townsend.bunksite.com

Tag: reviews

  • Six Ways To Get Customer Reviews That Boost Your Local Search Rankings

    SEO experts are almost unanimous in their agreement that customer reviews play a crucial role in boosting visibility and rankings in the local search results. So how can you use this information to leverage local search rankings for your own business?

    In a previous post, we discussed how a pro-active approach to customer service and feedback can boost your business reputation online. Positive reviews are a sign of trust, and that carries a great deal of weight in search rankings. Happy customers are an excellent source of positive feedback and reviews.

    For businesses trying to boost their visibility in local search, online customer reviews on Google Maps pages and third-party review sites are crucial to higher rankings. Although negative reviews can hurt your overall business reputation, they don’t adversely impact your search rankings.

    If you’re worried about negative reviews, take comfort in the knowledge that search engines don’t really differentiate between positive and negative reviews. As local search expert, Matt McGee, points out, “There’s no such thing as a negative rating. There are only degrees of positivity.”

    So, how do you go about getting your customers to post reviews on Google? Yes, you could outsource that to a company that handles SEO and reputation-management for its clients. But as local search expert, Mary Bowling notes, “It helps with trust that the review is legitimate and not gamed.”

    Here are six tips on getting more customer reviews than you can handle and leveraging the ones you have to boost your local search rankings.

    1. Ask and You Shall Receive

    Taking a pro-active stance is the best approach where customer reviews are concerned. When a client or customer offers praise or positive verbal feedback, ask whether they would be willing to be quoted online and email them a link where they can post a review. You’d be surprised how many of them are happy to recommend a product or service they really like.

    2. Offer Incentives – Not Bribes

    For those customers who get a little lazy with filling out forms online, a little incentive could give them the push they need to get that review posted. Ethically, this must be approached carefully. You can offer coupons, discounts or freebies to those customers who post a review online. It should not be stipulated that it must be a positive review. If worded “leave us a great review, and you can get 20% off your next purchase,” it’s a bribe.

    You could even have a monthly draw for customer review/feedback. Mike Blumenthal offers tips on using Leavefeedback.org, a site created by Michael Jensen of SoloSEO that facilitates review creation.

    3. Complete The Sentence…

    One trick that many companies use to get customers to write a review is to give them a feedback form on the way out. One section of the form is usually devoted to asking for comments. Customers who have trouble filling that section in, are more likely to do it if you use a “complete the sentence” format in that area.

    For instance, “I love (Your Business Name) because ____________”. If this form is available on your website, you could email them and ask for feedback anytime while offering incentives for those who do give it. Always ask your customer for permission to post their comments on your website and on review sites online, along with their name (or initials) and location.

    4. Use Social Proof

    When you first create your local business listing on yellow pages, review sites and business listing sites, a blank review page could keep many potential reviews away. People are more likely to post reviews for a business that already has a number of reviews online.

    As long as they’re legitimate and you create a separate profile for each review, you can use customer reviews from your website and feedback forms to populate these sites and provide social proof for the hesitant ones.

    5. Cut Down On Negativity

    Companies have little control over what is posted about them online, but by engaging directly with your public, you can respond to negative reviews quickly and minimize their impact.

    Almost every business creates a couple of dissatisfied customers, and the more malicious ones could post negative reviews that harm your business reputation. The best way to minimize their impact is to get many more positive reviews than negative ones.

    6. Engage With Your Audience

    Don’t let the conversation online go unanswered. Respond to feedback promptly and appropriately and thank users for positive reviews posted. Contact reviewers who post negative comments with an incentive to change their review. Offer them a coupon for your products or special service that will help them change their opinion about your company.

    Feel free to use these tips to get more customer reviews. It’s a great way to improve your visibility and rankings in the local search results.

  • Now Post Reviews Directly to Facebook and Twitter

    For online businesses that depend on customer reviews to improve visibility in local search, social media engagement has become even more relevant with companies like Yelp giving reviewers the option to seamlessly broadcast their Yelp reviews to Facebook and Twitter.

    According to the official Yelp blog, any photos that reviewers upload to Yelp.com will also be included when sharing reviews for that business via Facebook Connect. Users also have control over which reviews they want shared and which ones they don’t.

