1st page Google to not gone...Could it be Reach Local?

I have ranked on the first page of organic search results in Google with my keywords for a couple of months. Before that we were on the first or second page of Google for the last 4 years, something we have worked hard to obtain. We recently stopped showing up in any results for our major keywords. Google and Yahoo are not placing us. In Google if we type in long tail specific keywords we sometimes show up on the 2-3 page, but those aren't the keywords we want to target. The only thing we have changed on our site recently was adding our company to Yahoo directory (which increased our rank). However we did hire a company to do some local advertising for us. The company (Reach Local) places the site on their proxy server. I have read other forums, that were of out of date, but people complain that this company did the same thing to their page rankings. The company claims that their efforts do not effect search engine rankings at all. Could their efforts be changing our rankings and even making us not placed? Why else would we just disappear?? We also found Google's crawl and noticed pages were coming up with 404 errors, however they were pages similar to our site but not the same. ex/mailing instead of mail Does anyone have any suggestions as to what this could be? And more importantly how to reverse it??

 

Sorry to hear about your issues. I don't know if the company you hired is the reason to blame, but another possibility for the drop in rankings is that if your site had previously been ranked for 4 years for certain phrases and then now you're aggressively going after localized phrases, Google may de-rank you for a period of time to make sure that your site is still topical. I've seen this many times with Google and Yahoo.

Think of it as almost being the same as if you acquired an existing domain. The engines are aware of the links pointing to it, and if the new links pointing to the site are of different phrases, the engines will need to evaluate the links in order to make sure the site is still relevant to the phrases.

I'm not saying this is the answer, just a possibility.

 

I've heard that Google changes its algorithyms from time to time. Perhaps the links you had in the past are not as valid. Or perhaps the links you do have are very old. Try adding some new links to old keywords or adding new content.

 

I recently was hired by a client who went though the same experience, with the same company ("Reach Local"). This company basically manages online ppc campaigns. From the research I was hired to produce, I found that they where taking the majority of the daily budget my client was paying them. To hide this practice they need to hide the statistics from the website owner. This is the reason they use that shady proxy technique to deliver a cloned version of your website. Obscuring true CTR tracking and at the same time killing your organic search results. They then produce more or less falsified analytic reports back to the client in their format. I was in on a meeting with an account rep. from Reach Local. When I asked if my client could have the login to the Adwords and the analytics they refused. I know for a fact Google makes it very easy to allow other users to view reports from these services. That about sums it up.

 

I'm not sure what the answer is. It could be that the people handling your SEO have done something google doesn't like but I'm unsure.

 

I am part of the people who handle the SEO. The only things we have done would help us. Joined Yahoo Directory, the Open Directory, Twitter and YouTube. I am not sure we are being punished by Google because we come up with other keywords. Just not the mail ones that are the most important to us.

 

I am doing SEO and I have a google analytic account. It is really easy to add another user and if they refused, it means there is something there they don't want you to see. They should not have to move your website to their server to handle a PPC campaign. It is NOT a common procedure. I manage PPC campaigns myself for clients and it's the first time I hear that.
This company "Reach Local" looks like a big joke/scam to me.

 

I have had the same experience with ReachLocal. Our firm fell for their high pressure sales tactics and not only lost SEO rankings, but sank thousands of dollars into their scam. They hide everything from the client and their system is nothing more than a basic PPC management system that their sales people control. Buyer Beware!

 

This also sounds like my experience. My Google ranking has dropped significantly (from page three for favourite keywords to 14). RL generated absolutely no business for me despite their myriad assurances. I killed things after three months . . . As a new-ish business (coming up on a year), they have definitely been my biggest regret.

 

Reach Local have recently moved to the UK, and one of my client halted a very successful Adword campaign they had set up to go with Reach Local, my client (a cosmetic dentist) was getting between 5 and 10 enquiries per day with a spend of £1500, Reach Local advised a £2000 spend and in one month we have had a total of 8 enquiries, they ignored the campaign we had set up geared towards a specific aspect of cosmetic dentistry and launched a campaign based around the whole industry..

We have now halted dealings with them and are likely to end of taking them to court for making false claims.

I am an experienced organic SEO expert with 8 years organic and Adword experience and would advise anyone to avoid these 'cowboys' like the plague.

They use hard sell tactics and the slime literally rolls of the salesmans tounge as they pitch to you, AVOID AVOID AVOID

 

Thank you all for posting this info. I signed up to this thread based upon these postings. My name is Brian, I work for Billy Sweet Chimney Sweep and we're trying to handle a small shop that does a lot of chimney work in Eastern Massachusetts. I recently revamped our website, started some PPC campaigns, got very busy with implementing a new database so I started looking for companies to help me manage this. We chose Idearc's superpages.com and yellowpages.com to handle the PPC's. It's working out. One thing I was looking to do, I've been told is called banner re-marketing. This is where Reach Local comes in. They were insulting the first time I spoke with them and then later on this pleasant fellow calls and says that he can offer exactly what I want. I almost spent another $12,000 this year. Thanks to all of you who found out for me. We won't make that mistake now. I'm still left not knowing what this re-marketing thing is but I'm sure I'll find out eventually.

