Content and search

// part e

Part E: Content against Google's documentation

E.0 Summary

Google's guidance asks whether a page is written for people, shows first-hand experience, says who wrote it and why, and is accurate. Measured against 187 requirements from 14 Google sources, most of this site's content fails at least one of those tests. Each finding applies to both sites unless it says otherwise (see E.1 Scope). The 12 Medium patterns in E.4 are listed for completeness. They are not counted among the 91 findings.

• Verdicts: 1 of 91 pages can stay as it is, 66 need work, 15 should merge into another page and 9 should be removed or redirected (E.2).
• Accuracy looks like the most urgent problem (C-1 to C-3). A post lists a wrong phone number. Several pages have facts that disagree with another page or with themselves. Several posts present outdated information as current, such as COVID rules, old fees and past events.
• Trust signals are missing. The structured data (hidden page details for search engines) names the post authors as Marketplace Suites, a first name only, or a user name, with no author bio. Neither site has an About page or an email address (C-4, A-24).
• In this review, first-hand experience looks rare. Several posts read as generic travel copy. The hotel's real advantage, its location above The Marketplace in the middle of Cruz Bay, also looks underused (C-5).
• Some pages share titles and text. Several posts aim at the same search. 4 suite pages on the new site share 1 title. 2 other pages on the new site share another title. At least 8 of 12 suite pages on the new site (suites 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10 among them) share a near-identical About text (C-6, C-7).
• What Google does not ask for is listed in E.5, so that the fixes stay focused: no word counts, no llms.txt (a file that summarizes a site for AI tools), no special AI markup.

E.1 Method

1. 14 Google sources were read and turned into a checklist of 187 requirements, each with the source URL and a line marked "Google says". The sources:
   • Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content; Google Search's guidance on AI-generated content; the SEO Starter Guide; the spam policies.
   • Title links; snippets; link best practices; image SEO.
   • Checklist sources 9 to 12: the review snippet and "write high quality reviews" guidelines; structured data general guidelines; page experience; dates shown beside the author name (bylines).
   • The Search Quality Rater Guidelines (Google's guide for human search raters, version dated September 11, 2025), and Search Central blog posts from 2024 to 2026.
2. All 91 pages were reviewed against that checklist: 42 posts and 49 other pages. Each page got a verdict: keep, improve, merge or remove. The per-page results are in Part G.
3. Some serious findings were checked again on the live pages.

Scope: the body text is the same on both sites for 40 of 42 posts, the title and description match on all 42. /marketplace-suites-vs-airbnb/ and /why-book-direct-with-marketplace-suites/ have different cancellation terms on each site. So every finding in this part applies to both the legacy and the new site, unless it says otherwise. The rater guidelines are not ranking rules.

E.2 Verdicts

Remove or redirect (9):

• /3-destinations-with-the-least-covid-restrictions-that-americans-can-travel-to-without-a-passport/: 2021 COVID rules. Its JSON-LD (structured data) dateModified gives an update date of 2025-03-12, but the visible date is December 9, 2021 ("almost two years since the start of Covid-19").
• /what-is-the-best-winter-island-travel-spot-virgin-islands-puerto-rico-or-cayman-islands/: COVID rules from 2020 to 2021 presented as current.
• /best-caribbean-luxury-hotels-resorts-for-families-or-adults/: has leftover placeholder text "(six?)" CONFIRMED, and names resorts in 5 other destinations: the Bahamas, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Dominican Republic.
• /us-virgin-islands-food-the-caribbean-loves-crucian-potato-stuffing/: the recipe is credited to thatgirlcookshealthy.com. The recipe also contradicts itself: "45 - 65 minutes" in the text, "15-20 minutes" in the image alt text (the description that screen readers read aloud).
• /category/level-1/, /category/level-2/, /category/level-3/, /category/uncategorized/ and /thank-you/ (see A-8 and N-14 for thin placeholder pages, and N-3 for the thank-you page).

Merge (15):

• /best-water-activities-usvi/ into /10-of-the-best-water-activities-in-the-usvi/.
• /escape-the-winter-blues-wfh-in-the-usvi/ and /usvi-vacation-business-professionals/ into /remote-work-hotel-st-john-usvi/.
• /top-6-budget-friendly-places-in-the-usvi/ into /seeing-st-john-on-a-budget/.
• /category/blog/, /category/blog/bvi/, /category/blog/usvi-flights/ and /category/blog/vacation-rentals/ into a smaller set of categories (see N-42 for the category clean-up).
• /inquiry/ into /contact-us/.
• The 6 /marketplace/<tenant>/ pages (13 to 33 words each) into /marketplace/.

