Online reputation management has a lot to do with drawing positive attention to a business through boosting SEO and increasing direct site traffic. However, all the time, effort and money a business spends on building and maintaining a stellar online reputation can largely be wasted if they don’t put attention on their review content.
Owning Your Review Content
Regardless of how amazing a business’ products or services are, their power to draw attention is usually based on their review content. Consumers today have become incredibly wary of lofty, sometimes seemingly impossible promises, and will turn to those they trust to get the “real” story–other consumers who have already tried the business’ products or services. This means that positive reviews can truly work wonders for a business–that is if they own their review content.
Positive reviews about your business that are posted to third party review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Angie’s List and even your own Facebook page, may garner some positive attention for your business. However, there are a few things to consider about these third party review sites. Firstly, many of these sites use star rating systems over which you have absolutely no control, and which can markedly impact your business’ online reputation. On Yelp, for example, a one-star rating difference can mean a difference in five to nine percent of revenue. Since not all of a business’ customers will take the time to post a review on Yelp, one slightly-less-than-satisfied customer can adversely affect the business. Secondly, some of these review sites place businesses higher in their rankings if the business pays for advertising. Thirdly, businesses usually have no power to fight fake or slanderous reviews that may be posted to these review sites. Finally, these review sites cannot help to increase your business website’s SEO or direct traffic, which is critical to your online growth and success.
A business that owns their own review content has better control over their online reputation and can take action to improve it.