    So if your local search visibility matters, let your customers know how they can share their feedback of your business with all their Twitter and Facebook friends with a one-time signup at Yelp and watch your rankings rise.

  • Unethical Customer Reviews Can Cost You Big

    Lifestyle Lift is learning the cost of unethical customer reviews. The New York State Attorney General has reached a $300,000.00 settlement with cosmetic surgery company Lifestyle Lift in response to fabricated consumer reviews.

    It appears that Lifestyle Lift was directing employees to spend their time in reviewing their own facilities.

    Lifestyle Lift is a plastic surgery chain store. From those online customer reviews one finds, which appear truly authentic, they’re not doing so great in good old fashioned customer service. According to the article in the NY Times it seems that Lifestyle Lift is resorting to aggressive reputation management techniques to suppress bad reviews and advance their own message.

    Where did Lifestyle Lift go wrong?

    According to the article, it appears that Lifestyle Lift fabricated reviews of their own facilities and even went so far as to create entire new “review” sites to advance their message.

    To be clear, user reviews are great. The creation of alternate sites for search or more targeted messaging are a long accepted technique to obtain ranking and spread the message.

    Where it becomes a problem is when these reviews and sites are presented as authentic user generated content and they are, in fact, a fabrication in support of public relations.

    In short, the creation of false consumer reviews with the intent to deceive is the problem. It’s long been held to be unethical and now, in the state of New York, it’s illegal

    Examples of likely fabricated reviews:

    These aren’t for Lifestyle Lift, but for other plastic surgery searches. I’m not saying the following are specifically relevant to bunk reviews, but there are a couple listings – you can find them yourself – which have an abundance of positive or non-informative, yet 5-star, reviews.

    http://www.google.com/search?q=breast+augmentation+san+francisco
    http://www.google.com/search?&q=plastic+surgery+new+jersey

    And we don’t know that these are definitely a fabrication but “cool” has 3 reviews, all of which are for the same plastic surgeon, focusing on different locations (1 of which includes “Plastic Surgery” as the business name) and no reviews for other businesses.

    And “Happy”, whose reviews look more authentic has a similar instance of 1 each for business name”Plastic Surgery” and for the doctor’s name itself – again, with no reviews for other businesses.

    At a minimum, what the above demonstrate is how not to ask for customer reviews. Whether “Happy” and “cool” are real people or employees of the practice, a little digging makes it appear these are inauthentic and calls into question the validity of all the reviews.

    So what’s a small business to do?

    As the examples show it’s a dog-eat-dog world in online reviews.

    Ironically we’re preparing a much more focused post on how to get reviews but in the meantime remember:

    • Be authentic! Chances are if you fake it you’ll get caught.
    • Have customers tell their story. They’ll be much more believable than you.
    • In doubt? Don’t do it! Lifestyle Lift should be a lesson – it might cost you $$

    Of course, this case is different than most because Lifestyle Lift got busted. The New York State Attorney General has drawn the line for us with regard to clearly egregious behavior but I think we can all agree they’re not the only ones.

    Where does that line get drawn for you? As with every ethical question there are many shades of gray between here and there.

    I’d love to hear your thoughts.

    Thanks to the Blog Herald for tipping me off to this story. It’s very relevant to our livelihood and that of our customers.

  • Reputation Management or Just Good Old-Fashioned Customer Service: What Works Better?

    “Markets are conversations”, states the Cluetrain Manifesto, the online reputation managers’ Bible. And if you sell any kind of product or service today, you must be part of the conversation or get left out.

    Crowd Pleaser - The Power of Word of Mouth
    Crowd Pleaser – The Power of Word of Mouth

    In the days before the internet, reputations were built on word-of-mouth (WOM) and reputation management was a term that referred to damage control and crisis communications. The growing reach of the internet means that online business is now a two-way conversation.

    Consumer-generated product reviews play a big role in online purchasing behavior. 55% of US internet users indicate that they check other people’s opinions online before making purchases. A study by Deloitte & Touche USA reports that 18% of customers purchased a beauty or grooming aid based on reviews posted by other consumers.