Keep as is (1): /which-marketplace-suite-is-right-for-you/.

E.3 Critical and High findings (both sites)

C-1HighWrong phone number in a post. CONFIRMED /10-travel-tips-for-the-u-s-virgin-islands-during-hurricane-season/ says "please contact us at 1-800-627-6610". The real number is 1-800-727-6610. The same post places Louisiana's "John the Baptist Parish" on St. John and gives 2022 and 2023 hurricane forecasts. Google asks: "Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors?" (G-15).

C-2HighFacts that disagree across the site. Several pages have facts that conflict with another page or with themselves. Examples:

• Prices: the legacy kitchenettes page shows $160, $180 and $245 CONFIRMED. The new site's kitchenettes page shows $125, $155 and $245. The legacy /suites/ shows $160, $180 and $245. The new /suites/ shows $175, $195 and $245.
• Housekeeping is stated both ways (see N-32).
• The share of St. John that is national park is given as 60%, "two-thirds" and "more than half".
• "The best time to visit" gives four different answers on the same page.
• Places on St. Croix are listed as being on St. John, and one post mentions "direct flights to St. John" (the island has no airport).
• /best-hotels-on-st-john-u-s-virgin-islands/ lists The Hills with the number that Marketplace Suites also uses, which The Hills publishes on its own site, and gives House of Open Arms the same phone number as The Westin (1-340-513-7199).
• /marketplace/: "Cruz Bay Family Practice" links to redhookfamilypractice.com, the site of Red Hook Family Practice, which has offices in Red Hook and Yacht Haven (St. Thomas) and in Cruz Bay (St. John).

C-3HighStale content presented as current. Examples from several posts:

• COVID test rules shown as current, and July fares with no year, on /cheap-flights-to-st-john-us-virgin-islands/.
• "Paradise Jam (Nov 21-24 2025)" on /st-john-shines-in-autumn/, and "Reserve your suite today ... before dates sell out" on the Carnival 2026 post.
• Frenchman's Reef is still described as "soon-to-reopen" on /st-thomas-vs-st-john/.
• The old $4 Trunk Bay fee on /top-6-budget-friendly-places-in-the-usvi/. The National Park Service (NPS) fees page lists $5 per person ages 16 and up.
• Award claims from 2017 (TripAdvisor) and 2020 (Travelers' Choice) on /best-hotels-on-st-john-u-s-virgin-islands/, and 2019 and 2020 (Conde Nast) on /best-caribbean-luxury-hotels-resorts-for-families-or-adults/.

Google: "Provide up-to-date information" (G-130). Also, do not change dates "to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed" (G-24).

C-4HighWho wrote it: no real author. This applies to all 42 posts. The visible byline (the author name on the page) is "Marketplace Suites", but the Article JSON-LD names a first name only, a user name, or a Person called "Marketplace Suites". No author in the JSON-LD has a URL. Google asks whether it is "self-evident to your visitors who authored your content" and expects bylines to lead to more information about the author (G-28, G-29). Fix: real author names with a short bio page, or the business as author (Organization) with a line on who checks the facts.

C-5HighLittle first-hand experience. Several posts read as generic travel copy in this review. Google's self-assessment asks whether the content shows "first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge" (G-18). The hotel's location in Cruz Bay is named in 18 of 42 posts ("heart of Cruz Bay" or "center of Cruz Bay"), and 8 posts say it sits "above The Marketplace". In this review, the best existing examples are the Papaya Bookstore and Marketplace details in /8-of-the-best-places-to-work-in-the-usvi/.

C-6HighSeveral posts aim at the same search (keyword cannibalization, where posts compete with each other in search results). Clusters:

• Water activities (2 posts).
• Solo travel (2).
• Budget travel (2).
• Remote work and business travel (at least 3).
• Best time, winter, autumn and holiday (4).
• Things to do: /things-to-do/ and /top-things-to-do-in-st-john-us-virgin-islands/ share the exact title "Things to Do in St John USVI | Marketplace Suites".

Search Console data should confirm the merges in E.2 before the merges go live.

