Google help!!!!!!!!

Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
Paul Carmel
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Google help!!!!!!!!

Post by Paul Carmel »

Hi,

Could anyone explain why google has completely dropped our site?!! For over 2 years if you typed in Casa Paradis (our house name, I realise people would not try searching for us using this but even if I type in all our key words we are not listed) we came up first on the front page and had a Google ranking of 5. Last week that dropped to 4 and this week we have completely disappeared into thin air! This is of course very worrying, but as it's impossible to contact google about it, I am hoping somebody may have a clue as to why and also what we can do about it!
Last edited by Paul Carmel on Sun Feb 06, 2005 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cheers
PC
alexia s.
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Post by alexia s. »

Paul,
Maybe you have had the 15 minutes Andy Warhol promised you. (He said that everybody would have 15 minutes of public notoriety but what he really meant was that nobody would have more than 15 minutes.)
Best,
Alexia.
alexia s.
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Post by alexia s. »

PS
Back to the bath.......
Best,
Alexia.
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Hi Paul,

With a 'google' for "Casa Paradis", your site is there but sadly on page 15 :(

Fact is more and more sites are 'coming online' every day and whilst two years ago (or even two weeks ago) you may have been the only site with those keywords, now google believes these other sites will offer a better result for the search.

On checking the sites against your own, a simply fact comes to light ..... most of the pages listed show your property displayed on other 'rental' sites, and in the content they list the keyword term "casa paradis" 4 times ...... whilst on your own 'homepage' you only list it twice.

I'd also still put a lot of the problem down to the fact that most new sites are specifically aimed at being 'search engine friendly' and as was pointed out in your site review, yours isn't and therefore google isn't indexing the rest of your site properly.

And finally, a keyword is only a 'keyword' if you make it so .... it has to be in the page title, preferably in the URL and certainly repeated around 4 - 8 times on the page (depending on text amout).

Sorry Mate but you need to blow the dust off your web software ;) ......... please don't send Seymour and 'the boys' round!
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Well ok, not exactly sure what you're getting at, but regardless when you've spent 2 and a half years working on page ranking and all of a sudden it's completely gone, you get a bit concerned and pissed off about it. So some helpful advice would be appreciated.
Cheers
PC
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Sorry, maybe i didn't explain it properly ......

The are two major influences with Google.

1 - Page Ranking

2 - Key word positioning

Page Ranking - Having lots of external sites linking to yours results in a higher Page Ranking. In your case it's PR4 (was PR5). This can change as more and more sites come online and develop links of there own.

Unless you are constantly building relationships and reciprocal links or are providing attractive, unique content which ensures that other website owners will wish to 'add' your site, then your Page Rank will go down. As it has done.

Key words - It's only common sense that google will display a site that features the 'search term' 4 times, in a higher position than a page that only features it 2 times. It simply expects that the higher page will have more information on the subject.

Anyway, in this case ........ most of the search results on page one of google for 'Casa Paradis' are other sites displaying your property details. Which means they are doing what you are paying them to do.

The hundred quid (or plus) that you pay them is to actively market themselves via search engines and other means. It would be pointless being listed on a site that didn't feature well in googles pages. You're just getting value for money.

If you expect your own site to feature higher than theirs, then you'll have to add many more pages, rebuild the site using search engine friendly software and give 3 or 4 hours a week to linkbuilding.

Please don't think i'm being argumentative, i'm just attempting to provide an answer to your questions ...... i fully understand how frustrating it can be though, when things take a downward trend :(
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Paul,

That's awful! But at least many of the rankings reference your site in some way... do they link to your site as well?

I'd recommend:

1) Follow Tony's advice. :) Specifically, as a beginning:

2) Change your page title to "Casa Paradis - Corsica, Calvi, stylish 4 bedroom townhouse for holiday rentals, in the heart of historic Calvi" and likewise change your Meta Description tag in your HTML code, and

3) Add "Casa Paradis" wherever possible without being too obvious in your home page. Example: your first paragraph could read:
Casa Paradis is a stylish four bedroom townhouse with private garden set in the heart of historic Calvi, on the northwest coast of the beautiful French Mediterranean island of Corsica.
And instead of saying "Click to e-mail us," you could say "Click to e-mail Casa Paradis", or add a link at the bottom next to the "Top of Page" link that takes one to "Casa Paradis Home".

