Drop in Organic Traffic

[PlanetDISH]

Hi all,

last Thursday (1/31) our organic traffic and conversions fell off the map, going from 15% of our traffic to just over 5%. We've started creeping back up, we were nearly 7% yesterday, but I'm wondering if anyone else experienced an extreme drop in traffic or any advice on what we should be doing next. We are currently building links from University and government organizations and are always creating fresh content on our blog and website pages.

One thing that we thought of is this timeline corresponds with when we created a Google + local listing for our company. Is there any possibility we stopped appearing in as many national search results since we have a local listing?

Our domain is www.dishcostsless.com. Any advice would be very helpful.

Thank!

[mstoic]

I don't believe local listing can hurt a website. It's just the changes in Google algorithm that are playing with websites. My website too got affected in November reducing my search appearance to 1/8th. But now it has recovered a bit.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kevin,

Building a Google+ Local page should not have a negative effect on your business. I did want to ask a question, though. I'm looking at your website and don't see the typical hallmarks of a local business such as a local area code phone number or street address. I see a vanity phone number (Google doesn't like these for local) and a toll free number (also not right for local) and I can't find your physical address. Do you have these things and are you serving clients face-to-face? Does your business comply with all of these guidelines:

https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

[PlanetDISH]

Thanks Miriam and Hemant, appreciate your help. To answer your questions Miriam we're not your typical local company and don't meet with customers at our office as we are in the satellite TV industry and work with customers throughout the country. Because our customers are national base our concern was a Google Local listing may be hurting our national results if they think we're trying to market locally. Has anyone had an issue with this before?