C-7HighSuite pages are near-duplicates. On the new site, at least 8 of 12 suite pages (suites 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10 among them) share a 96 to 100% similar "About" block with another suite. On the legacy site, at least 8 of the 12 suite About paragraphs (suite 2 included) match suite 2 word for word after the opening sentence. 4 suite pages share 1 title ("Standard King Cruz Bay St John Hotel | Marketplace Suites"). Each suite needs its floor, view, size, bed layout and 1 or 2 lines that only that suite can claim (Google warns against mass-produced content with little value, G-11). Promo text such as "15% Off Holiday Dates!" sits in the main headings (H1s), JSON-LD names and alt text on 6 suite pages on each site (it also appears in alt text on several pages of each site) and reads as a seasonal offer.

E.4 Medium findings

E.5 What Google does not require

• No word-count target. Google warns against writing to a particular word count (G-22).
• No llms.txt. Google's June 15, 2026 changelog says these files "aren't needed for Google Search".
• No special files or markup for AI Overviews or AI Mode.
• No FAQPage markup (structured data for FAQs in search results) (Google says the feature no longer appears in Search from May 7, 2026).
• No ban on AI-assisted writing. Google's scaled content abuse policy covers many pages generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. In this review, the main concerns are accuracy and first-hand value.

// part i

Part I: Search visibility

I.1 What this part covers

This part uses third-party search data for Google in the United States (English). It covers the live domain marketplacesuitesusvi.com only, not the netlify.app address. Traffic figures are modelled estimates, not Search Console or GA4 numbers. Use them to rank pages against each other, not as exact visit counts.

• Footprint: about 620 modelled organic visits (visits from unpaid search results) a month and 912 organic keywords.
• Top-100 keyword rows (the 100 rows with the most modelled traffic): 86 rank in the top 10 and 33 in the top 3. 63 of the 100 are AI Overview sources. 37 are organic results. Their modelled visits add up to 951 a month (452.7 from organic results, 498.8 from AI Overview rows). That is more than the 620 above because the 620 counts organic results only. Use the shares below to compare pages, not the totals.

I.2 Where the search traffic comes from

Two URLs carry about 78% of the modelled traffic in the top-100 rows.

• The best-time post is the main source of search visits and of AI Overview citations: 49 of its 58 keyword rows are AI Overview sources. Any rewrite must keep its URL, its title and its month-by-month weather sections.
• Queries that name the hotel (3 rows: "marketplace suites st john", "marketplace suites", "marketplace suites st john usvi") give about 167 of the 951 modelled visits (18%).
• The query "st john marketplace" (880 searches a month, position 4 for the home page) is likely about the shopping center, not the hotel.

I.3 Pages that G.1 marks to merge or remove, and that carry traffic

Only pages inside the top-100 keyword rows are listed.

• Give every merged or removed URL a 301 redirect (a permanent redirect) to the closest page, and check the 4 pages again after launch.
• The two pages for other businesses (Starfish Market and Chelsea Drugstore) answer searches for those businesses, not the hotel.

I.4 Rankings and demand for hotel searches

Monthly US searches, with the provider's difficulty score (0 to 100, lower is easier):

• Hotel searches (searches for hotels in St John) peak in January and February and are lowest in September. "hotels st john usvi" averages 4,400 a month, with 8,100 in January 2026 and 2,400 in September 2026. Finish the rewrite of the home page and /suites/ before December 2026.
• For "st john usvi hotels", the top results are booking and review sites (such as hotels.com, Tripadvisor and Expedia) and travel guides (stjohn.com and seestjohn.com).
• The home page already ranks 9th for "cruz bay boutique hotel" (1,300 searches a month). Put the hotel searches in the home page title, the main heading (H1) and the first paragraph, and give /suites/ the same wording with the suite types.

I.5 Backlinks

• Totals: 583 backlinks from 573 pages on 75 referring domains. The provider's domain rank (its score for link strength) is 34. The spam score of the link profile is 5 (low).
• Concentration: 2 sister sites (other websites in the same group) give 501 of the 583 links (86%): vacationvi.com 313 and thehillsstjohn.com 188. Most other domains give 1 to 3 links.
• Useful links: a news site, real-estate sites, travel sites and a news listing that copies the Google Business Profile.
• Nofollow links: include a directory listing (myvirginislands.vi; myviapp.com redirects to it).
• Image links (links that point to image files): 5 pages (4 blogspot pages and one wellicious.com page) link to 2 old image files (westin-st-john-resort.jpg and a Cruz Bay photo). 4 of the 5 have spam scores of 15 to 30.
• Latest trend: the provider's monthly series shows referring domains rising from 57 to 257 in the latest month (200 new), but its current total is 75 domains and its domain list returned 25. These two figures do not match, so treat the jump as unconfirmed. Review the links report in Search Console before the switch.

