Month: December 2014

ComputerBy Blair Kuhnen, BDX

This is the final blog in our online reputation management series.

The title of this post is a lie. You really can’t push negative reviews down in a way Google would approve. What you can do is make positive results more relevant so they outrank bad or negative items in the search results. When you get a highly ranked bad review, you want it to go away. Fair or not, this is unlikely to happen on its own and you probably cannot force a bad review to be removed. So, what are you to do?

It is time to promote the positive. Glowing third party reviews are the best reviews to promote, but you also have pages in your direct control that can be promoted. Third party reviews and your owned or controlled pages will rank higher if they are deemed more relevant in search engines for the consumer’s query.   Some basic on-page search engine optimization (SEO) can make a huge difference in getting these pages to rank better. For example, if you have a consumer reviews page on your site, make it consumer friendly and add appropriate copy, title tags, URL’s and header elements. Assuming the key on-page factors (URL’s, Title Tag, H1, Image Alt-tags, and body copy) are handled, you are half way there.

The more difficult task in improving search rank is getting highly authoritative and relevant sites to link to your landing pages. For every search query, what is relevant changes. Want a list of the most authoritative links for your search term? Getting links from pages that Google returns for a specific search term represents what Google considers to be relevant and authoritative. But how are you going to get these sites to link to you?

Search for “[Your Brand Term] Reviews.” What comes up? Shown below are the results for one of our clients, Pacesetter Homes. They have a good reputation and focus on addressing issues before they escalate, but they still need to manage a few things. They have two apparent negative links showing up. In both cases, these are not even companies associated with our Pacesetter. So the only thing they can do is promote the positive things about their brand to effectively push these less relevant links off of page one.

blair blog 6The good news is Pacesetter has several positive articles and pages they control that can be promoted by linking to them. First, the Edmonton Sun announced Pacesetter as a finalist for the excellence in housing award. While this is for their Canadian division, getting that on page one would be a great third party implied endorsement. They can ask consumers on their website to “review all our Pacesetter communities on NewHomeSource.com.” This page dedicated to Pacesetter on New Home Source should rank well with a link or two from them. If consumers click on any of the listings, the leads come straight to them.

When you do this type of search with your own brand term, most of what you will find are pages you own or control. Often there are aligned business partners willing to help you as well. So, where do you start?

Here’s how to do it.

  1. Review Your Audit. Get your reputation audit results together. If you have not completed your audit. Now is the time to do it. Review our previous post on “How to Audit Your Online Reputation Guide”.
  2. Handle any Negative Reviews. Review any negative reviews on page one or page two of the Google search results. Make sure you have responded to the reviews to mitigate any ongoing negative impacts. See our guide for responding to negative reviews. If there are slanderous items, you may be able to work with the site owners to get items removed or a disclaimer added.
  3. Make Sure You Have Solid Online Business Profiles. Check to see that you have robust profiles created for key builder and social sites. We recommend the following for home builders: Google MyBusiness (formerly Google+/Google Places), Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and your NewHomeSource.com Showcase page. If you are not linking to these from your main site, you need to. Consider also having a presence on Pinterest and Houzz. All of these sites should be optimized for SEO. While you will not always have direct control over on-page SEO elements (e.g., Meta Title Tags) on these sites, you can usually control much of the copy on the page and decide how and from which page to link.
  4. Add or Update Your Career and Review Pages. Make sure you have a content rich, SEO optimized pages for careers and reviews on your own website. There is no reason these pages should not rank highly within Google search results for career and review related searches. If you can link directly to these pages from other sites you own, that will help. Some businesses even have an “workat[company].com” site to help showcase employment opportunities.
  5. Promote Positive Pages by Linking to Them. Review your audit for positive links from third party sites. Positive articles or reviews are like gold. Promote these by linking to them. If you have glowing reviews on Glassdoor, link to them with a link that tells the user what to expect such as “Check out our employee reviews on Glassdoor.” Are your Glassdoor reviews a little shabby? Don’t link to them. Instead link to other third party and owned/controlled pages that are more reflective of your brand. This part of the process takes some careful planning. Map out the pages you will want to promote and from which sites/pages a link would be beneficial to consumers. Title the links in a way that makes it very clear what the user is likely to find by following the link.

Remember that the only way you can push a negative link down is to get other links to be considered more relevant. The important thing is to get started. Contact info@thebdx.com for more information.

Other articles in this series:

1)      Builder Online Reputation Management – Live, Die or Thrive

2)      How to Audit and Monitor Your Online Reputation

3)      Responding to Negative Online Reviews

thumbs downBy Blair Kuhnen, BDX

This is the third of four blogs in our online reputation management series.

We previously covered online reputation management and steps in auditing and monitoring your online reputation. Now we will address responding to bad reviews.

Home building is a very human business and we, as humans, all make mistakes. The Internet amplifies those mistakes making them more visible. Gone are the days when you would address an issue that made it into print media and then quietly went away. Online reviews don’t go away. They have to be handled differently than other potentially negative public relations issues.

