Local SEO – 5 Tips to Tackle Negative Reviews

As a well-established integrated search company that deals heavily in website promotion, SEO Positive has helped a huge number of local businesses gain the recognition they deserve in their targeted area. To do so requires local SEO,a slightly different approach to that of traditional SEO, because if the company’s reputation were to be mishandled and tarnished as a consequence, any future marketing campaign (online or otherwise) is likely to be more of a struggle.

There are a number of ways that SEO Positive promotes local businesses online. Submitting company details to free business listings is a fast and simple way to generate interest and place the business in a position to be seen.  The larger search engines actually offer dedicated business listings to aid this website promotion process. For example, Google Places has proved incredibly popular in recent times for local SEO, especially as participants are often propelled to first page SERPs for localized search terms just for placing a relevant listing in Google’s database.

However, the one glaringly obvious drawback to the advantage of getting noticed by doing local SEO is the potential to be shot down in flames by less-than-flattering reviews. This is a sensitive area for many businesses who have dealt with past consumers airing their company’s flaws online, and something SEO Positive has dealt with on a regular basis. Whether posted by a competitor as a malicious effort to ruin your reputation, or flagged up as a genuine concern from a past client, negative reviews can seriously affect your link building work and are a concern that SEO Positive has handled extensively in the past. We’ve compiled five handy tips to help tackle the would-be devastating impact of negative reviews, offering practical advice to businesses hit hard by the definite cons of public interaction.

Local SEO can be very beneficial for businesses

• Join In! A response from you or one of your customer service representatives is favoured above simply ignoring the review and hoping it goes away. Like anything posted on the net, it won’t disappear. SEO Positive highly recommended addressing the issue head-on and, if possible, state reasons for your misconduct – be careful to provide an apology rather than an excuse and offer to rectify the problem if possible. This demonstrates dedication to your customers will take the edge off the post.
• Deal with the complaint away from the online arena. Any potential customers don’t want to read the intricacies of your debate and will be put off by any aggressive comments, whether they’re from yourself or the reviewer. Should a dispute arise, offer to deal with it in private. Similarly, if you think appeasing the customer with special offers or complimentary products is the way forwards, don’t advertise this on your site, as you’ll get a stampede of phone calls from aggrieved consumers demanding the same treatment.
• If you feel it’s possible, ask the customer for an updated review. It’s best not to ask if you can remove the review completely, as this might appear to some as an attempt to stifle the opinions of those who need to be heard. You can however ask for the customer to update their review based on the solution and/or high level of customer service they have received since highlighting the problem.
• Try and encourage users to post positive reviews. Make customers aware of the reviewing system and ask them to give feedback based on their experiences. You can argue that this could backfire and you’ll simply end up with more negative press, but it’s a viable alternative to producing fake positive reviews yourself, a technique that we at SEO Positive have seen work to our clients’ disadvantage in the past and ruin their website promotion.
• Let the reviewer know that you’re taking steps to address the issues. Perhaps the reviewer was right after all – perhaps there are things you can do to improve customer satisfaction. Making an effort to implement change, and of course letting your irate customer know that something positive is going to come out of their complaint, shows you are handling the situation to the best of your ability (and will also impress other users browsing your reviews).

By using the review system to your advantage you’re able to greatly aid your website promotion and establish yourself as a trustworthy business.

The above article is edited by RP, who is associated with many SEO and Web Designing related companies like SEO Positive , a SEO Company in UK which is showcased in the article. She excels in writing articles related to web designing, SEO, pay per click services, social media etc.