Hotel SEO / Rank Conundrum
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
3 Main Local Ranking Factors
In the Moz article titled Should You Pay for Local Listings Management? by Miriam Ellis, she makes this statement: "Prominence, proximity, and distance are the three types of factors Google tells us it takes into account when ranking local businesses. " I always thought that classic on- and off-page SEO was one of those three factors. What puzzles me about Miriam's statement is this: What's the difference between distance and proximity? Aren't they the same thing?
Local Listings | | btreloar3 -
This page should be ranking but it's not even in top 50
Please help! Ive been trying to rank this page https://www.visitmanchester.com/where-to-stay/hotels It appeared on age 2 for a day and disappeared again. It's like it's being algorithmically kicked out. Can anyone see why?
Local Listings | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
Home Page not Ranking on Local Community Sites
I am helping out with a couple of community sites and am seeing the same problem on both. They are small non-commercial local websites. One has 5 or 6 relevant links to the home page, and the title tag and content have been optimised for the name of the group and the location (and in any case the phrase is completely non-competitive). The other one has few links and isn't optimised. Both sites are fairly new. Both sites have the same problem in that when you search for the name of the group, it is not the home page that comes up but another page. My experience is mainly in the more competitive commercial arena, so I thought that these community sites would be simple! Can anyone point me in the right direction as to why this might be? No spammy links on either. These are community sites that are not particularly well maintained, but the phrases I am searching for are non-competitive. I have checked that the home pages are not no-indexed. Any tips much appreciated!
Local Listings | | Wagada0 -
Did anybody else notice a big change in local/map results in late Jan early Feb
Hi, We work on quite a few local campaigns for clients and saw a fair bit of movement in the UK in late January/early February. Did anybody else notice this? Some of ours have improved, some have lost out, but the results generally seem to have shifted against usual guidelines for listing optimisation (reviews, local phone numbers, consistency with website etc.). Any thoughts? Thanks
Local Listings | | jasarrow0 -
Are Yellow Pages links good for SEO
I have a client that has 2500 yellowpages.com links like this one http://m.yellowpages.com/hillside-nj/guardianship-services Are these SEO relevant? Can they hurt SEO efforts. Is this something should push for clients? Can Yellow pages be a good link building strategy? What say you?
Local Listings | | donsilvernail0 -
How to handle Local SEO when two businesses merge
Hi, I have a landscaping client who is buying another company and merging the two companies together. I trying to figure what the best way to handle this type of situation is. Here are the specifics. Company A I've been working with him for a number of years, he has a really robust site with good content and with really good rankings. I've done a ton of citations, he's in good shape. His company has decent name recognition. Company B My client is buying Company B. Their site is really poor, no SEO done on site and no directory listing work. The company has great name recognition in the community and gets most clients through word of mouth. My client has decided to take Company B's name because its a more well known company. He is going to merge the companies, because he doesn't want to have 2 companies from a management standpoint. He plans to keep both physical locations open. So here are my questions. Do I keep both sites live for a period of time and put a message notifying people that "Company A is now Company B Name"? OR Do I transfer all the good content from Company A's site to Company B's site and do a 301 redirect of the URL. How should I handle the data aggregators and directory listings? I'm trying to keep all the great natural traffic that Company A gets to its site, start to build traffic around company B's location while following all of Google's policies. I could just start over and in the long-term they'd be fine, but I really love to find a strategy to avoid my client taking a big hit in organic traffic. Thanks in advance Mozzers!
Local Listings | | JohnWeb121 -
Best practice for local SEO when two offices handle different services?
Our agency has three main services - SEO, PPC and web design. We're in the process of setting up a new office in a different city where our PPC team will be based, while SEO and web will stay in the original office. How do we handle local SEO/Google My Business listings in this situation? Geo-targeted service pages and two separate GMB listings?
Local Listings | | CustardOnlineMarketing0