No matter your niche market, nothing is more valuable than a well-respected brand image. That is why search engine optimization (SEO) and reputation management are more vital than ever.
It’s difficult to know when a bad reputation will hit your business. Your online reputation can go from impressive to poor if you do not take action right away. The reasons for your brand’s soured reputation can be a dissatisfied customer leaving negative online reviews, a consumer raising concerns and wanting to be heard or simply a human error. At the end of the day, you can never control the quality and quantity of reviews you get.
SEO reputation management can not only help you turn negative reviews into marketing opportunities, but it also allows you to go above and beyond your digital marketing goals.
“Local SEO results are dominated by directory sites and review sites,” said Rize Reviews’ senior reputation manager Tim Clarke. “It’s necessary to improve the quality and quantity of reviews to have a strong local SEO profile.”
Online reviews are essential tools you must always keep in your SEO arsenal to prevent your brand from garnering a negative online reputation. Strengthen your online presence and get found by your target customers with SEO reputation management.
In this post, we discuss:
• The difference between SEO and reputation management
• Why SEO online reputation management (ORM) is crucial to your brand success
• The consequences of a poor online reputation management SEO strategy
• How to leverage reputation management SEO to build a thought leadership brand
Read on and discover the significance of reputation management SEO in improving your brand perception and conversion rates.
SEO and Online Reputation Management: What’s the Difference?
Some people confuse SEO with reputation management. Although they are closely connected, SEO and online reputation management are two different marketing efforts. It is essential to understand the difference between SEO and reputation management, so you know how they can work together to improve your digital presence.
SEO is the process of acquiring leads and traffic to your website through organic search results. It deals with the technical aspect of optimizing your site structure based on search engine guidelines, so your website can be crawled, interpreted and indexed by search engines. An SEO company can help you perform on-page and off-page optimization to increase your website’s online authority and conversion rates.
Reputation management, on the other hand, is the act of managing your online reviews and brand mentions across online platforms. Online reputation management ensures your prospects find the right information about your company online. It involves review generation, review monitoring, online reputation repair and review response publishing.
Typically, SEO serves as a component of reputation management. Albeit two different marketing efforts, SEO reputation management shares the same goal: to strengthen your brand authority and credibility.
“We all know reviews and online reputation have a huge impact on our businesses, but another piece of the puzzle is an active approach to SEO,” said Rize Reviews’ reputation consultant Courtney Quigley. Having good reviews can help with visibility, but having those reviews work in tandem with a quality SEO strategy can help your business reach the “local 3” status on Google — the top 3 businesses that appear in a search for your desired key terms in your service area.”
Advantages of Combined Online Reputation Management SEO Efforts
SEO for reputation management is an integral part of online success. When paired together, SEO online reputation management opens vast opportunities to improve the rankings of your positive content and drown out negative search results.
Reputation management SEO:
• Creates Strong Brand Recognition
Every day, new data is uploaded online and not all of it is in a positive light. With reputation management SEO, you can ensure only positive content will be associated with your brand. SEO reputation management is not just about ranking for industry-related, valuable keywords. It also focuses on taking immediate action to protect your brand name from negative content that can harm your business’ online reputation.
• Boosts Your Local SEO
Search engines rank content that best satisfies user queries. A large part of the rankings formula is based on local reviews, listing accuracy and name, address and phone number (NAP) consistency.
SEO for reputation management is one of the best ways to acquire positive customer reviews and enhance your local SEO rankings with Rankiology. The more positive reviews you acquire, the more legitimate your brand appears to search engines. At the same time, SEO ensures your brand listings across online platforms are consistent.
• Conveys Your Best Story
With the right online reputation management SEO strategy, you can take control of your brand mentions and create a positive narrative. Reputation management highlights your positive reviews and SEO ensures these content trample fake online reviews and negative search results.
• Builds Better Communication
Your website, social media pages and other review platforms serve as vital customer touchpoints. By maintaining an active online presence, you can maximize your website’s potential, provide immediate review responses and gather actionable insights to improve your products and services. Acknowledging consumer sentiment is also one way to turn customers into loyal brand advocates.