    The fact that reputation matters online is beyond debate. At Search Influence, we believe that business is not just about putting a positive spin on your product or service. It’s also about creating value for your customers. And the value you provide is what will create good buzz online, with positive reviews and comments from happy customers.

    Very Satisfied Customer
    Very Satisfied Customer

    Customer reviews are not only useful on blogs, forums and review sites. They’ve also been reported to improve site conversion, retention and customer loyalty, and boost search engine results by increasing on-site content.

    eBay was one of the first web companies to harness the power of Consumer Generated Media (CGM) feedback. By using user generated feedback ratings, it helped other users make purchasing and selling decisions.

    Unfortunately, many businesses are still in reactive mode today. This includes even big brands, such as McDonald’s, KFC and Coca Cola. Few have woken up to the fact that consumer reviews and opinions are playing an increasingly important role in word-of-mouth marketing online. It’s only when they get negative buzz that they go all out to clean up the mess.

    One example of how negative buzz can play havoc with your brand is the recent Domino’s Pizza YouTube video fiasco, that resulted in criminal charges being filed against two members of the staff at a Domino’s outlet, for posting a video that shows a staffer shoving cheese up his nose.

    To minimize the backlash Dominos uploaded a video on YouTube addressing the issue. Not exactly the most effective way to salvage their reputation. You can bet a lot of people (us included) will be avoiding those pizzas for a while!

    In the long run, the best approach is to take a proactive stance on creating and maintaining a good reputation online. Here are some steps we recommend to help you create more positive buzz for your products or services.

    • Provide value: The #1 rule of thumb for brick-and-mortar stores or offline businesses is also what works best online. Customers appreciate businesses that offer them quality products and services, whether they operate online or off.
    • Ask for feedback: Are your customers unhappy? Do you get complaints about your systems, processes, staff or services? Ask each customer to fill in a form with feedback and reviews, no matter how inconvenient it can be.
    • Take action: View your customer’s complaints and feedback constructively and take the steps you need to improve what you’re offering. It’s easier and cheaper to offer a refund or a replacement than it is to clean up the bad press and damage to your business reputation created by an irate customer.
    • Monitor your online reputation: You could do this yourself using Google Alerts, but if your online reputation matters a lot to you, it makes sense to hire a reputation management firm to monitor buzz about your company.
    • Participate in the conversation: If your business generates a lot of positive feedback from customers, ask them for permission to use their reviews and testimonials online. Participate in industry forms, social networks and consumer review/opinion sites.
    Be Part of The Conversation
    Be Part of The Conversation

    Even if your online reputation is suffering, it’s not too late to change the negative perception of your business. You can syndicate articles to industry newsletters and article engines. Put up a blog on your own website and post your articles there. Allow visitors to post comments and reply to them.

    Learn about social networking and how to make it work for you. Build a mailing list and keep your subscribers in the loop with an email newsletter. Send out press releases on recent developments in your industry.

    Rules of the road for creating visibility online:

    • Get personal. Build relationships with potential customers.
    • Be human. Use consumer-speak, not corporate-speak.
    • Don’t advertise blatantly. A link to your website at the end of a forum post is acceptable.
    • Be patient and consistent in your efforts. It takes time to build trust and see results.

  • Quick Followup to Yelp / Scream

    I placed a comment on Greg Sterling’s writeup of the Yelp issue pointing him to my post.

    In a reply to my comment Greg Sterling says , and I totally agree:

    “There also need to be clear rules at these sites to that SMBs understand the “Hows” and the “Whys” of these systems and they’re not surprised by something they thought was OK.”

    This triggered a thought process which reminds me of a discussion I often have with prospective clients and other interested parties.

    I believe in links! In fact I believe links are often more important than content.

    So I’m often asked “why do these sites want to link to you”? To which I reply “because we give them content”.

    • Directories: the content they want is business listings
    • Article sites: the content they want is information
    • Press release sites: the content they want is news
    • Content exchanges with other sites: the content they want is… content (and links back too)

    So lets be perfectly clear about the motivations of these free sites. They’re not free! They need the critical mass of listings, articles, news, reviews or whatever to continue to be “free” because they’re selling advertising!

