Review management and what you can do to look your best online when people are doing searches for your business. I’m Matt Jones, one of the co-founders of WebPunch, and last week I was in hot Atlanta. With all that back sweat going on, I don’t know if people weren’t thinking clearly, but I was talking to a guy who told me he had a great reputation online. After I did a search for his business, I could see that he was partially right. He looked great on Google but looks terrible, I mean terrible on Facebook and Yelp. When I showed it to him he said, “No. I think I look great.” The truth is that when you’re showing your business in an inconsistent way like that, it doesn’t bode well for you when prospective clients are trying to vet you as being a quality business.
So do a search for your business, and when you do that search, make sure that you look good on every site that’s popping up on that first page of search results. Again, you want to make sure that you’re controlling the message that prospective clients are going to see when they’re looking for your business. If there are mixed messages, make sure that you’re soliciting reviews or trying to get reviews on websites that you’re not as strong on. Again for this guy, he was really great in one place, but not so good on the other pages. He will now because he has a review strategy in place that’s going to optimize his online reputation and get reviews on sites where he’s not looking as strong. But, when you’re doing that, you also want to to make sure to realize that Google also likes variability.
What that means, again, we’ve talked about this, but they want to make sure that you are getting reviews on multiple websites in order for them to rank you because they want that buzz about your brand. If people are saying great things about you across the board on all the different review directories, you’re going to look stronger to prospective clients, but also to Google on local search. It’s the Google maps section that is ranking for clients who are looking for businesses like yours in their area.
So that’s it, just want to to make sure that your review management is showing the overall picture of the quality service that you do across all of the different websites that represent your brand. I am Matt Jones, and with WebPunch we’ll help you knock out the competition one review at a time. We’ll see you, next class.