Don’t let negative brand or employment reviews cause further damage by going unanswered. Delays allow the current situation to escalate leading to lost sales or potential employees. That said, we believe there are right and wrong ways to respond.

It is uncomfortable to admit mistakes and takes courage to publically acknowledge them. Online, that is exactly what you have to do. This is important for two reasons: (1) When done right, it keeps the PR issue from escalating, and (2) it minimizes the ongoing damage of negative information that remains visible. This second point is what differentiates handling online vs. offline reviews. Potential customers and employees are going to see your response or lack thereof. Reviews handled with care will both prevent additional negative reviews and reduce the impact of the bad reviews.

We believe a builder should respond to a negative review in a timely, authentic, and humble manner. A personal and conversational tone is generally preferred. Here are some guidelines:

  • Show empathy: Apologize and express that you understand the pain/inconvenience caused. It does not matter if what they are saying is 100% accurate, you don’t want to debate or seem defensive. Try to understand their point of view and how the situation made them feel.
  • Demonstrate your contrition: Empathy alone is not enough. Express how your actions were wrong and what you are doing to fix it. Show that you are taking steps to make amends and prevent similar issues.
  • Without making excuses or sounding defensive, stress the positive: This is the tricky part, but an opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade. Let’s assume something positive (e.g., company growth) contributed to unintended employment related results. In this case, you should point out the jobs and advancements made possible through your growth, but admit to the negative consequences.
  • Ask for feedback: Ask the poster to come back and comment on how you did with resolving the issue.

When a prospective customer or employee reads your response, they should be thinking: “Some of the reviews I see here are bad but at least the company has acknowledged the issues and are seeking to find a resolution.” If someone wants to come to work for your company, they want to believe your story. If they don’t, you probably don’t need them.

Is this easy? No, but you can do it. I ran across this blog post from SEER Interactive that gives a good critique of several reviews on Yelp. It is worth a read before you draft your first response to a negative review.

When You Should Respond to a Poor Online Review

In general, faster is better. However, do not write a response while you are still angry as that could cause even more damage. Additionally, you don’t want to seem like you are in denial about the allegation even if the complaint is unfair.

There are times when you will not want to respond and maybe should not. When a negative review is pure slander, you might not respond. You might try to have the review deleted from the site or even consider legal action. These cases are few and far between.

Who Should Respond to a Negative Online Review

Unless you are Amazon, you probably don’t want your reply to come from someone with customer service in their title. In many cases, you should consider your president or a regional department head, but most importantly make sure someone is responding. You may want to consider providing a direct dial phone number that you can be reached at. Sometimes talking it out is better than corresponding through the web or email. While we are talking about negative reviews, responding to positive reviews humanizes the business and is a lot more fun for your CEO.

A colleague recently shared Glassdoor reviews of Zillow, a massive online real estate site with more than 500 employees. Their CEO, Spencer Rascoff, directly responds to many of the Zillow reviews with humility and a style that probably helps their recruiting effort.

An Example of How to Respond to a Poor Glass Door Review

This builder used in this example is growing quickly. Strong revenue growth creates huge opportunities for all employees if they seize them. Start by thanking the poster for their feedback. Read the review carefully and make sure you directly address specific issues.

blair-blog-5

This company needs to support its current strong employees while only recruiting the best. This response is crucial:

  • You want to communicate to prospective posters that you recognize your growing pains and are taking action. We believe employees will be less likely to post negative reviews if they see a solid response followed up with action.
  • A solid response allows prospective employees to see the opportunities your company has to offer while minimizing their hesitations.

A Hypothetical Recommended Response to this Review:

“Thank you for pointing out some of the problems related to our recent growth. We did not do well. Our team is the backbone of our success. Our rapid growth has created tremendous opportunities for career advancement, but it stretched our systems. We are sorry that we have left some employees feeling they are not supported and in some cases we asked for more than what was fair. That is a terrible feeling especially when you work as hard as our employees do.

This has been an area of concern for executive management. We left employees far too stretched and failed to delegate authority that would have made your lives easier.

In response we are implementing our company-wide leadership training and development program in January and are speeding our recruitment efforts to handle our continued growth. We need to get new employees up to speed faster with our processes and procedures so they can serve customers better. We will not grow revenue and profits at the rate we desire without a well-trained, motivated, and loyal team leading the charge.

Finally, we need to push authority down further and are currently experimenting with ways to give additional decision making and spending authority to our field personnel.

Please return later and re-post or reply anonymously to tell us how we have done.”

Over the top? Maybe, but this type of response can make an immediate impact. This may be difficult the first time, but it gets easier. You will feel better having responded and may have more clearly identified how to improve your business.

This blog series has given you a good understanding of how online reputation management works, from how to complete a reputation audit to providing recommendations for responding to negative reviews. Do you still have bad reviews out there on page one or page two of Google search results? Stay tuned for the final post in this series where we will show you how to get your positive reviews ranking higher in Google search results.

 

text-boxBy Blair Kuhnen, BDX

This is the second of four blogs in our online reputation management series.

If you read our previous article, we took a deep dive into Builder Online Reputation Management. The first step to managing your reputation is to assess your current reputation. Start with a benchmark audit.