    Sure, the business who lists their site for free isn’t paying, but we’re paying. Every time we click an ad, watch a video or in other way interact with an advertiser we’re paying for the site’s operation and we wouldn’t be there without the content.

    Traditional print publishers have had hundreds of years to get used to the idea of their responsibility. Online publishers fewer than 20. Unfortunately it appears Yelp is about to learn this lesson in court.

    So, it ain’t free. It’s barter. Our content, their links — and they’re the ones getting paid.

    Update:

    Great quote from TechCrunch:

    “Their goal is clearly to make businesses need Yelp, but not to expect a lot of help when it comes to disputes. Complain all you want, you’re just proving that you need Yelp more than they need you.”

    And another update from the comments of the original post in response to Dave Ingram of Brown Book:

    “I think you make one particularly interesting point which I missed in my rant.

    The idea of businesses recommending one another is an offline behavior and attempts to squelch it online only serve to enforce an unnatural order.

    Think of every networking group you’ve ever been in. I’m a member of BNI, for instance, and even though I might not have ever used the guy in our group who sells granite, you can bet I’ll recommend him because I know him.”

  • Yelp Makes Small Businesses Scream

    I got this link by email from one of our clients (for Botox, San Francisco folks can’t go wrong with Dr. Roy Kim – yes, it’s a blatant link-drop) and it got me going on a pet peeve of mine:

    Small Business owners giving up control over their own online destiny.

    From the SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle Online): Merchants angry over getting yanked by Yelp

    This article brings to a head a few issues of significance from professionals like us and from the service providers.
    Yelp logo

    Businesses like those in the article have come to rely on Yelp for the connection to buyers. If only it were just Yelp…

    …There’s Insider Pages, Google maps, WordPress and many other free services on which may small businesses rely and which have completely opaque and oftentimes arbitrary rules and enforcement thereof.

    There are a couple of significant challenges for small businesses online which are related but not always connected:

    Aaaaaargh! Makes me want to scream. Really.

    Greg Sterling constantly points to the need for education as one of the biggest impediments to small business acceptance of online marketing and I think he’s right. But the problem is, the ignorance that comes with a lack of education is really hurting small businesses.

    Look at these poor saps in the Yelp article. Even if they knew what they were doing was wrong — and I’m sure they didn’t fully understand the rules, the emergence of these new yellow pages replacements is completely inscrutable to small businesses. As the recent local search ranking factors study (which I intend to write some more about) from David Mihm shows, there’s not even agreement among professional practitioners.

    And then The New York Times stirs the pot with an article regarding Incentives for video reviews. You mean there’s something wrong with incentivizing reviews?

    And then there’s my dearest Ms. Laycock berating those complaining about failings of a free service (Twitter).

    For me it all leads back to a central frustration I feel from small businesses: they understood the Yellow Pages. You pay more, you get a bigger ad, you get more calls. How hard is that?

    The problem with online is that many of these services on which the business must rely are free. And since they’re free there’s no repercussions if they don’t work, or don’t work as intended. And worse still there’s no way to get a realistic grasp of the totality of the rules nor an appeals process when one accidentally crosses the line.

    So with all these problems how do you effectively use internet marketing for small business ?

    Simple – you go back to the basics. You don’t rely on raw technology and you definitely don’t get caught up in “They’re doing it so should I”.

    Oh, and you don’t fall for a slick sales pitch from the likes of SEOMatrix, Yodle (formerly Natpal), or LinksHog (or one of their hundred other names).

    The problem with many practitioners and many small businesses either doing it themselves or outsourcing is that they get caught up in the flavor of the week. There are some very smart discussions about regarding how you rank well in Google maps, the value of reviews and the sites on which they live. But…

    All that doesn’t matter if you, the small business owner, don’t control your own destiny!

