Making sure your website shows up on Google’s Page One for organic search is one of the most important aspects of online marketing. After all, Google still commands the highest percentage of all online searches. However, beware; Google is not in the business of promoting your business – at least not for free! In fact, they are constantly changing the rules with stealthy algorithm updates and penalties that keep even the specialists like our team here at IMS on their toes.
When you rely on Google’s organic search rank to drive traffic to your website, a sudden drop can seriously impact your business … as one of our clients recently learned!
Here is what happened: after literally years enjoying top of Page One status, our client’s website abruptly fell … not just to position two or page two, or three, or four … No, the website in question fell completely off the map! Almost overnight. Boom! Just. Like. That. From Page One, to Nowheresville almost overnight.
So, the IMS detective team went to work.
We scoured performance reports to try to pinpoint the exact moment this happened, so we could start looking for anything “different.” We ran the website through our automated code-checker, looking to see whether some errant code had somehow passed under our radar. Then, we ran the site through our automated grader, checking for any errors that might cause a Google penalty. We maintain these automated programs because they give us an objectivity that human eyes lack.
To our frustration, we found nothing that would have caused this type of dramatic change. We actually were hoping that we had made some grievous error that we could quickly fix and make everything right again for our client … but it was not so.
We checked to make sure Google was still indexing the site, then we checked the site’s ranking on Yahoo! and Bing. While those search engines do not account for a large slice of online search, their algorithm rules are very similar to Google’s. Even more frustrating, the site was still showing up at the top of Page One on both Yahoo! and Bing – which told us that we were definitely dealing with a “Google problem.”
We scoured Google’s webmaster blogs, and the blogs of other experts … searching for a clue. And found nothing that would explain our client’s dilemma, nor fix it.
Grasping at straws, and knowing this was a “Google problem,” I thought perhaps we should look at the client’s Google accounts. And finally, a picture started to develop.
Somehow, without realizing it, the client had mistakenly created three different business profiles in Google Places for Business. Duplicate business profiles (or “pages”) are a red flag to Google for possible scam artists creating fake identities. To compound the problem, in one of the profiles the law firm was not listed as a “law firm” but rather as an assisted living facility. We don’t know how that happened, we did not even have the log-ins for that listing. The client was not sure how it happened , either, and had to guess at what the possible log-ins might be. The best we can guess is that someone started making a profile, checked the wrong boxes, and probably abandoned the process not realizing it had been saved.
The good news is that we were able to delete the duplicates, correct the profile information, link the proper profile to the client’s website and Google responded almost immediately. The client’s website went from “oblivion” to page 5. While this was a huge and rapid improvement, and it did confirm our detective work … the client still has a long road back to the top of Page One. Google will be waiting for “proof” that the firm is who they say they are.
Take-Aways from this story:
- Be very careful when creating your business profile on Google, protect your log-ins and if you get confused, call us before you make a serious mistake!
- Having a committed, knowledgeable team of experts can mean the difference between complete Google failure and success … and they can pull your hiney out of the fire, even if you put it there yourself!
- An AdWords campaign would have been a great tool to have in place in this situation. Should your website fall off of Google’s Page One for whatever reason – including a simple algorithm update – an AdWords campaign can ensure you still get the traffic you need to continue generating leads.
Call James, at 877-352-2021 ext. 80, to learn more about Google AdWords management.
Comments