• Increases Online Trust
BrightLocal research showed that 76 percent of consumers value online reviews as much as personal recommendations. The same study revealed that a positive online reputation could convince 49 percent of customers to trust your brand and take your desired action.
This means to attract the right customers and earn their trust, you need to show positive brand-related content on Google search results. Reputation management SEO makes this possible by tracking and mitigating negative reviews through active review monitoring practices.
• Drives High Profits
Your brand’s profitability and success hinge on having an excellent brand reputation. An upstanding brand image catches your ideal customers’ attention and makes it easier to move them to the bottom of the sales funnel.
Evidently, online reputation management SEO has a huge impact on your brand’s long-term growth. When you ignore SEO online reputation management best practices, you waste a vast opportunity to make meaningful connections with the right audience. Don’t commit this mistake.
Does a Poor SEO Strategy Impact Online Reputation Management?
Yes. SEO for reputation management is a two-way street. This means, your SEO efforts should match your ORM strategies to ensure they deliver the best results. You can’t simply build a website and focus on its optimization, hoping good customer reviews will come in.
Likewise, you can’t depend solely on review platforms to showcase your positive customer reviews. You need to create and optimize your website to establish social proof.
“Great reviews are important, but it’s vital to have steps in place to make sure potential customers see them,” Quigley said. “Visibility gained by employing a top-notch SEO strategy will ensure the positive reviews you’ve worked hard to generate for your business can reach their full potential of helping you garner new business. A poor strategy (or no strategy at all) essentially limits your revenue on any investment you’ve made into generating new reviews for your business.”
Ineffective online reputation management and optimization strategies can have a long-term impact on your sales. Ignoring online reviews and SEO best practices can taint your reputation. Thus, discouraging prospects from making brand interactions and taking your desired actions.
So how can you ensure your reputation management SEO strategies are on the right track?
Optimizing Your Digital Presence: The Ultimate Guide to SEO Online Reputation Management
Today, customers have the power to voice their opinions right before you get to talk to them or address their concerns. A single negative review can spread like wildfire and influence other people’s opinions about your brand, potentially damaging your reputation for good.
Don’t let this be the case. Here are proven ways to maximize your SEO reputation management strategy:
1. Build a Robust Digital Foundation
SEO online reputation management starts with your website. As the center of your digital presence, your website affects how your potential customers perceive your brand. As such, you must ensure it contains useful information and serves the right purpose.
Be sure to:
• Secure your domain
• Optimize your site architecture
• Create SEO-optimized web pages
• Boost your website speed
• Simplify your navigation
• Keep your web design simple and professional
• Test and improve all site elements (i.e., images, content, navigation buttons, etc.)
• Keep your branding consistent
• Fix broken links
• Add a sitemap
2. Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy
Once you’ve built your website, the next step is to optimize it for search engines. Begin with content marketing.SEO reputation management revolves around improving the quality of brand-related content that appears on search results. This means you need to ensure your website contains valuable, information-rich content that addresses your customers’ needs and provides solutions to their problems.Publish long-form blog posts, case studies, expert interviews and various types of content that highlight your thought leadership brand. You may also include client testimonials and positive online reviews on your web pages and blog posts.
3. Assess Your Overall Reputation
Safeguard your online reputation by knowing all your customer touchpoints and identifying your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). Assessing your existing online reputation allows you to determine the critical aspects of your SEO reputation management campaign. At the same time, it helps in creating a clear digital marketing roadmap.
Begin by:
• Conducting an online search of your branded keywords
• Monitoring review sites
• Setting up Google alerts for your target keywords
• Tracking your social media mentions
• Assessing your backlink profiles
• Verifying the reputation of your business partners
4. Establish Social Proof on Your Website
Online reviews bolster customer trust and drive loyalty. Displaying your customer reviews on your website through a custom review widget is a great way to show page visitors that your business is legitimate.“Implementing a review scraper widget on your website can help push site visitors, who are likely close to making a decision about whether to do business with you, over the figurative fence, thereby converting them to paying customers,” Quigley said.A Nielsen survey of 30,000 online users from 58 countries revealed that 70 percent of the respondents trust consumer opinions posted online. Additionally, potential buyers value up-to-date feedback from the last 90 days over older reviews. This means displaying your most recent customer reviews and ratings on your website can stimulate your prospects’ purchasing decisions.
