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Thank you for checking this for us and confirming that something is not right, I thought I was going crazy...

I will try to contact Google via webmaster tools (perhaps filing another consideration request) to prompt a reply.

If anybody have any suggestions it would be much appreciated thanks!

Hello,

We are experiencing something very odd at the moment I hope somebody could shed some light on this.  The rankings of our site dropped from page 2 to page 15 approx. 9 months ago.  At first we thought we had been penalised and filed a consideration request.  Google got back to us saying that there was no manual actions applied to our site.  We have been working very hard to try to get the ranking up again and it seems to be improving.  Now, according to several serps monitoring services, we are on page 2/3 again for the term "holiday lettings".  However, the really strange thing is that when we search for this term on Google UK, our site is nowhere to be found.  If you then right away hit the search button again searching for the same term, then voila! our website is on www.alphaholidaylettings.com page 2 / 3!

We tried this on many different computers at different locations (private and public computers), making sure we have logged out from Google Accounts (so that customised search results are not returned).  We even tried the computers at various retail outlets including different Apple stores.  The results are the same.  Essentially, we are never found when someone search for us for the first time, our site only shows up if you search for the same term for the second or third time.  We just could not understand why this is happening.  Somebody told me it could be due to "Google dance" when indices on different servers are being updated, but this has now been going on for nearly 3 months.

Has anyone experienced similar situations or have any advice?  Many thanks!

Got you, thanks again Yiannis!

Thanks a lot Yiannis, your reply is certainly very helpful and much appreciated.  It gives us faith to continue with writing content.  Just one quick question, when you mentioned "5 Ws keywords", what do you mean by that?

Cheers,

Tom

Hi Yiannis,

Thanks for your reply.  As far as I know, the links in our press releases are nofollow.  I was told that by releasing quality content press releases via sites such as PR Web, it would have a positive impact on our seo.  But if the links are nofollow, is it a practice worth pursueing?

I have also noticed that when the releases were picked up by other online outlets, the links have in some cases become "follow".  I guess this is a good thing?

Tom

Hello,

Thank you for your reply.  We are not flagged in Webmaster Tools as having any manual actions placed against the site, really lost as to what is causing the issues.

We are not currently doing any link-building, but have started doing some press release marketing.  Not sure how much this would help I guess it will tell in time.

Hello guys,

Looking for some help here hope someone will be able to point us to the right direction, we have been scratching our heads for months!

Basically our Google rankings and organic traffic from Google have dropped signficantly in the last 12 months. At one point we ranked as high as page 3 with the term "holiday lettings". Now we are on page 16, and sometimes not found at all... This has been the case for months now.  Curiously, Bing and Yahoo have been much more generous to us, we have been and still consistently rank at No. 2 with the same term.

We are in the vacation rental industry - our website is www.alphaholidaylettings.com and most of the sites that rank above us are of much less relevancy, quality and authority. We just could not understand why we would rank so poorly on Google (both US and UK). Organic traffic has also dropped by more than 50% steadily in the last 12 months.

One thing we thought might have affected our site is the quality of content. Most content/listings on our site are user generated, and it is not uncommon for users to copy and paste details from an existing listing that they have on another site. Having said that, the same would apply to our competitors too.  In this case, might Panda or Penguin have had any negative effects on our seo? We have been adding unique content to the site in the form of a blog and "Holiday Feature" articles.

Could the actual design/structure/coding of our pages contribute to our poor rankings too?

Any opinions or feedback is much appreciated!

Thanks guys,

Tom