This is a peculiar situation where there were zero notifications of manual actions that rank for the brand name.  This can be a problem, and you may wonder why Google is keeping it from ranking, and it’s a problem that’s existed for a while. it’s essentially a penalty that’s associated when there is a domain that’s there even if it’s registered by a new buyer years later.

There are cases where you don’t’ get the notification that there is a penalty, especially if you just bought it. The site may have natural links due to word of mouth, but it cannot rank for even a snippet of the content.  What is the problem at this point? 

It may not be a problem with Google, but there might be other reasons.  it’s possibly something that was ranking from a long time ago.  For example, if you look at the archive, it might be linking to content that wasn’t ranking, but then tried to link to content that did rank. A domain that’s parked is a domain without a website, it just has ads. People used to do this to monetize the traffic, but nowadays that’s something that isn’t allowed, and it can blacklist the site, keeping it from ranking. 

These penalties have existed for a while, however. this has happened a lot over the years, and it used to be a standard to check the background of the SEO before you got it.  Another SEO that actually knows about this could actually get the legacy domain penalty lifted too.

There are search queries that the site owner uses to rank for being generic, and the ranking can be kind of hard with this too. It can be tricky. But if it’s not relevant to the brand name, and referring to the generic nature of the domain, it can possibly play into the problem.

There is also the fact that the site may be poorly optimized too. If you visit the site, you may not even notice that collective is there, and you may have an image and text in order to be recognized. If you omit your brand name from the home page of the website, you’re going to have issues with rank.

If the name isn’t in the page itself, chances are it won’t rank.

But, if you take content from a page that’s actually just a snippet from this domain, it won’t even rank it. So, if the site is fully indexed, the content itself won’t rank, due to the penalties.  This is definitely something that you should realize, and you should always check the archives.

So yes, previous domains, even when you buy them and completely rebrand everything, do play a big part in the overall success of the site. If you’re not careful, you’ll want to make sure that you do take the time to learn this, since it will in turn help with the ranking and benefits of the site.