Articles in this category How to respond to negative online reviews? “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ― Albert Einstein How to respond to positive online reviews? You can teach businesses how to respond to a bad review, but what about a good one? Many of the principles remain the same—be courteous, thank the reviewer and take some time to develop a thoughtful r... Should I just hire a lawyer? The law is often on the side of websites containing negative content, as they are not legally obligated to take it down. It can take years fighting this battle with lawyers. It is much more efficient ... Why Positive Online Reviews Matter for Your Business Positive online reviews help captivate the attention and interest of customers. Similarly, online reviews can effectively establish trust and confidence when consumers either search for your business ... How to Leverage Online Reviews and Use Them to Your Advantage While the control of online reviews lies largely in the hands of past and potential customers, there are still several ways you can use these reviews to your advantage. Below are five key ways to leve... How do businesses "get on" Yelp? First go to biz.yelp.com and search for your business. If your business isn’t found/listed, you can then click “Add your business to Yelp.” What can you do to offset Yelp and their "review filtering?" I've seen many real reviews get filtered out by Yelp and it's frustrating! We agree. Unlike Google who encourages businesses to ask customers for reviews, Yelp discourages it. They want customers to organically/naturally leave reviews about a business and can suppress revie... Can you block consistent bad reviews from one customer? Especially one that you have made attempts to rectify the customer’s experience. Is it a good idea to just block the customer after a period of time? On most review sites, you can’t “block” reviews. (Although Google recently began allowing businesses to “flag” suspicious reviews, but they’re not the norm.) In most cases, you just want to respond t... Can you publish feedback without the customer’s permission? Like comments in an email or provided on Facebook? Are there restrictions in this area? NEVER post a review online on behalf of a customer. First, ideally you want that customer to go online and leave the review themselves. That makes it truly genuine. Second, the review sites can tell ... Do you think that Facebook reviews are as important as Yelp or Google reviews? Almost ALL of the credible review sites are important. Yelp, Google My Business/Google and Facebook are probably the top three, but don’t stop there! If there are niche review directories (like Angie... How important are online reviews? Customer experience is the new marketing. Well maybe not new, but a return to grassroots in the form of digital. The importance of responding to customers could not be more prevalent. These stats illu... What Makes a Good Online Reputation? Being present and having a good reputation go hand in hand. Not being listed on a reference site customers use is just as bad as having bad reviews somewhere else. When many of a business’s online pr... How reviews affect SEO? Gone are the days when all a business had to do was throw their [keyword] all over their website to score high in local search rank. For this, we’re all thankful. There are tons of factors that affec... How to get more reviews? Here is how can you help your clients get more online reviews: Make sure their listings are accurate. When customers search a business, it should be easy to find. Don’t give customers any obstacles t... How to Ask for Reviews–What Works? Knowing how to ask for online reviews is an important business skill that will pay off well. Here’s wha Should I Incentivize for Online Reviews? As a general rule of thumb, don’t incentivize for online reviews. Offering an incentive in exchange for a review may lead to a biased review that might not accurately reflect that specific customer’s ... What about Buying Reviews? If you’re wondering about buying reviews, yes it’s possible. However, it’s ill advised. Buying reviews is agains What Is Review Marketing? Review marketing is a form of online reputation management in which your business works to get new positive reviews while managing neutral and negative reviews. Most websites that allo Why is review marketing important? Review marketing and online reputation management are important for a few things: Who needs review marketing? All businesses need review marketing. Whether you’re a restaurant, roofing contractor, retail store, eCommerce business or anything in between. Everyone wants to read reviews of your business, product... Why are some of my reviews filtered? Some review platforms filter certain reviews that don’t meet their criteria for one reason or another. Here are a few reasons reviews might get filtered: The reviewer has never Can I get a negative review taken down? Sometimes you’ll get a negative or fake review and want it taken down. Let’s start with negative reviews. You probably can’t (and shouldn’t) get your negative reviews taken down. Negative reviews can ... What is online reputation management? Online reputation management is a way to protect a company or person from negative online publicity. Who are the major search engines that affect online reputations? Google is the main search engine with the highest number of users. They have over 1 trillion pages in their index and grow by the billions every day. Yahoo, Bing, Ask and AltaVista are the next top fi... Online Reputation Management: Why does it take so long? Management of online reputation attacks is very complex and requires a lot of work on various websites with positive content that outnumbers and outranks the negative content. It can take weeks and mo... How does someone protect a reputation from these attacks? A strategy must be made to determine how to guard against these attacks, what the nature of the attack is, and also where it is coming from. The strategy must include search engine optimization tactic... Are search engines important to an online reputation? If there is negative information about a company or a person ranking on the search engines, it can dissuade users from visiting a site or purchasing a product or service from that company. This ultima... How long does it take for reputation management to work? This can vary depending on the nature of the attack. Whether there is a high volume of negative content or not can determine how long it would take for significant results relating to your online repu...