Hotel SEO / Rank Conundrum

[mbochic]

Hello Mozzers,

I am having an issue with a particular client and wanted to throw it out to the forum for feedback.

We work with many resorts and hotels. One, in particular, is a large condo-hotel property with several individual buildings. Each building has a unique name. While the property management company owns and operates most of the units within each building, there are units that are individually owned.

The property management company runs the branded resort website, all local pages & listings, etc.

One savvy unit owner, however, has built a website that is branded with the individual building name for one of the buildings. He has also taken ownership of the building Google Plus page, Facebook page, etc. He only owns a handful of units in the building.

We have retroactively tried creating a new site but are struggling to gain traction from a ranking perspective. We did temporarily change the website address that was listed for the Google local listing, via the "edit" button, and were actually starting to increase rank (presumably somewhat related to the increase in website traffic), but it was quickly fixed to the other website.

The management company has reached out to the owner but he continues to refuse to give up any rights to the Google local page, etc. We have also created a new (technically duplicate) page just to see if we can knock the other one off, though we are having issues getting the verification post card from Google.

Any advice on how we can gain access to this Google local page? Or any other tips on how to get a relatively small, new site to overtake an existing site?

I know URLs / examples are helpful in these situations but we'd prefer to keep the client names anon.

[mbochic]

Hi Bernadette, thanks for taking the time to respond. The owner in question is most certainly representing his ownership and we had advised legal options, though the client is not quite ready to pursuit anything yet. Thank you for the lengthy feedback, we certainly appreciate any help we can get.

[mbochic]

Thanks very much for the feedback. At this point, the client is steering away from legal options, though we had advised that. The entire situation took us off guard so we are definitely taking this as a lesson learned. Thanks again for your response.

[becole]

Meisha, this can definitely be frustrating. When it comes to local listings, and individual units, keep in mind that every unit should have it's own unique unit number, so it would have it's own address.

You mentioned this: "He has also taken ownership of the building Google Plus page, Facebook page, etc. He only owns a handful of units in the building. "

If that other person has taken ownership of the entire building essentially, and the entire Google Plus page, Facebook page, etc. then is sounds as if he is misrepresenting his ownership. Therefore, pressure can be put on him to disclose his ownership of only certain units in the building, and you should be able to force him (legally) to only represent the units that he actually owns.

If this is the case, then he would need to update his Google Local listing(s) so that they only show the actual address of the unit(s) that he owns. If it doesn't currently, and it shows that he owns the entire building, then he should be forced to update it.

You should consult a lawyer, but most likely a stern letter to him asking him to update the website, Google Listings, and any Facebook (and other URLs) so that they only show the unit numbers he actually owns would probably go a long way. In the meantime, any listings that you create should also reflect the actual units that you own, as well.

When it comes go Google's local listings, it's perfectly fine to have multiple "businesses" at one location, as they have unique suite numbers. In this case, there are individual unit numbers, so there is an option to create a listing for each unit. It's not okay for this other person to misrepresent his ownership.

[Highland]

The answer here is not one that I often advocate but you're going to to need to grease the wheels a bit

Buy his website out. Make certain this includes his domain and control of the social media he's running. Have him sign a legal agreement as well. Once you own it, 301 redirect it to your main resort page.

If he balks, or tries to run the price up, my bet is he has a contract with the owners of the building and they might have some things they can do that will make his life uncomfortable (consult a lawyer first so you know what your legal options are). You might be able to use that as a stick to encourage him to take the carrot of a buyout. Try the carrot first, tho, and save the stick for any serious negotiations.

Next, you need to harden the contracts with your private owners. Make it clear that, for a small sum of money, they agree not to try to represent themselves as the resort. Again, consult a lawyer and get this written properly. Make any future private buyers sign this agreement as well.

At the end of the day, I would chalk this up as an expensive marketing lesson. If you can get him to sell, you don't have to jump through any hoops. Otherwise, you're competing with what Google sees as the legitimate business (which is a much more difficult path to walk).