Online reviews:
• Offer free advertising
• Improve your search engine results
• Show your commitment to client satisfaction
• Serve as a free source of useful business ideas
5. Ensure Your Local Listings are Consistent and Accurate
Your NAP data is a significant part of local SEO rankings. It allows search engines to build a credible image of your business, verify your brand details and confidently return your business information within relevant searches.Some tips to keep in mind in optimizing your local listings:
• Set up your fixed business NAP details
• Update your NAP information on your website
• Keep your Google My Business profile up-to-date
• Optimize your local pages
• Create content of topical relevance around your target locations
• Determine all NAP variations and inaccuracies in your data and update them
• Audit and update your online directories and listings
• Ensure your NAP information matches the details on your social media profiles
6. Maintain Active Client Communications
Building customer relationships is one of the best ways to ensure your prospects choose your company over a million other options. Rest assured knowing you are your customers’ go-to brand by responding to all their concerns and taking immediate action when conflicts arise.Apart from responding to customer reviews, you must also keep an active social media presence. Engage in conversations with your followers and provide immediate responses to customer queries. You may also launch email marketing campaigns to check up on your prospects, acknowledge constructive feedback or express your gratitude for their brand support.
7. Launch Review Solicitation Outreach Campaigns
“Review solicitation outreach and targeted efforts to both Google and industry-specific review listing sites, such as SEOblog, Clutch and UpCity, are crucial to improving your business’ visibility,” Quigley said.Encourage your best customers to write reviews and share their unique brand experiences. To make this possible, you must make it as easy for your clients to write a review. Send email and SMS drip campaigns with the link to your survey form or simply direct them to your website to submit their reviews through the review widget. Make review solicitation a part of your digital marketing efforts to yield your desired results.
8. Invest in Negative SEO
Negative SEO or reverse SEO pertains to the process of pushing down negative results and websites that promote bad reviews or create a negative perception of your business. The best way to employ negative SEO is by creating valuable content and optimizing it to gain higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).Additionally, you may reach out to each website that promotes bad reviews and ask them to take down these fake reviews. It is also important to resolve conflicts right away and provide concrete solutions to customer concerns to avoid acquiring more negative reviews.According to Clarke, among the top considerations in building an effective reputation management SEO strategy are:
• Acquiring the top spot on branded searches
• Improving ratings to at least 4/5
• Responding to negative reviews
• Flagging fake negative reviews or unfair feedback that break review site rules
9. Employ a Holistic Digital Marketing Approach
Online reputation management SEO is just a fraction of the bigger picture. To achieve your marketing goals, you must ensure all aspects of your digital marketing campaigns share the same goal.Launch strategic paid advertising campaigns to draw attention to your unique brand offerings. Ensure your web design is safe and secure from malware issues. Guarantee safe browsing and seamless brand experience by simplifying your site navigation and eliminating unnecessary page elements. These practices are crucial to ensure your prospects stay on your page and explore your products and services.
10. Leverage the Right Tools
Reputation management software makes it easier to acquire reviews and monitor your brand mentions from across online platforms. By investing in the right SEO reputation management software, you can spend most of your time developing strategies to improve your brand reputation and increase client satisfaction.Reputation management software helps in:
• Quickly resolving customer concerns
• Acknowledging customer feedback
• Creating positive word-of-mouth about your brand
• Promoting transparency
• Collecting marketing data
• Identifying business opportunities
Protect and Manage Your Brand Reputation with SEO Reputation Management
Search engines favor well-reviewed brands. If your business is thriving and you have plenty of customer reviews published on your website and across review sites, your business has higher chances of ranking in search engines.
Enlist custom reputation management SEO services and boost your lead acquisition and client retention rate. Rize Reviews offers full-service online reputation management solutions with no contracts, so you can assess if our services are the right fit for your business. We collaborate with Thrive’s SEO and web development team to ensure all your digital marketing and reputation management needs are met.
Rize Reviews offers:
• Custom review response writing team
• Unlimited email and SMS review requests
• No setup fees or add on fees
Contact us today and let us help you improve your overall star ratings and reviews.
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