A Bad Reputation Can Cost a Business - How Your Agency Can Step Up

Itamar Gero Founder and CEO, SEOReseller, explains how positive and negative reviews can have an impact on businesses, and how digital marketing agencies can help businesses leverage the power of online reputation. The article also outlines the best practices that agencies can adopt to manage the online reputation of businesses, as well as some of the tools they can use 

A bad review or two can spread like wildfire. It spreads and plants seeds of doubt on customers. It causes loss of trust and credibility. If a business ignores even just one negative feedback, customers will be able to see it and it may cause them to rethink their decision to buy from that business.

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Why Does a Good Reputation Matter to a Business?

• Businesses get 18% increase in sales due to positive feedback.
• Customers spend 31% when they read positive reviews.
• 22% of customers are less likely to buy after reading one negative review.
• Businesses lose around 70% of customers due to bad reviews.
   

If the stats above are not enough to convince you, just think back to how some major brands were brought to their feet because of backlash from customers. Some of them handled it well, while others suffered major losses.

Make It Your Business to Improve Other Business’ Online Reputation

Should businesses be afraid of having bad reviews? Not necessarily. There’s still a good side to seeing the truth come from customers themselves. In a way, bad reviews make a business look genuine. It humanizes them and shows customers that those behind the business are still people who make mistakes. This doesn’t mean businesses have to be complacent, though. It boils down to how they manage their reputation.

Remember the issue about United Airlines involving a passenger back in 2017? All the negative reactions started pouring in, causing the airline company’s reputation to take a nosedive. They may have been able to salvage their reputation if they handle the crisis well. The point is there’s always workaround situations like this.

A poorly-handled online reputation can jeopardize what took years and a significant amount of effort to build – a brand. It’s this very reason that businesses need to take control of their online reputation with great finesse. This is when digital marketing agencies should step up.

When you’re working as a digital marketer, your primary concern is to get clients as much exposure as possible to bring them more business. The more exposure they have on search results, the more customers are likely to be familiar with the brand. Everything about your client that appears on search results becomes your responsibility – from customer feedback to brand mentions. Their bottom line becomes your metrics.

As a digital marketer, what are the steps that can provide your clients with the arsenal they need for their online reputation?

1. Fortify Local SEO with High-Quality Listings and Citations

One of the foundations of a solid local SEO strategy is getting a business on directory or listing websites. You'll find thousands of local business listings online—Google My Business, Yelp, and Yellow Pages are often the first listings that agencies or businesses themselves set up. However, the listing should be relevant to the business, which can be based on industry or location.

Accurate information is important when listing a business on directory sites. The more accurate and complete the information is across these sites, the more likely it is to gain the trust of users and search engines. When you talk to clients about their local SEO needs, make sure you get as much information about their business as you can from the start.

Another aspect of local search strategies is building citations. You can go about this in three ways: First is through listings (which I've discussed previously). Second is through mentions of the business and their address or contact information in news articles, blogs, or social media platform. Last is on the actual website of the business.

How do you build citations? Start by checking where the competition is. A quick Google search is one way to do this—just copy and paste their NAP and go over the results that appear to find out which ones allow submissions. But if you want the quick and easy way to build citations, use a reputation management tool that is capable of scraping the web for potential listings for particular businesses.

2. Develop a Review Strategy

When a customer leaves a bad review, some businesses tend to be on the defensive immediately. But, rebuttals can be taken out of context and do more harm than good.

Here’s the thing with online reputation—you can’t fight fire with fire. You have to douse the ire of customers and resolve issues in a way that will not compromise the business.

As an agency, you’re also responsible in ensuring business preserve an air of professionality when it comes to their online interactions. Your review strategy takes care of this.

What should be included in your review strategy?

• Top review websites to monitor for your clients - Which websites to pay attention to.
• Review guidelines when engaging with customers - How to respond to customers who left reviews about the business.
• Negative review action plan - How to handle negative feedback.
• Review requests to send to customers - How to initiate conversations that will prompt customers to leave reviews about the business.

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Guide your clients in how they should handle reviews and make sure they implement the recommendations from your review strategy.

3. Plan Against Negative SEO

Even with the most meticulous online reputation strategy and local SEO efforts, there will be instances when a business will be hit with malicious link building activities and fake reviews. This is a case of negative SEO, which should be one of the things to look at in online reputation management.

While Google has implemented measures to prevent the impact of negative SEO on websites, your agency should still be aware of how to counter negative SEO to safeguard your clients’ reputation.

Here are some pointers:

• Be extra vigilant in monitoring the most important links of your client's website.
• Analyze your client’s backlink profile and disavow the links you deem toxic.  
• Monitor review sites that have your client's information.
• Track any mention of your client’s brand—get a handy white label reputation management tool for efficient tracking.
   

Combining a solid SEO strategy with reputation management can provide you with a strong defense against any form of SEO attack.

Ready to Step Up?

Businesses are busy taking care of their customers. Who then will take care of their reputation? That’s where your agency’s expertise comes in. Know how to be in control when it comes to online reputation, and you’ll find your agency with more businesses to service.