TravelSupermarket are a UK travel comparison website that specialise in comparing the travel market for products such as holidays, car hire, flights, hotels and travel insurance.
Following Google’s increased emphasis on E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), particularly after the “Medic” update, TravelSupermarket, a leading UK travel comparison website, experienced a significant decline in organic rankings and revenue. Recognising the critical need to address these E-A-T-related challenges, I led the development and implementation of a comprehensive recovery strategy. This focused on enhancing content quality, improving product visibility, and refining user experience. Within 13 months, this phased approach resulted in a partial recovery of lost organic traffic and the return of core keywords to page one rankings, mitigating significant business impact.
The Challenge
Following Google’s algorithm updates focused on E-A-T, TravelSupermarket experienced a significant decline in organic visibility, directly impacting revenue. The key challenges I identified were:
Poor Content Quality (from an E-A-T perspective): Historically, content was heavily focused on keyword stuffing and lacked in-depth editorial value, failing to adequately demonstrate expertise.
Lack of Product Visibility: Core product offerings (holiday packages, flights, car hire) were hidden behind search filters, making it difficult for Google to understand and index them, hindering product-focused rankings.
Intrusive Advertising: An excessive number of ads, some of which were intrusive, negatively impacted user experience and potentially signalled a lack of focus on user needs.
Impact on Core Keywords: High-volume keywords saw significant ranking drops:
“Cheap holidays” dropped from position 3 to page 2.
“Car hire” dropped from position 1 to page 2.
Cheap flights” dropped from position 2 to page 2.
These keywords each had approximately 500,000 monthly searches, resulting in an estimated 50% drop in organic traffic and revenue.
The Solution
To address these E-A-T-related challenges, I led the development and implementation of a phased, comprehensive strategy:
Phase 1: Content Enhancement and Product Visibility (6 Months):
Enhanced Destination Content: I spearheaded the creation of more in-depth editorial content about destinations, ensuring these blog posts linked effectively to relevant destination landing pages to enhance topical relevance.
Improved Product Visibility: I oversaw the implementation of technical changes to surface product search results directly on landing pages. This involved crawling destination searches daily and displaying segmented results (e.g., “holidays under £XX in Dubai,” “4-star holidays in Dubai,” “family-friendly holidays in Dubai”). This crucial change allowed Google to access and understand the product offerings.
Improved Content Quality: I guided the team to focus on more natural integration of keywords within the content to improve readability and user experience.
Phase 2: Further Content Expansion and Ad Refinement (Additional 6 Months):
Expanded Product Visibility: I oversaw the rollout of the product visibility improvements to all relevant pages.
Ad Reduction and Format Changes: I initiated a review and reduction of the number of ads on the site, as well as adjustments to ad formats to improve user experience and comply with Google’s guidelines.
Enhanced Trust Signals: I championed the implementation of trust signals on all pages, including highlighting partnerships (e.g., ATOL protected, part of MoneySuperMarket group).
Ongoing PR and Outreach: I worked with the PR and outreach teams to ensure continued efforts and bespoke SEO campaigns to build high-quality backlinks to core pages.
The Results
The phased implementation of these E-A-T-focused strategies, under my leadership, yielded positive results:
Partial Traffic Recovery: Within a year, TravelSupermarket recovered 25% of the organic traffic lost due to the initial E-A-T impact.
Core Keyword Recovery: After seven months, core keywords like “package holidays” and “cheap holidays” returned to page one rankings (bottom of page 1 initially). Over the following six months, these keywords improved further to top-of-fold positions (position 5 and above).
Impact on Business: The recovery efforts contributed to stabilising revenue and regaining some lost market share. However, increased competition, more prominent ads above organic results, and featured snippets meant that traffic levels did not fully return to pre-update levels.
Conclusion
By leading the development and implementation of a comprehensive E-A-T strategy, focusing on content quality, product visibility, and user experience, I helped TravelSupermarket mitigate the negative impact of Google’s algorithm updates and begin the process of organic recovery. While full recovery was impacted by increased competition and changes in the search landscape, the strategic changes I implemented provided a solid foundation for future growth.
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