Loading ...Online reputation management is so much easier than reputation management offline, and yet so many businesses overlook it completely. This is a real shame, especially considering how easily, naturally and beneficially reputation management fits into a search engine optimization plan. It’s even more of a shame when you consider how easily a bad review can bring profits down, and how easily this can be avoided.
The benefits of reputation management go far beyond actually keeping a good reputation on the net. If you’re proactive about your reputation management, you will probably go out there and plant reputation boosters for your business all over the net. This means you’re also seeding links, which will help your SEO plan. You can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about how to use search engine optimisation to help with reputation management issues.
Reputation management in general helps SEO because it boosts the knowledge of the business around the net. It has obvious benefits for the business itself, although some smaller businesses might question the worth of reputation management for themselves. The real worth of reputation management online comes from the fact that on the internet, there is nowhere to hide.
Information travels on the net
When someone leaves a bad review of your business, or of products that you sell, around the net, it’s available for anyone to access. If the review site is a particularly popular one, it’s likely that this review will pop up when the keywords you’re targeting are searched for. This can have predictably bad consequences.
Proactive reputation management, which involves taking control of the top spots for your brand keywords, can only do so much. When a juicy review beckons Google’s spiders, you can’t guarantee that it will never be seen in the SERPs.
Smart businesses practice proactive reputation management because it achieves the variety of outcomes described above. Really smart businesses should keep tabs on the net for bad reviews, and answer them. Not many do, though, and it’s puzzling to understand why.
Bad press needs a reply
Sadly, bad reviews are more likely than positive ones, but so many businesses let them stand. This leaves the criticism unchallenged, standing in as the truth. When a business answers the review, they show not only are they able to counter the criticism, but that they are reasonable, putting them in a good light.
Several really good examples of this attitude can be found when perusing the site Trip Advisor. Travellers are invited to post reviews of the hotels they’ve stayed in, so other travellers can judge where to stay. Bad reviews appear fairly frequently on the site, but the great thing is that businesses can reply. The ability to acknowledge concerns and answer them means that many hotels who otherwise would look horrible come out looking dignified, professional, and ultimately come out on top. It’s the way to turn a negative into a positive.
If it’s at all possible for you to answer a bad review, do so. Don’t let the criticism stand. Be vigilant, as bad press can turn up on your search pages forever.
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Tags: Keywords, Reputation Management, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, SEO Consult
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