 

ReachLocal does not affect your SEO... They include a Meta No Index, No Follow Element along with a Robots.txt file that blocks the spiders from indexing any potential duplicate content.

Have you considered that may have caught your website for shady SEO practices and assigned a penalty. My company specializes in Google Penalties and Ethical SEO and I have found that with the majority of ReachLocal complaints - they are invalid.

I would submit a link to my Blog article that points out the facts relating to ReachLocal but I am not sure I am allowed to yet as I am a newb user

Keep your chin up.

 

BillySweetChimneySweep - on the Idearc note I am glad they are working out for you. I had a Idearc rep try to sell one of my clients, when he said

"One thing we noticed about your website was that your domain is only registered for a year, you have to renew it for 3+ years, Google likes that," I dismissed them.

Anyway - a topic for another day. I have about 1/2 my clients on Yodle and the other 1/2 on ReachLocal and seen pretty good results on both.

 

Need to ask your rep if using a reach local or yodle type company for a few IMPORTANT things......
Out of your monthly budget, what portion do they take as pay??
Will you be charged for clicks if the EU is finding your Company by name?
To show you reports of how people are getting to your site, how many pages looked at within your site, time spent on site, time spent of each of your pages, BOUNCE RATE (HUGE FACTOR), keywords that they are using on google?
Good luck getting any of this information, as from what I understand they take approximately 40% (if not more) to pay themselves, then they use the balance for your ppc campaign. And a big no-no is that they charge you for your name being searched! And if you look through their reports if you get them, you will see that a large portion of your "budget" is being used towards potential clients that already know your name??
Good luck getting some answers ......

Currently in the Space, I would highly recommend a Company called Local Internet Traffic, www.localinternettraffic.com. They give free consults, and they do not up charge for clicks, reporting is unbeliveable....they also offer website design, not by a designer, but with the site being optimized to come back for organic traffic when site launches. They also do ppc and you pay google directly, WHAT A DIFFERENCE!! SEO programs are amazing....you can win in the space BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT COMPANY DO IT FOR YOU!!

Good luck all!!
If you contact Local Internet Traffic, ask for Olivia.......

 

Unfortunately, using a proxy site most def effects your SEO in a very negative way, your page rank (they most important part of your website all together)....Assuming that you are maybe a rep for reach, not saying that they can't pay for themselves, but google does not give an url credit for ppc'ing a proxy site....PPC is temporary and SEO is forever (but needs continuous maintenance. There is a much better way to get a much higher ROI on your internet marketing campaign dollars than using a company such a reach or yodle type company.... sorry not to be offensive at all, but I know too many companies that have been scratching their heads as to why they do not show up organically after spending their ad budgets and it only paying for itself. You only use ppc to get the data on keywords that work best for your company in the geo area you are targeting....then do a true SEO program to get you on the first page, then onto climbing up the page.....81% of all users go to the first organic listing.....pretty big number to be ppc'ing for a long time especially on a proxy site......and reach uses proxy sites, no doubt about it. They got a bit smarter and on their newer campaigns they are not using their name in the url, but so obvious who is running the campaign

 

As a rep from ReachLocal, I wanted to clarify a few things. The purpose of the proxy site it to enable lead tracking, so the client can clearly see important events such as phone calls, emails & contact forms that the advertising generates. There is no relationship between Sponsored and Organic results at all and Google does this for a very important reason, they don't want businesses with big PPC budgets influencing the relevancy of the organic site by simply driving traffic, quite logical really.

I'd suggest the original poster may have an organic issue related to conducting black hat seo techniques or Google changing a fundamental part of their algorithm.

 

Wow, sorry to hear so many people have had bad experiences or have been burned. Just a suggestion, since you are trying to target local specific customers, have you considered creating a Google Places listing? If you do that, combined with your ppc and organic efforts you should see a decent pickup in your traffic and probably SERP. I used this and it has worked out well for me
http://www.trafixs.com/Build-a-Google-Places-Listing-Trafixs-Tut.pdf

 

You're a very naive rep from reachlocal. I was a customer of reachlocal and after 4 months of putting up with poor results (in comparison you my existing campaign) I am absolutely convinced your proxy report system hides some absolute key information. In addition all of the clients ad word spend doesn't go to google, otherwise you would give access to the adword account or at least show a screen print of the page showing the spend. I contacted google and they told me reachlocal only have to commit to a certain ad word percentage with them and the rest is free to go onto other search engines or in reachlocals pockets, I'm guessing it's the latter. My most popular keyword surprising was my own company. Ever wondered why your services aren't advertised? My guess is it because it doesn't work, what's your take on that?
In summery don't waste you money.
If your a rep, get a job selling a product that actually works.
My guess is the reps are misled and believe our money is being spent wisely.
The whole thing smells and I'm £8000.00 plus vat out of pocket for giving it a go.

 

You can definitely try it but i don't think you're going to have much success with it

 

Try to find and other Good Seo company . this is can help