Online reviews are one of the most important ways to increase both your SEO efforts and to also build out a strong online brand name. Branding is critical when it comes to SEO, as you have to think about the long-term process of building trust with both Google and consumers within your marketplace. The best thing to do is to turn your online reviews into an asset that can help you with both SEO and building a brand.
Figuring out a process to both capture online reviews and harness them is tricky, with many companies simply not following up on orders or just leaving it up to the customer. This is a flawed strategy, but you will see that big brands are the ones who are really benefiting from online reviews, and they all have one thing in common, which is that they have built a systematic way of getting customers to leave a review without needing to beg.
The first step to consider in winning the online review game is to actually go out and be proactive to collect reviews from existing customers. Instead of waiting for customers to leave you a review, why not reach out to your previous customers and ask them to leave some feedback for you? According to a leading study by BrightLocal, 70% of previous customers would be willing to leave your company a review if you asked them to do so.
Another stat of interest is that 30% of customers who have had a negative experience with your business will leave a review afterwards. This means that online reviews can be heavily skewed to a negative perception, as more people are willing to leave negative feedback than positive. This is vastly important to remember when dealing with feedback from online reviews; for every negative comment and complaint, you may have had hundreds of customers who had a positive experience.
To gain some ideas, why not take a look at your emails and find some post-purchase emails that you have received from a big brand name? You will find plenty of ideas and strategies that you could implement, but some of the basics are following up with an email a few days after purchase and always leaving the consumer enough time to actually use the product they have purchased so they can leave an accurate review. You should also ask them to leave a review of both the product they purchased and your business.
One of the fastest ways to build your review database is by asking for both a review of the product and your shop. The consumer will likely have to sign in to your shop or an external site to leave a review, so why not get them to do both at the same time? This will allow you to collect more data but also find out mistakes in the process that you can correct going forward.
A great example of this split strategy is using data to figure out if the product or the process is the issue. For example, a consumer might buy a new TV from your website and love every technical aspect and highly recommend it; however, they might leave some negative feedback for your business because delivery was slow or cost too much or they had to wait for the item to come back in stock.
Understanding which area is the weakest point in your business will give you some much-needed feedback into what needs to be improved; you either need to purchase better products, or you need to make improvements in how your business executes the final mile, which is delivering the product to the customer.
While many business owners hate to see negative feedback, they fail to see that this data is gold and extremely profitable. Your customers are actively giving you free business ideas and telling you how to increase your business’s value. All of this should be noted down, and you should start a large-scale spreadsheet which tracks your online reviews and divides them into positive and negative so you can correct any problems you have and double down on the things that consumers like about your business.
Another thing to consider is setting up a template that will yield higher-quality reviews. You don’t want people to just leave a star rating and bounce off your website or a review website; instead, you want them to really give you some insights into what you did right or wrong. This can be tricky when consumers only leave a one-sentence review; instead, you should build a template and have them fill it in to try and gain some vital insights into how you can improve your business process.
Additional follow-ups are another critical element that should form part of your strategy. You never want to annoy your customers with requests, but you should also realise that some people will receive your follow-up email and simply get busy and forget to leave a review for you. To capture more of the market, you should send another email follow-up a week later. This should get more people to take action and gives them a friendly nudge.
Responding to a review is a tricky game. The web has seen many business owners who get defensive and fly off the handle, make accusations and even threaten legal action against those who leave a negative comment. Before you collect reviews, you must have a system in place to respond to them. The first step should be giving the review some time to sit and digest. Never respond to a negative review straight away, as you may lash out in anger and try to be defensive; you should wait until your emotions are in control before you respond.
Your frame of mind as a business owner should be to remain calm and take a look at what the customer is upset about; you may then realise a solution on how to fix this problem. You should also realise that it is never a personal attack but just a reality of doing business; certain people will just not like the way you conduct business, and no business of any size has no negative reviews.
One of the best ways to deal with a negative review is to be able to see things from the buyer’s perspective. Perhaps you made a single mistake that led to a negative response, and that mistake could be undone. You could apologise and get the relationship back on track. You should always apologise and take responsibility for anything that was under the control of your business. This will show other people who look at your online reviews that you are willing to make things right should they have any problems. This can save your entire reputation.
When you receive a positive review you should really take the time to respond and provide some positive feedback for the person that left the review. You should thank them for taking time out of their day to give your business some positive words so that others can see. You should also find their name and invite them to come back. Use a positive review to build a relationship with the customer and turn them into repeat customers. This is not only a profitable strategy but may also lead to them inviting friends to check out your website.
There are many websites that allow you to sign up and submit your business to be open for reviews. Google Reviews is a main one that will show up when someone searches for your business or brand name; however, you should also look at sites like Trustpilot and even Yell. These sites are established with consumers and often do a really great job filtering out fake reviews, which are a huge problem within all industries.
Another way to leverage reviews into your SEO strategy is to take a look at the positive and negative words that your customers use. You can take these words and start including them in your website copy. This will help to build trust with the customer, and you can even use them to form a unique selling point for your business based around a specific situation that you have discovered is disliked by customers.
SEO in the modern world is all about branding, and at the core of branding is building trust with customers. You can no longer just have a website that ranks well because before placing an order with your business, customers will check out your online reviews and reputation to see what kind of business you operate. If they don’t like what they see, then they will click over to your competition very quickly, so make sure you make a good first impression.
Another way to boost your SEO rankings is by including links or badges to any online review sites; this helps you by boosting your external link count but also by showing Google that you really care about your reputation and can also be trusted since poorly run businesses will often try to hide negative reviews.
In the online world people want to do business with businesses that are established and trusted; they like businesses that are older and have many customers over businesses that are brand new. By embedding reviews on your website, you are showing Google that your business is established enough to have multiple reviews; this can provide a boost to your SEO by showing Google that you are serious about building your brand.
The last thing to consider is taking a look at how people type your business or brand name when leaving a review. You will often find many different variations of your name, which is a surprise to most business owners who assume people will know and spell the name correctly. This is a complex problem in the SEO field, as it may lead to brand hijacking or lost business from people who spell or type in a different name.
One of the strategies to combat different names is to collect the data from both Analytics and online reviews and then get backlinks with those alternative names; this will help you avoid lost business and make it easier for someone searching to find you.