Review Sites Creating A Problem

The good news is that review websites have provided a forum for customers and businesses to exchange and discuss their sales history working together. The bad news is that the intended use for review websites has completely failed. Review websites, like Google reviews, Yahoo, Yelp, YP, Mechantcircle, Superpages, YP, and others, may have had good intentions but have created a mess for small business.

I am certain the true intention of these review pages was the bottom lines of the sites that host them. If you can create an excuse to have a separate page for every single business on earth, you have just justified 1 billion new ads displaying revenue-generating pages for the review sites.

It may be argued that this is a win-win situation, since the reviews sites, like Yelp.com and YP, get to make huge gains in pages to display ads while businesses get free publicity. This would be nice if it was true.

The review sites have turned into a free for all of fake positive reviews and malicious competition targeting bad reviews. Here in Charlotte, we can easily point out examples of local businesses and services that spend hours every week attacking their competition with negative reviews. These review sites require nothing other than an email account to allow you to post high-ranking, anonymous attacks on your competition. The review sites themselves have no vested interest or financial connection to the validity of the reviews. Ad-displaying pages make the same revenue for these sites with accurate or fake reviews; there is no motivation for these sites to try and insure integrity.

The down side is that the only way this sort of phenomenon resolves itself is through becoming obsolete. Until these sites see less users counting on them and the revenue impacted, they will not change policies to protect businesses. Until that time comes, many of these have become an easily accessible medium for slandering competition and misleading customers. ME

Charlotte Defensive Search Marketing

What is Defensive Search marketing?

Defensive SEO is the process of filling the top 20 spots for your name with positive items about your business and you mission towards your clients. This process includes:

·       Producing public pages highlighting a professionals skill set, contributions, what their philosophy is and anything else we can create that presents and highlights positive things.

·       We continue to flood their name with these items to occupy as many top 10-20 spots as possible.

·       We create pages, blogs, Blogspot, Wordpress Free blogs, Tumblr accounts, guest books and anything online to create as many results with positive references as possible. This keeps anything negative from getting an easy ride to page 1 and becoming damaging.

·       We also monitor and add review sites and local search reviews if there is any reason to. By maintaining high reviews on all review sites we protect the star rating of your business as it shows in the form of bright yellow stars next to your name in searches every day.

What happens when someone gets bad press to land on page 1 of google?

·       We would provide or repost the good reviews to drive it down the page and always keep ALL you review sites at 4+ stars.

·       We would seek out other review sites, large Q/A sites like Yahoo Answers or use public forums like craigslist or city-data to write about your company and get your name above them to drive them off page #1. With about 86% of users choosing to click on page one of Google and this negative publicity will not damage you livelihood.

·       Contact the website to get it removed.

·       Comment beneath it in response to show good customer service and explain the view of the company.

What makes this so valuable to a local business?

You are currently working hard to build your rank. Search positioning gets all of the publicity and is the goal of any business that is online. You need to also pay attention to what to do when they do find you. Any established business or business that has long-term plans and goals needs to understand that a lot of their business will not see their website first.

With the growing numbers of review sites, public forums, and rising blog ownership the chances that you won’t get to state your case to clients is going up as well. We all know the sayings about first impressions, and this is how you control all sources of those first impressions. A good plan means accounting for all sources of clientele to your business. You need to control the top 10 spots for your name and your business reputation at all times. **86% of all searches end on page one of Google, so to control those spots for your name and livelihood is imperative. 

Being proactive is the only way to be sure that you get to decide how you are seen by online searchers and shoppers; it is as important where you are located in searches to decide what they read when they do find you.

And what they don’t read when you are busy doing your job.

** http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2049695/Top-Google-Result-Gets-36.4-of-Clicks-Study

by: Todd Kron