March 27th, 2010 by Susie

Although word of mouth has always been a valuable form of custom to businesses in the traditional, offline world, many companies forget that it also takes place online, namely through message boards, review sites and social media sites. Making use of and responding to such chatter in a way that enhances rather than damages your company’s brand and attracts consumers to your website can improve its search engine result rankings and is essential to your wider online reputation management.

The user review is one of the most powerful forms of word of mouth on the internet. It involves an internet user submitting his view of a product to a website where other users are likely to find it. Reviews can be found everywhere from Google Maps and Amazon to ‘amateur’ blogs dedicated to a particular industry. As a business, it is important not to ignore user reviews: after all, according to recent research, only traditional word of mouth has a greater influence on consumers. Indeed, any review concerning your company from outside its bounds that is exposed to any of the wider public has at least some influence. Nonetheless, as well as providing you with feedback, as they also spread keywords relevant to your business around the internet. User reviews can also be a source of incoming links to your website, another factor that influences its search engine result rankings.

Figuring out how to respond to bad reviews of your company in the often seemingly uncontrolled environment of the internet can be agonising at first. One unhelpful myth is that you have no control over their impact other than to submit counter-reviews. Proven tactics include posting replies to reviews to create backlinks and help generate some more positive chatter about your company. You could also encourage more of the latter by inviting users to submit reviews to a specially created section on your own website, which directly provides you with continuous new, valuable and relevant content.

You may also be tempted to send your own user reviews to the likes of Google, but you will need to be careful that the review doesn’t just read like an unconvincingly uncritical advertisement. You may therefore need to ask a professional in search engine optimisation to write the review for you. Bear in mind, too, that the odd more critical review makes any review site appear more authentic, hence, oddly enough, potentially benefitting your search engine optimization.

It is also important to make maximum use of various other SEO strategies, such as well timed press releases infused with keywords and content that are relevant and valuable to your target consumers. These tactics can literally push negative pages down the search engine result rankings. For more information on how to make the most of online reviews in your search engine optimisation and internet reputation management, as well as on other aspects of an effective SEO campaign, just get in touch with our team at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk today.

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