These are things that Tony already said... I'm just making specific suggestions.

Cheers and good luck!
Last edited by vrooje on Sun Feb 06, 2005 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Brooke
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Sorry Tony, my last post was adressing alexia's postings, I hadn't seen your reply!
Yes it's true, at least we are still coming up via other sites, and yes it's gratifying that at least they are working for their money, but still it's just a bit of a major shock when suddenly we've gone from page 1 to page 15 in less than 24 hours!
Will take your points on board and see what we can do, so thanks for your advice.
Cheers
PC
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Hm...

I've also just remembered that Paolo wrote a piece on just this topic... I'd check the newsletters for that, too.
Brooke
alexia s.
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Post by alexia s. »

Paul, If I had anything serious to say about it I would - read my other postings! I'm a computer illiterate and have to struggle to understand everything I read here on computers, rankings etc. What fun to be able to joke about something! (try joking about taxes..........)
I did find it very interesting (really) that losing a ranking position which you never expected to work anyway could be worrying, which is what led me on to Warhol's (very famous) promise of 15min fame.(Contemporary interpretation, supported by another posting here: You've had your time on google and now it's somebody else's chance. Sorry - this is getting even more obscure!)
I'll stick with tax.
(The reference to a bath was to your previous identity photo.)
Best,
Alexia.
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Hi again Paul,

I'm sure no 'offence' was taken by anyone :)

More on the 'problem' though ........

Google is a really tough 'master' to serve ..... how it works out which sites go where changes 'dramatically' every 6 months or so (sometimes more often). You're actually 'lucky' that this problem hasn't occured sooner.

Thing to keep in mind is that whilst google is the 'biggest' search engine, it's far from the only one. Millions of people use the others ....

Search for Casa Paradis

www.msn.com - www.corsicanholidays.com - No.1

www.yahoo.com - www.corsicanholidays.com - No.1 & No.2

www.lycos.co.uk - www.corsicanholidays.com - No.1

Things arn't so bad ;)

Also, a point to note is that sometimes google themselves arn't happy with the 'new' results, and after a week or so everything goes back to how it was 'pre change'.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Hi Paul,

I wouldn't lose sleep over not appearing for the search 'Casa Paradis', as nobody will ever look for you that way, and even if they did, your ads will get them first.

How were you doing before for searches like 'calvi holiday accommodation', etc?

My guess is you were not ranking high for a typical search phrase because your site's text doesn't look optimised for any particular phrases.

If I were you I would not bother chasing the popular search phrases, as the rental listing sites will always beat you in the search results. I would work on your page for Calvi and add keywords there - 'Calvi', and other things in Calvi to do with tourism. This would give this page a chance of being found by a surfer looking up Calvi. Such a searcher will not necessarily be in the market for accommodation, but some will, and it is a way of working your way around the massive obstacle of the listing sites.

Sites 'disappear' from Google all the time. There is no rhyme or reason that we can perceive. It can be a temporary blip caused by an algorithm change. Or it could be longer term because Google has decided there are more relevant ways to rank results. The way to future-proof your site against the ups and downs of the search engines is to include lots of relevant text across all pages, updating it if possible, and also to work on the inbound links.
Paolo
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Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Hi all,

Thank you all. I think it's yellow card time and I need to change my site and software, I have just looked on Amazon and Dreamweaver is the best part of 350 quid!!! :shock: What I did like about our old software is that is does all html etc for you. So can you recommend something that is not quite so pricy and that isn't a minefield when it comes to building the site?

Paolo, before our site was kicked off you could type just about anything with Calvi and Corsica and we used to come up on the first page.
Cheers
PC
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Paul,

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be much help in that area... My husband is a professional web programmer so I got my copy of Dreamweaver for free when he needed to use my laptop while we were out of town... and before that I just used a simple text editor because all the other programs I had come across did funky things with the code that I didn't like.

Tony posted a few days ago in this topic (under "website designer wanted") about a free program at http://www.cmsmadesimple.org -- you could give it a whirl.

Cheers!
Brooke
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Paul,

You do have an impressive number of inbound links - 165 counted by Google. They would explain your success in the search engines. If Google has changed the way it views inbound links - e.g. only counts those with a certain pagerank - that would drop you down the rankings.
Paolo
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