Discover how you can dominate Google in your local market by using your local directory and review site listings to push your competition off the front page.
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0:07 – Using review sites to boost your website
0:24 – Boost your sites Google rank with local listings
0:47 – Claim and optimize your existing listings
1:15 – Ninja tip 1: Dominate page 1 with your listings
1:27 – Ninja tip 2: SEO works on directory listings too
1:55 – Not being on Facebook won’t stop people talking
2:29 – Drown them out with good reviews
3:05 – It helps if you have happy customers
3:38 – Google Maps reviews boost your rankings
4:03 – Ask for a review on things you give to them
4:20 – Use signage to encourage reviews
Full Transcript:
Hi! This is Justin Meadows with another website news update. Today we’ll be covering how you can use local directories and review websites to boost your online presence and how to deal with bad reviews.
Firstly … using directories and review sites. This is a fantastic way to establish a very strong online presence. It’s well worth going at a time of climbing all of your listings and filling them out with as much valuable information as you can. A good way to decide which directories and review sites you should be using is to have a look at your main keywords and see what is already coming up. You’ll probably find that some of your competitors are already listed in these review sites and you may have some listings yourself.
Claim directory listings
You’re better off claiming some that you haven’t claimed yet already, because these can often boost the results that you get simply by claiming it and filling it out with a bit more information.
Be sure to add a link back to your website, because all of these claimed directories that link back to your website gives you a boost to your search engine rankings. Another thing that can be very powerful is that if you have claimed all of your local listings and filled them out with a lot of valuable information so that each rank will be a little bit better themselves, you can actually take out a lot more of the front page of Google and you can also apply some of the SEO link-building techniques to promote the directory listings that you have, to push them further up above your competition and own more of that online space that is the front page of Google.
A word on bad reviews
Quite often, I encounter comments from other people who are worried about the problem of getting bad reviews on social media or on review sites or directories. The best advice that I can give people that have these worries is firstly, there’s nothing you can do about it. These people, if they really have a bone to pick, if they’ve had a really bad experience with your business (and that does happen from time to time), it’s not necessarily your fault, you might have just got a bad customer. There’s not much you can do to stop them jumping on social media and talking about you.
What you can do, however, is offset those few bad reviews that are uncontrollable and inevitable by encouraging all of your happy customers to post up as many good reviews as possible. By encouraging all your happy customers to do this, you establish a large bank of good reviews which outweighs the few bad reviews that you’re going to get. When people look at a review site, they discount a few bad reviews if there’s only one or two and they are outweighed by 10 or 15 good reviews. The really best defense against bad reviews is to put yourself out there, encourage reviews, and get as many good reviews as possible.
Keep customers happy and satisfied
Obviously, you have to have a good product or service and you have to make sure that you are keeping your customers happy … that is the main thing. But as long as you are doing that, by encouraging those good experiences that happy customers have had, getting those online and shared with the rest of the world is the best defense against a few bad reviews.
Encourage customers to review the website
In terms of ways that you can do this, it depends on the business that you’re in, but you can either encourage people to review from your website yourself by giving them a link to review sites or to Google maps to review them there. By the way, Google maps is probably the most valuable place to put these reviews because apart from the social media effect of having these good reviews, there is also a strong search engine effect. The sites with the best reviews rise to the top of the search engines.
After Each Service or Sale, Ask Client for a Review
Apart from doing that, you can also do this with your invoicing or with your bill that you hand out to customers at the end of their stay or once you’ve finished giving them their service or selling your product to them. Add to your documentation a counter-action for them to review you and to share their experience with the rest of the world online.
Other great ways, if you have a shop or a venue like a café or pub, put up signings that encourages people to jump online and check-in on the social media things and add their review. In fact, you can even run competitions, maybe giving a free drink or something to people who have checked in and reviewed you online.
That’s just a couple of ideas, and for each business there’s probably a different strategy that you can be implementing. If you have any questions specifically about your business, please chuck them in the comments below, and we’ll see if we can help you out.
I’m Justin Meadows, this is Evergreen Profit.
I’ll talk to you soon.
