Outranked for own content

[bogdan_c]

One of my clients has a travel site and is syndicating apartment listings to the likes of tripadvisor and flipkey. I've just done an SEO audit for them and noticed that when searching for snippets of text from within an apartment listing, these aggregator sites outrank my client by miles (which is the original creator of the content).

How would you suggest tackling this issue? We can't give up the aggregator sites as they're bringing in sales. The first solution that comes to mind is send different descriptions to aggregator sites than the content on our site, however this would mean rewriting a ton of content. Any other suggestions on how to treat aggregator/comparison shopping sites?

[KaneJamison]

So, they're outranking you for snippets of text. That actually is not a big deal. The bigger issues are these:

1. Are they outranking you for any of your branded terms?
2. Are they outranking you for any generic head terms that you used to rank highly for? (eg. "waterfront seattle condo rental"). This is far more important than whether they're outranking you for arbitrary text snippets that you wrote.

You're correct that trying to rewrite each description is a good tactic, but make sure that it's good copywriting, and not simply changing the words around for the sake of SEO. Users on these networks aren't finding your listings entirely through SEO, they're largely finding you through internal searches on tripadvisor.com, etc. Make sure you're ranking well in those searches and that you have copy that will convert prospective renters.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Adfix,

Sounds like a familiar issue, as these sites have a huge authority they're likely to outrank your clients content. I would go with your own suggestion and try to rewrite the most popular content and use the new content on their site. It's still likely that they will outrank you on the terms you'll be using in that new text.