I.6 Google Business Profile and map visibility

• The profile exists, is claimed (the owner has verified it) and is listed as a hotel. Rating 4.1 from 27 reviews (17 five-star, 4 four-star, 1 three-star, 2 two-star, 3 one-star). 204 photos.
• The phone number on the profile (1-800-727-6610) matches the site. The website link carries utm_source=Google_GBP&utm_medium=organic.
• The data shows no booking link and no opening hours on the profile, and no Google posts (short updates shown on the profile). Add them.
• Reviews: the guests' praise names the location, the grocery store below the building, the size and the parking. Complaints name noise between units or from outside (4 reviews), housekeeping or linen (2 reviews) and fees (1 review). 7 of the 27 reviews are from 2026, and the newest review is 4 months old. The owner replied to 5 of the 6 reviews rated 1 to 3 stars.
• Questions and answers: the profile lists 21 questions, all written by the hotel. 20 have answers; the kitchenware question has none. The answers give check-in at 3:00 PM, check-out at 11:00 AM (the suite pages' structured data, which search engines read, gives 10:00 AM, so the two need to match), a minimum guest age of 25, a 2-night minimum stay except on holidays, no laundry, no pets and no smoking. The visible text of the home, FAQ, cancellation, terms and suite 1 pages on either site does not state these times, the minimum age or the minimum stay. Add them to the FAQ.
• Nearby competitors: among the 15 hotels and rentals returned within 4 km, the hotel has the lowest rating (4.1) and the 10th most reviews. "Cruz Bay Boutique Hotel" has 4.9 from 147 reviews, and the Westin has 4.3 from 1,059.
• In a map-rank grid for "hotels in cruz bay" at 9 points 1 km apart centred on 18.3277754, -64.7910829 (the hotel's map position). The hotel did not appear in the map results at any point (each point returned only 6 to 17 results). "Cruz Bay Boutique Hotel" was first at all 9 points. In a check of Google Maps results from the hotel's position, "hotels in cruz bay st john" lists Marketplace Suites 17th of 19 results. So the hotel shows up when the list is long enough, but far from the top. Cruz Bay Boutique Hotel is 1st and Wharfside Village Hotel 2nd. The Villas at Cruz Bay, The Flamingo House, St John Inn and The Saint Resort follow.

I.7 Answers from AI search

Five questions were put to five engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Claude and Perplexity): 25 answers.

• Brand question: all 5 engines mention and cite the site.
• Hotel and planning questions (4 questions, 19 answers; 1 AI Overview was not shown): the hotel is mentioned in 2 answers. Both answers are for "St John USVI suites with a kitchen" (Claude cites the site, Perplexity mentions it).
• No mention: the questions about where to stay in St John (5 answers), the best hotels in Cruz Bay (4 answers) and the best time to visit the US Virgin Islands (5 answers). The keyword data lists the best-time post as an AI Overview source for 49 queries.
• Most cited domains in the 19 answers: hotels.com (7 answers), visitusvi.com (7), tripadvisor.com (6), travel.usnews.com (4), booking.com (4), expedia.com (4).

I.8 Independent crawl of the legacy site

A crawl of 112 pages with 20 Lighthouse runs (Google's page test tool) found: pages with images that have no alt text (104), titles that are too long (26), duplicate titles (14), heading levels that skip (14), missing meta descriptions, the summary text under a search result (11), orphan pages, meaning no other page links to them (8), duplicate meta descriptions (5), meta descriptions that are too long (5), noindex pages (5), duplicate page content (3, the /category/level-1/ to /level-3/ pages), canonicalized pages (2), a missing H1, the main page heading (1) and multiple H1s (1). It found no broken internal links, no server errors and no redirect chains. This crawler counts differently from Part A and Part E, so the numbers do not match line for line. Most issue types match Part A and Part E; duplicate meta descriptions and a missing H1 on one page are not listed there.