    Here are a few clues that the sales pitch you’re hearing isn’t going to allow you to control your own destiny:

    • Use of the word “Proprietary”
    • Mention of “Optimized Landing Pages” (hint: if they optimize a landing page they own, they’re not optimizing your site )
    • Inclusion in proprietary “Directory” listings — don’t get me wrong, directories are great but the ones we like are the ones whose listings don’t go away when you stop paying
    • Switching costs – in other words you have to pay to leave
    • Mention of ownership of “thousands of sites“

    In short, if you’re looking for small business internet marketing, or even if you’re in a niche with higher returns and you need plastic surgery internet marketing or any other internet marketing remember one thing:

    • If it doesn’t increase the search engine positioning of your site look twice — make sure you understand the outcomes and that the reward is worth the risk.

    So make sure you cover the basics before before you try the flavor of the week and if you don’t understand the pitch ask more questions. And if you don’t believe the answers get a second opinion.

    Just to be clear all of these distribution methods have value: reviews, directory listings, blogging, video optimization, even pay per click.

    Please be sure you know the reward and most importantly be sure the click you buy lands on your site or makes your phone ring!

  • Reputation Management – DKI Gone Bad

    So, I was reviewing my ranking for “Swine Insemination” on the heels of my last post and noticed the ad on the right, below:

    Swine Insemination and Reputation Management
    Swine Insemination and Reputation Management
    Dynamic Keyword Insertion is one of the ways Google tries to allow advertisers to make their ads more relevant to users searches. In this case it looks like the advertiser wanted to show their ad any time someone searched for something which included “insemination”.
    DKI inserts the phrase that was searched for and so this reproductive clinic is now forever associated with Swine Insemination.

  • Trusted Reviewers Impact on Google Maps / OneBox

    A Case Study of Trusted Reviewers’ Impact on Google Maps Placement

    David Mihm, a local SEO in Oakland CA recently pointed me to a post by Tim Coleman of Convert Offline who offers Search Engine Marketing help for small business entitled “Is Google Filtering Reviews or Reviewers”.

    Tim’s post suggests that trust is an issue in map ranking as well as general listings. There’s some question whether age of the review has an impact as well (from Small Business SEM author Matt McGee). Mike Blumenthal of Understanding Google Maps has a wealth of knowledge on the subject and made some valuable contribution to the discussion.

    I thought that we needed something a little more concrete and decided to do an experiment specifically focused on reviewer trust.

    Google Maps and Local are notoriously slow to update so this experiment may take some time to reach a conclusion.

    As it turns out, we have relationships with 3 providers of the same health / wellness service in the same metro area, none of whom are currently represented in Google maps (I’ll be storing screenshots dated for archival purposes).

    We have asked, and the practices have agreed, to begin asking their patients to go online and write reviews.

    In the interest of controlling the experiment we’ll use only InsiderPages. There are a few challenges selecting the review engine of choice:

    • Despite multiple universities our area is NOT tech-savvy
    • No review site has significant local depth
    • Few reviewers on Insider Pages have profiles which would indicate trust
    • On Yelp, the highest power reviewers are from out of town

    Considerations and methodology:

    • None of the websites are in the OneBox or on page 1 of map results.
    • None currently have reviews
    • None have been heavily promoted (on a scale of 1-10 for internet promotion they represent a 1, 3 and 5)
    • All are seemingly equidistant from the Google centroid
    • Reviews for 2 of 3 will be from virgin reviewers
    • Reviews for the 3rd will be solicited from already active reviewers
      • We will make contact with power-reviewers and ask them to visit our test subject
      • We will not attempt to influence editorial content
    • In the best case each practice will have the same number of reviews.

    Additional comments to the original were:

    • Miriam Ellis has written a very understandable follow up deconstructing Google reviews.
    • Cathy of Avant Gardens points to what can happen when the discussion goes negative.
    • Mike Muntz expresses concern that the de-emphasis of reviews may be in response to deceptively negative posts.

    Some questions for anyone who wants to collaborate:

    • Should I showcase the sites and current standings in question at the risk of skewing the results?
    • Does the proposed methodology seem sound?
    • What am I missing?

    This exercise is going to take some patience and I’ll update every two weeks at a minimum. In the early going I’ll be sure to indicate once we’ve got the reviews in place.

    By starting from scratch I hope we eliminate the “age” question and are able to focus solely on “trust”.

    I hope this is instructive because I think it’s critical we find a way to effectively combat all the map spam that’s cropping up.

    Tally ho!