Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Yes, it was a bad decision to hire a website design company. I have since taken the site away and built it on a custom platform.

it was 2015 and they were questioning the DC office only

I got caught up in a disaster of a website that consumed 3/4 of a year, all the while our SEO was put on the backburner with only occasional "massaging" to keep it going. Now our traffic has dropped almost 25% along with our incoming calls.

Our rankings have remained steadily good- medium but definitely not bad during this period.

My question: Who else has had this experience and how long did it take to rebound?

TY
KJr

Yes, Google has called our main line asking for information across the street, down the block, etc. We had to prove we occupied our address, which is our sales office in DC. We currently have 6 addresses, with 4 physical locations,1 sales office and another obtained in the acquisition of another business.

I agree, our main page ranks for our #1 term and we have /products/ pages that do as well.

I optimized several pages using Rand's post on Google Answer Box: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-appear-in-googles-answer-boxes-whiteboard-friday

How long after the page is indexed should it appear?

Lastly, how long should I wait before determining it will not get an answer box and reconfigure the page?

No bad answers

TY

KJr

Hi Lee,

I've been with Heritage for 18 months, SEO is my full-time job. I have been gaining our Search Visibility for over a year. We were at 38.29% on 2-5-17, today we are at 30.79%. We've not been that low since 2015. I am also curious to this issue.

If anyone has input, I too will be appreciative.

KJr

I built a webpage with links to the review sites we are listed on, in hopes the customer will use the platform they are most comfortable with. They use Google and Facebook the most.

It works for us, we're a custom sign shop and commercial printer. I believe managing your NAP is always important an ML helps me this that. We recently upgraded!

Andy,

Tough question, this may help: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479312.aspx

KJr

If using a physical address in USA, you will not get a Local listing out of that region.

To target areas outside our physical address, I use specific SEO and content marketing targeting the designated area, ex: Thailand Casino instead of "physical address" Casino. For us it's, Banners Las Angeles CA, instead of Banners Charlotte NC (we can ship anywhere)

This will take some time organically, PPC will get you there faster, but is expensive.

KJr

Report this to Google thru the Feedback section of your webmaster tools. Google "should" discredit the thief and return your status. Be prepared to verify the content is your original work.

Good Luck,

KJr

TY for your offer, I sent the message with some screenshots from the 2 GA accounts. I look forward to hearing back from you.

KJr

On Oct 31, I updated our Google Analytics code, but not in Moz. Once I realized my oversight, I updated Moz with the correct GA code, but our traffic has diminished drastically. We’re at 1/3 of the traffic now, as compared to our October numbers.

Why are there much less visitors (350 to 150) now as compared to Oct and prior?

Other visitor tracking resources numbers have not changed.

KJr

Have you submitted your pages for "Fetching" through Webmaster Tools? Check when you were last crawled by Google, make some content upgrades and re-submit. That always gets us indexed within 48 hrs.

I use the Moz Page Optimization tool as a guide to edit our product pages, that helps immensely.

KJr

I use a spreadsheet to track my top 10 competitors, every time the new DA index is released. By watching our competitors, I can see trends and seasons in our markets and how algorithm changes affect us and them. Most of the time, the majority of us see the same increases and reductions. This is not an immediate answer bc it takes a long time to populate enough data to begin measuring, but after a while, it very valuable when the owner comes knocking.

KJr

We hired a new website/marketing company that is a Preferred Google Partner (one of two in Charlotte according to them) and they hosted a presentation by Google at the Google Fiber office in Charlotte yesterday.

As expected, there were lots of self-promotion by Google, accompanied with a plethora of data they created to support their PPC Marketing. It was an impressive performance with Molly Dince and Celena Fergusson, presenting Google Marketing Solutions: "Making the Web Work For You" and the keynote speaker Tim Reis, Director of Performance Agencies at Google: speaking on "Mobile Micromoments: Why Your Biggest Opportunities Are In The Smallest Moments"

They ended with 15 minutes of Q&A and my question was answered with "I don't know" which I found surprising. So, here it is Thursday morning and I'm asking the same question to my Moz Family for some feedback:

"Since the removal of Ads from the right column of a SERP, what percentage of Google traffic comes from Ads vs. the Organics?"

I look forward to your comments.

TY,
KJr

My largest obstacle occurred 2 years ago when the server we were on got blacklisted by Google. We hosted through my close friend - ally, he had leased a "less than secure server" and after a year something got hacked on his server and we (along w/ everyone on that server) were blacklisted. To add to the complication, my friend suddenly fell ill and was admitted to the hospital (he was down for 14 days) and I had no clue how to manage his server nor communicate with the server company.

Numerous long days and nights on calls, chats and emails, we (our new host & myself) were able to move our 2 sites to a secure server, and submit to Google and get re-listed. We were "Off-SERP" for 10 consecutive days, 8 of which were business days, our owner said sales went down $20,000 during that period!

Take-Away: If it's important, never just take someone's word it is right. Do the follow-up and confirm your status.

KJr

Logan,

Thx for the feedback

Edited all our pages and tested and passed!

TY,

KJr

GR,

Absolutely, there are no guarantees. That's why i measure head to head with our direct competitors.

Bottom Line: somebody's going to get the opportunity, and they probably rank in the top 10, I believe monitoring and adjusting will give us the best chance at that opportunity.

TY,
KJr