Too Much SEO

Hi guys.
I got an email from one of my clients today, and to be honest, I'm rather stumped. I never thought I would receive an email like this.

My client, who I did some SEO work contacted me and told me that their website is bring in TOO MUCH business. I have recently got them them to the number 1 spot for most terms in their industry.

Their business is offline and requires a booking, however it is not a hotel or accommodation, it's more like an activity.

They say that they are receiving too many requests and they want to be brought DOWN to the second page results on search engines.

I suggest implementing some sort of booking engine but they don't want this. Most bookings are taken via email or the phone and they are so busy, they don't want the extra admin work.

I really wanted to say "Why don't you hire some more staff and grow your business!" . I have never had to drop a client DOWN SERPs. And I don't want to have to now. Can you make any suggestions as how to approach this?

If the worst comes to the worst, does anyone have any ideas on how to drop a site to the second page of results? (The client wants what the client wants).

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

your client is insane.

if you know how to optimize, it shouldn't be hard to, uh, reverse it. remove it from the title tag. mention it fewer times in the body. if worst comes to worst, ditch the old pages and start anew.

 

Use robots.txt, but they will then ask you that they want increased sales.

 

nah, just block every IP apart from their own from accessing the site

seriously though, another thing you could do is ask them if the calls they're getting aren't targetted enough. if they're getting a lot of calls that in no way would result in sales, I can understand their frustration.

if that's the case, figure out where the users are coming from and block them / deliver them different content / etc.

 

Create a script that says "We have too much business go away" for every second customer.

That should help.

And yes, they are insane. That's like telling that you have too much money in the bank.

 

Who exactly is your client? And they those monkeys we see in those Career Builder commercials?

To help them out, maybe you should redirect their traffic to one of their competitors. That ought to reduce their workload, don't you think?

 

Maybe have them place google ads on their site. They will loose some customers due to competitors ads on the page (which they want), plus they will make some money from the clicks. Just a thought.

 

I say the smartest thing they could do is increase the prices on their services, since it would result in less people being interested and more profit for the same amount of work .

 

Yea, that would be the best thing.

 

Don't we all wish that we had too much business.

Honestly, I have to say that your client is borderline insane.

If they are getting a lot of calls / email or whatever requesting information or other non-sales related requests, then maybe attention should be taken on the website so that the calls the do get are more targeted and less informational. Personally, I would ask them how you can get them better leads to cut down on the work that they need to do. Also possibly suggest to hire some part time work.

I would absolutely not do anything to try to lower the rankings. Nobody has enough control to adequately guess where you will end up and once you hit the 5th page or so, you get blamed for no business. This is just the nature of business. They need to figure out how to adapt to the success that they are having. Take advantage of it now, because it may not be there next week.

 

If you client is getting swamped, then it would be easy for them to turn away business instead of wasting all the good that your SEO efforts have done for them. Let them understand it took a lot of work for you to get them to the top. And now is the time for them to expand their business instead of going back to the status quo.

 

Yep, they are certifiably insane. Assuming that you are helping to drive targeted traffic, then they should be throwing rose petals at your feet.

Write a script that redirects every other user to an affiliate travel site of your own. Then collect the extra profits that they can't handle

 

wow at least you know you did a great job.

I worked on some activity sites and trust me they appreciated all the additional business. lol I wasn't able to get them to #1 but the improvement generated a lot more business for them.

Too bad for the company you are doing work for.

 

Thanks for all the replies guys.
The situation is a little more complicated than I made out. They actually do not have the resources to cope with the amount of requests.

Their request to me is to get them a second page position. As an SEO, I "Should" be able to do that. I have not sat down with them yet to explain in detail what exactly the cons to this are. I actually couldn't believe it.

Fair enough, when I run PPC campaigns for clients, I can just pause the campaign or make adjustments accordingly, but with organic SEO.... I never thought I would be in a position like this.

It's my job to give a client what they want. We all know in business though, what a client wants isn't exactly what a client needs.

I'll have to have a think about this and I'll keep you all updated.

 

Sinply Stupid
I think your client is an idiot .

 

Nope, my client is not an idiot. They have been in business for over 20 years. The business is relatively small and technically, can only accommodate a certain amount of places for now.

It's complicated, but I see where they are coming from. I'd just like to see them grow rather than "Be Happy" with their current business.

If anything else, it will make for an interesting experiment.

 

You were probably joking but that was more or less exactly what I had in mind. Why waste the time, effort and money invested by dumbing down the SEO again? All you have to do is this:

1. Find a relevant affiliate program.
2. Redirect every Nth visitor via the (your) aff link to the competitor/alternative.

Result (if you do it properly) they keep the ranking and the day they can have the extra business you charge them a few grand 'to bring it back up' - remove 10 lines of code and you're done. In the meanwhile, they or you are earning extra bucks.

If you can't find anything relevant to cash in on try AdBrite Interstitials.

But really, the client should just charge more. That will scare a lot away and they make more.

And yes, they are a bunch of muppets by the sounds of it. Maybe you should just buy them out.

EDIT: Thinking about it, surely you can make one page with a few lines of code where they can log in and hit a 'full for this month' button which will simply remove the enquiry form, display a bunch of contextual ads and automatically or based on user input reopen next month?

 

I agree, monetizing the traffic would be a better option than tanking the ratings.

be careful with flat-out redirecting them though, that could obviously screw with search engines. just randomly, like TOPS30 said, change the page to have only affiliate links or other methods of monetization

 

OMG they are so dumb...

I'd redirect the traffic as T0PS3O cleverly suggested!

BTW good job!

PS. Now you can advertise your SEO services with something like:
Our SEO services will get you out of business because you won't be able to cope with the excess traffic