  • Review server/redirect chains and SSL issues that can silently reduce visibility.

Off-site and SERP signals to inspect next:

  • Perform a backlink comparison (referring domains, anchor text diversity, placement quality). Treat third‑party “authority” scores as directional only; prioritize real referring sites and editorial links.
  • Find unlinked brand mentions and request links; reclaim any broken links that should point to your site.
  • Check the knowledge/brand SERP (social profiles, Wikipedia, directories) and add clear Organization/site structured data to signal the official entity.

Tactical plan and monitoring:

  • Day 1–7: technical fixes (canonical, redirects, titles). Week 2–6: targeted link reclamation and outreach; add precise structured data and authoritative “sameAs” links. Month 1–3: PR/linkable assets to rebuild editorial links and citations. This complements ’s and ’s GBP/activity advice but focuses first on recoverable technical and link signals. For implementation basics, see Google’s SEO starter guidance and local-ranking advice: Google SEO Starter Guide and .

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Member Avatar for Dani

Show Google that you’re back in action! Right now, Google thinks your company is most likely out of business. Prove to them that isn’t the case by showing how “active” your website is. Link to it from your Facebook, Twitter, or other social media accounts. Post about it on social every so often. Perhaps start a blog on your website with a new article once a week or so, so Google can see that there’s new content still being added to the website (and it’s not just an archive of past achievements of a defunct business). If you haven’t already done so, submit a Google Sitemap file to the Google search console, which is a listing of all pages on your domain along with a timestamp of when they were last updated. Basically, do everything you can to make as much noise as possible that things are still movin’ and shakin’.

commented: I spend the most time on Google post and I published it every week. +0
Member Avatar for bavya

Update your old blogs, share your post on social media and Analyse your competitor.

commented: you can also do some keyword research and update your blog using it. +0
Member Avatar for Dani

Keep in mind that a LOT has changed in the past year on the Internet. It's possible that, in the past year, other websites have sprouted up, or upped their game, such that they now rank better for your keyword. Keep in mind that Google has also released a handful of new algorithm updates recently, notably the Helpful Content Update in August and then the September 2022 Core Update.

Member Avatar for Dani

Oh, and I forgot to mention ... Does your domain have an account at Google Search Console?

Under Page indexing, what does it say? Are your pages back in Google's index?

Member Avatar for Sujith_5

Based on your post, I believe that you weren't paying much attention to your online presence. I guess even your GMB profile is not updated.
Let's start from scratch then. Apart from verifying your Google profile, have you made any edits to the profile?
If not, I would suggest you add basic details to your profile. We had a similar situation three years back. We are a pioneer in software development and ai services domain, and we didn't pay much attention to our local SEO efforts. So we started building our brand from zero.
First, we added a well-written business description to our profile. Don't forget to check your address too.
Then, we added services and their small descriptions.
We added products to our profile and created posts for many important announcements.
Also, on a monthly basis, we started adding pictures to our profile. And encouraged our employees to leave reviews on the workplace.

Member Avatar for AussieWebmaster

Update your Google Business Profile - change the hours of operation - change the page it links to your website - make the contact us page the link

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