Reputation can impact a lot in the business industry. Hence, online reputation is a considerable social proof on how businesses can gain their valued customers, partners, and suppliers. With the proper practice of online reputation management, it can create a broad visibility and customers to your business.

How Reviews Impact a Business?

Core findings of the Online Reputation Management Survey:

• 100% said that reputation is significant to their business
• 77% said that reputation is a high concern
• 17% of respondents’ time is reserved for reputation management (avg)
• What are your hindrances in managing your reputation?

Good reputation boosts search rankings

A huge part of local ranking is dependent on reviews, according to the Local SEO Ranking Factors Study.

Hence, businesses with high rankings in Google local have good reviews and ratings in Google.

Good reputation develops search click-through rates

Positive rates and reviews improve CTR by 22%, according to a study performed by BrightLocal in 2016.

Good reputation boosts landing page conversion

A Landing Page Performance Study revealed that positive ratings and reviews increase trust by 11% and customers are likely to contact a business by 12%.

Good reputation improves customer trust

Core findings from Local Consumer Review Survey:

• 93% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses
• 85% of consumers rely on online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• Reviews and ratings make 68% of buyers more probably to use a business

Effective Practices for Reputation Management

You need to run a good business that cares about its customers. For the reason that, you can’t build a good reputation when you disregard your consumers’ needs.

Below is a list of effective review strategy that can work both in single-location and multi-location businesses.

The 6-pillar Review Strategy

1. State clear targets.

You probably need enough reviews to convince a consumer to trust you. You should know how competitive your business field is into and how many reviews you should aim to build a high reputation. In addition to that, you must think as if you are the consumer. Would you trust a business when you saw it with only 3 reviews?

In fact, Google should also be in your target. Enough reviews can convince Google to trust your business. Get enough reviews and you’ll possibly stand out above your competitors. In addition to that, you must help benchmark your business against your competitors, you may read our recent Google Reviews Study.

To set your targets in Google, you should observe your local competitors and analyze what reviews and ratings they’ve achieved. For a guide, the experts from MojoSEO can help you check with Local Search Results Checker.

In order to have great social proof, you should have more reviews. In fact, it’s worth it setting these two things to balance your time and investment with the reviews that returned to your business.

First is the law of diminishing returns. 0 to 50 reviews will affect hugely beneficial but the next 50 won’t. Fresh reviews are important. 77% of consumers think that reviews longer than three months are not relevant according to the Local Consumer Reviews Survey.

You should also remember that you need a monthly improvement or changes to build reviews over time. Hence, a strategy that successfully delivers can steamroller your competitors.

2. Develop actions to produce new reviews.

93% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, so they’ll likely notice other consumers’ reviews about your business. Hence, it is a normal concept that some businesses ask consumers to give reviews about them.

Hence, our research shows that 69% of consumers will leave reviews if asked to. It means you can ask ten people to review you. Probably seven people will do it and three will ignore.

Asking for reviews is a part of a service process. In fact, timing is a key, too. You should know when to ask for a review. Ask when a consumer is at its highest satisfaction. If they are asked for a review after a month, they’ll have cooled off and either give a less positive review or more likely ignore review your business.

Hence, it is most effective to ask for reviews at the point of service. You can then follow up with an email or SMS message. MojoSEO has a Reputation Manager, too who can help you with this.

3. Pick the best review sites

For average local business, three or four sites are enough. Too many review sites can weaken the reviews.

Google and Facebook are good sites, to begin with then search for other review sites that can fit your business. You can Google search keywords that are related to your business then pick some review sites which rank the highest in the search. For Google, these will be particularly relevant to your business and will give you a fair traffic.

To view competitors and businesses like yours, you can view the ‘Reviews from the web’ section of Google Knowledge Panel. Those may inspire you to add more sites to your list.

There are numerous highly relevant, niche review sites for different industries. You definitely want to be ahead of these niche sites. You can also use the BrightLocal’s lost of 300+ Niche Review Sites to help you choose which sites to focus on.

4. Motivate and train staff.

Help your staff to understand the importance of reviews and how social proof can gain new consumers. In fact, it is not just asking your staff to get more reviews from consumers. Some businesses tend to fail in this tip.

To achieve this, you can put it in terms your staff can relate to. You can tell them how reviews can increase job satisfaction. In this industry, great reviews must be shared with everyone in the business. Hence, the reviews will remind them to appreciate their hard work. This makes everyone united and helps to avoid employee retention.

5. Hold your reputation.

Your reputation is incredibly portable. Hence, reviews across lots consumers can be used as a weapon to know more how they feel about your business. The following are some places where you can use it:

• Landing Pages. First of all, show a feed of reviews and create a dedicated review page or link on third-party sites.
• Contact Pages. Testimonials and reviews can be added to key customer contact points.
• Schema Markup. You can mark up ‘native’ reviews (rather than third-party reviews) with schema to bring star rating into SERPs.
• Twitter and Facebook. Promote posts containing your relevant reviews.
• Google Posts. Hence, you must learn to balance promotional posts with social proof like testimonials and reviews.
• Email Marketing. To gain a higher response rate with your emails, you can include review site logos and star ratings as well.
• Display and Re-targeting Ads. You can build consumer trust by featuring review stars before a customer clicks the ad.
• Leaflets, Flyers and Business Cards. You can’t always depend on your reputation online. So bring your business in the real world.

6. Grab the advantage of using a management tool.

If the online review is your focus, then it is a lot beneficial to invest your business in reputation management software. It does not only save your time and money but also make your work organized and improved.

Furthermore, the core features of a good Reputation Management tool include:

• Ability to monitor all reviews from all sites in a single report
• Review response function for the most important review sites
• Customer feedback system
• The process to get more reviews through automated email and SMS
• Ability to get more reviews on a branded web page
• Review showcasing functionality for your website and social media

Consequently, we hope that we’ve shown you the significance of online reviews and even demonstrated that an effective reputation management strategy doesn’t have to be stressful. In fact, MojoSEO is pleased to answer if you have any questions about our Reputation Management services. Feel free to contact us today!