The same crawler ran on the new site (104 pages, 20 Lighthouse runs). It found pages with images that have no alt text (22), thin content, meaning little text (10 pages: 6 tenant pages, the 3 /category/level-*/ pages and /thank-you/), missing meta descriptions, the summary text under a search result (9), a missing H1, the main page heading (/llm-info/), multiple H1s (/best-times-to-visit-usvi-for-suite-stay/), titles that are too long (26), heading levels that skip (8), meta descriptions that are too long (5) and noindex pages (7). It also lists 95 pages as canonicalized, because their canonical points to marketplacesuitesusvi.com. It found no broken internal links, no server errors, no duplicate content, and no orphan pages by its own link count, and no redirect chains.

I.9 What to do first

1. Keep the URL, title and weather sections of the best-time post.
2. 301 every merged or removed URL to the closest page, and re-check the 4 pages in I.3.
3. Rewrite the home page and /suites/ around the hotel searches in I.4.
4. Add a booking link and opening hours to the Google Business Profile, and ask recent guests for reviews.
5. Review the latest jump in referring domains (separate websites that link here) before the switch.
6. Request Search Console and GA4 access, so that real clicks replace these estimates.

I.10 Other findings from further tools

Site crawlers, a link-graph crawler, an AI-readiness checker, a command-line toolbox and a schema and robots review were used on both sites. They agree with the rest of this report on these points: no cross-origin (CORS) risk, no mixed content (insecure files on secure pages), no cookies set by the server on the home page, 27 of 27 AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt on both sites, and 2 new-site pages with no links from other sitemap pages (a sitemap-only test; the crawl in I.8 found no orphan pages on the new site). They also show the points below, which the other parts do not cover.

• /llm-info/ page. Both sites serve a page for AI assistants (noindex, which keeps it out of search results, about 650 words) that lists starting prices of $125, $155 and $275 a night, names Bard, which Google renamed to Gemini Apps and has an instructions_for_ai_assistants block. The legacy copy and the new copy give different cancellation terms. We suggest removing the /llm-info/ page, because Google does not need similar files such as llms.txt (E.5). If you keep it, make every fact match the live price, policy and contact pages, and add it to the policy text the owner must approve.
• robots.txt sitemap line. The new robots.txt points to https://marketplacesuitesusvi.com/sitemap-index.xml. That address returns 404 (page not found), because the legacy site uses sitemap_index.xml. The new site serves that file, so the address works after the switch.
• Login page. /wp-login.php returns 200 (page found) on the legacy site and 404 on the new one.
• Suite breadcrumbs. All 12 suite pages on both sites carry 2 BreadcrumbList blocks that do not match. Suite 5 reads "Properties > Suite 5 Marketplace" in one and "My Rentals > 2 Bedroom, Sleeps 6 Guests" in the other on the legacy site. On the new site, "Suites" appears in place of "My Rentals".
• Reviews in suite structured data. The new suite pages lost the review list that the legacy suite structured data has.
• sameAs. No structured data item on either site has sameAs (only the social profile links exist on the page). Add the Google profile, Tripadvisor and any Wikidata item.
• Address structured data. The legacy addressRegion reads "USVI", which is not a region code (the new site uses "VI"). The street address is also punctuated differently in the page text and the structured data.
• AI-use terms. Neither robots.txt has a Content-Signal line, so robots.txt states no preference on AI use. The /llm-info/ page on both sites does give instructions to AI assistants.
• Brand presence. A search of Wikipedia and Wikidata for "Marketplace Suites" returned nothing. A YouTube search returned 11 videos, and one is a guest room review of the hotel. Reddit could not be checked.
• Hero image weight. The default src (the image file the page loads first) of the beach-bag image on /best-beaches-on-st-john/ is already a 1 MB PNG, not only the larger sizes in srcset.
• Sitemap dates. The legacy lastmod values repeat: 19 of 43 URLs in the post sitemap and 9 of 16 pages share the date 2025-03-12, and all 13 suite URLs share one date. These dates may not show when each page changed, so the new site's lastmod values should come from true modified dates. No /property-tags/ URL is in either sitemap.
• Page weight. In the local Lighthouse test (Google's page test), the new /marketplace/ page weighed 4,045 KiB, the heaviest of the 5 new pages in that test, and the legacy /marketplace/ page showed a mobile layout shift (CLS) of 0.221 in 2 of 3 runs.