Major SEO poblem encountered on Google!

[Ali Etemadi]

I hope someone can help me here,

One of the hotels I worked with was ranking excellent in the Google search engines under the terms "??? Hotels". In a matter of a month, the hotels website index went from #5 to #114 in Google. I spoke to our website company and asked them what is going with our website optimization and their response was that they don't control indexing of Google. They can only add more PPC ads to be on top of the page. This was not the answer I wanted to hear!

Anyway, I have noticed a shift in these search engines but did not realized that the shift was going to be so drastic.

I would like to find out if are any other hoteliers that have encountered similar problems on their SEO in Google and how are you handling this problem.

Thank you for your help ahead of time!

[Brian Fitzgerald]

Here's my two cents on some things to think about...

1) search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, these changes and tweaks will always result in fluctuations in rankings
2) search engines, Google especially, are doing much more with personalization. Meaning they are customizing results for users based on login state, search history, IP address, etc. This will often result in different results for different users
3) pure ranking data is going away in my opinion, largely because of my second point but also because it doesn't really tell you anything. If you were #5 that is great, but if no one is clicking on your listing or converting once they click then who cares? rankings are going to continue to converge with other website elements like usability
4) to address your issue...that is a big drop. A drop like that can often mean that you or your website company did something that the engines didn't like or that the engines are having trouble figuring out. Some examples of this would be - did you just relaunch or redesign the site? did you launch another site that has similar or duplicate content? did you switch hosting? did your number of inbound links suddenly increase or decrease dramatically? were you paying for inbound links? Any of these might result in rankings changes.

hope this helps.

Brian Fitzgerald
Director SEO - TIG Global

[Steven Herron]

Ali,
Our clients experience, from time to time, shifts in rankings but nothing as drastic as what you experienced. We monitor all of clients positioning on a daily basis and take appropriate actions if we see a change. We expect to notify them of the change and not vice-versa. We also never correct the problem by launching or increasing PPC unless instructed by the client to do so.

I agree with Brian in that if this drastic of a change occurred something happened to the site that Google didn't like. I would review the site on your own and with the SEO company to determine what change was made. Are you confident the company didn't try any "black hat" tactics in order to maximize position?

Hope this helps,
Steven

[Ali Etemadi]

Thank you Brian and Steven for your reply back.

The only thing that I can think of that we did last month was we increase our PPC spend by 200%. Would this have caused our website to drop the rankings so drastically?

Thanks,

[Brian Fitzgerald]

I've never seen increases in PPC result in drastic changes in natural rankings.

Large increases in PPC can however result in cannibalization of natural traffic, meaning traffic that would have normally clicked on a natural result is now clicking on a paid result because of your increased visibility within paid. This is something that we test on a client by client basis to find the right balance.

[Ali Etemadi]

Brian,

I think you are absolutely right! I think this is what has happened in our case. Question is how do we fix it?


Brian Fitzgerald said:

I've never seen increases in PPC result in drastic changes in natural rankings.

Large increases in PPC can however result in cannibalization of natural traffic, meaning traffic that would have normally clicked on a natural result is now clicking on a paid result because of your increased visibility within paid. This is something that we test on a client by client basis to find the right balance.

[Susanne Lindqvist]

PPC is normally refered to as a complement to your organic strategy, and a good placement in organic search doesn´t neccesarily replace PPC or vice versa (at least that is my experience)
Correct keywords and a carefully managed bid strategy should allow you to keep your PPC ad´s at the increased level and drive new valuable business to your site without cannibalization of natural traffic.

Hope you are able to find the reason for the drastic drop!

//Susanne

[Steven Herron]

Ali,
Why did you increase your PPC by 200%?

Ali Etemadi said:

Brian,

I think you are absolutely right! I think this is what has happened in our case. Question is how do we fix it?


Brian Fitzgerald said:

I've never seen increases in PPC result in drastic changes in natural rankings.

Large increases in PPC can however result in cannibalization of natural traffic, meaning traffic that would have normally clicked on a natural result is now clicking on a paid result because of your increased visibility within paid. This is something that we test on a client by client basis to find the right balance.

[Ali Etemadi]

Steven,

Our strategy to increase PPC was due to our competitor who is aggressively stealing business from our hotel. The competition hotel was just built next door to our hotel and is competing with our hotel even though they are a notch higher product than we are! We had no choice to increase our advertising spend in order to capture the traffice. Perhaps we should have put more emphasis on inbound links...

Thanks,

Ali



Steven Herron said:

Ali,
Why did you increase your PPC by 200%?

Ali Etemadi said:

Brian,

I think you are absolutely right! I think this is what has happened in our case. Question is how do we fix it?


Brian Fitzgerald said:

I've never seen increases in PPC result in drastic changes in natural rankings.

Large increases in PPC can however result in cannibalization of natural traffic, meaning traffic that would have normally clicked on a natural result is now clicking on a paid result because of your increased visibility within paid. This is something that we test on a client by client basis to find the right balance.

[Christopher Regan]

#5 to #114 in Google? I've never experience anything of this sort, no matter the industry/niche within which I was pursuing SEO with a CPC complimentary effort.

Echoing some previous comments let me state that the development firm must have been practicing black hat seo. I'd have an expert review the site, making sure that it's not "seo messed-up" (i.e., check with your site's adherence to Google Guidelines), then establish your own Google Webmaster Tools account and request site reconsideration by Google once any issues are fixed.

[Arthur Cato]

Based on you comments the real problem is that you told the SEO company that you noticed the problem. They did not tell you and why would they ? The second problem is the response you got from them. It sounds like they have not been monitoring the on line competitive environment for your hotels particular market and your hotels position in the search results for that market. Consequently, they were not prepared to give a reasonable and acceptable response to you question.

The process to resolve your particular issue is to drill down into the details. How many links are pointing are your competitors sites vs. your site? Are they quality links ? Is your site a new site under six months? Do you have page rank of two or better? Have there been any recent changes in your on page optimization ? Do you have access to your Google webmaster tools account for the hotel? Google will tell you what they see.

Most recently in a similar situation, we had an experience with a website that was under six months old. The listing after launching went to number 38 on Google. We monitored the site every day. Some days the site could not be found, it bounced from a #38 listing to a #249 listing, some days it was #100, basically it became somewhat of a game, we would check the site listings manually and the person that got the closest got a free lunch.

Four weeks ago we paid fees for inclusion into a couple of directories with a page rank of five for the site. Within three weeks after that the site has somewhat stabilized. It achieved a #6 listing and for the last week has been appearing in the top #20 listings for its primary Keyword Phrase. We will continue at a reasonable pace seek out more listings with directories in an attempt push the site in the top ten listings.

As a footnote, Web Sites can contribute significantly to a hotel's revenue stream. As an experienced hotelier, I have seen drops of anywhere of 5% to 40% of a hotels revenue stream when a new hotel enters the market specific competitive environment. When this happens it is a good practice to evaluate your off line competitive environment as well. It generally pays off to also drill down into your customer base and try to identify who has shifted to the new product, how they make their reservations and your position in other channels of distribution.

[Remy Na]

Hi,

There was a Google Update just recently so that must have resulted in your site rankings to drop. Do send us your site URL and the keyword for us to evaluate what could have caused it. We will suggest a few recommendations based on what we find.

Doing PPC is good, however as you've been told already its a supplement to ongoing SEO and is not enough by it self.