3-Steps in the Audit Process:

1. Gather and categorize reputation results through relevant lenses. We pull 3 pages of Google search results for keyword searches that are reflective of your reputation. Our main focus is on page 1, but on page 2 and 3 are your best opportunities to promote positive references. Feel free to use our reputation audit spreadsheet as a guide for this step.  I have filled out the spreadsheet based on this example.

2. Identify the results on pages two and three that you want to promote and develop a plan for making these results more relevant.   You want to cause things you own/control or are highly positive to be considered more relevant in the search results.

3. Continue to monitor your reputation online. Update your audit sheet bi-weekly while actively seeking to drive changes in the results, but monitor at least monthly for changes. Set up monitoring of your brand mentions. Many tools are available free or at moderate costs.

Gather and Assess Reputation Through Google Search Results

You need to view your reputation through three lenses: (1) a general brand view, (2) the view as someone looking for brand reviews, and (3) the view as a potential employee. We can assess your online brand reputation by using Google to search for:

[Your Brand Term only]

[Your Brand Term only] + reviews

[Your Brand Term only] + careers

For each search above, we are looking for two key things: (1) Positive information on sites you own/control or influence, and (2) results that are harmful to your reputation on the first two search results pages. Ideally, you will own/control most of page 1 and what you don’t own is influenced by you or favorable to your brand. Further, we want no negative reviews, particularly on the first 2 pages of Google search results. Based on your own situation, you may choose to modify or add to these guidelines. Just be consistent.

We care most about what shows up near the top of search results. Page 1 of Google is key since less than 6% of searchers will ever get to page 2 and less than 2% will get to page 3 (Source: Advanced Web Ranking’s 2014 Google Organic CTR Study).

For this example, I am going to pick a local Austin auto dealer, Henna Chevrolet, who we do not work with.  So, let’s search for:

  1. Henna Chevrolet
  2. Henna Chevrolet reviews
  3. Henna Chevrolet careers

Save the first 3 pages of results.  To make this easy, we use the Moz toolbar.  While we are most concerned with page 1 and page 2, we may want to promote positive reviews from page 3. So, we pull these as well. Save all the results for possible analysis later. You will also want to put your findings in a spreadsheet that will make it easy to visualize results. In this sheet, we gather the following fields:

  • URL
  • Meta Title Tag
  • Meta Description
  • Moz Page Authority
  • Page Links
  • Page Linking Domains
  • Moz Domain Authority
  • Links to Domain
  • Domain Links to your Domain
  • Sentiment: Positive, Neutral, Negative, Not Applicable
  • Relationship: Own/Control, Influence, 3rd Party

The finished product looks like this (title and descriptions hidden):

blair blog 1This gives you a wealth of information. The goal is to make the positive and Owned/Controlled content more relevant so it ranks higher in Google. What is controlled content? This would include pages like your LinkedIn page and 3rd Party sites where you control the content. For example, the 6th listing in a branded search for Drees Homes on Google links to New Homes Source’s profile and reviews page for Drees Homes.

You want to own or control most of what is displayed on page 1. Ideally, the only 3rd party information showing up are positive reviews or information.  Coming in a future post in this series, we will give you steps you can take to push down negative reviews while promoting positive information about your brand. This does not mean you don’t take the other steps to address reputation issues, but promoting your positive press is critical.

Monitoring Your Brand Online

Monitoring your brand is easy and many tools are available. Some can be costly, but free options exists. You need to monitor two things: (1) your social media mentions and (2) anything showing up in Google search results. For social media monitoring, one of my favorite tools is Trackur.com. They have a 10-day free trial and costs $97/month after that. Want a free option? You can set up Google Alerts at no cost. To use it effectively, you need to know a little about Google advanced search operators, but it’s easy to set up and manage.

How to Set Up a Google Alert in 3 Easy Steps

First you need to have a Google account. It’s free and you can access all the tools Google offers at no cost.  If you do not have an account you can sign up here.

1) Go to Google Alerts: https://www.google.com/alerts

Blair blog 2

2) Set Parameters for the Alert

Type in the search query and modifiers you want. For example, if I were Drees Homes I might want to search for exact matches on the full brand name “Drees Homes.” Since we don’t want to track mentions on our own website, we use the qualifier ‘-site:www.dreeshomes.com’ and looks like the example below. Google even brings up an example based on recent news for Drees Homes.

blair blog 3

3) Select your options for the alert

For most of us, we only need to decide how often we want email alerts to come when Google finds something new. The options are: “As-it-happens,” “At most once per day,” or “At most once per week.” Then just hit the “Create Alert” button. You can edit or delete the alert at any time.
blair blog 4

That’s it. You can set up as many as you want. You might set up alerts to track your executives mentioned in the news, specific negative review sites like “pissedconsumer”, competitor brand mentions, and community names. Each alert will send a separate email, so make sure you are being specific and sending at the frequency you want. Give it a try, you will like it.

In the next article in this series, we will share best practices for responding to negative reviews online. Remember, the number one way to build a better online reputation: be better.