Online Reputation Matters!

Like it or not, your business’ online reputation matters.  You could be the best company that offers your products or services, but if online information it readily available that paints a different picture, it will negatively impact your reputation and ultimately your sales. 

Nearly seventy percent of customers admit that they check out reviews online before committing to a purchase. So it’s up to you to manage your online reputation. People are checking out Yelp, Angie’s List, Google, Yahoo Local Listings (and hundreds others) for information. From time to time, you will get a negative review.  In our culture, it is inevitable because you just cannot please everyone.  Knowing this, there are a two key steps to take:

1)    Be Proactive:  Don’t wait to generate your online reputation only after a negative review has been posted.  Have a routine part of your operation that encourages happy customers to post positive reviews about your business.  Most will not take the time to do so, so the key word in that prior sentence is “routine”.  You have to ask all happy customers to do it, knowing that only a select few will invest the time to do so.  It is OK to encourage them to write these reviews with some type of offer such as a $5 gift card or an entry into a raffle for a larger ticket giveaway.  The cool thing about these reviews, is that once they have been written, they are assets for your business that are permanent.  So there is tremendous value in a positive online review.  A volume of positive reviews takes the punch out of the rare negative review.

2)      Be Reactive:  When a negative review is written about you, respond… EVERY time.  An occasional negative review will actually make your profile look more legitimate.  So, take the time to get your side of the situation documented as a response to that negative review.  Your goal here is to be non-emotional, fact-based and ultimately to try to make lemonade out of lemons.  Rarely will you be able to change the mind of someone who has written a negative review, but you can write your response in a way that anyone who takes the time to read it, will see your side of the situation and feel that you handled it professionally.  That can, sometimes, carry more weight than a positive review because we all know things go wrong in life.  You want to portray that when things do go wrong, you make things right for that customer.  If you do succeed in turning around the opinion of the reviewer, as them to take the time to post another review conveying how you resolved their situation and turned things around.

Things to remember when building your website

By Scott Martin

Building a website can sometimes be a daunting task, especially for a business owner who doesn’t know what critical elements are required.  Many times, all the attention is spent on the aesthetics of the site and not enough attention is paid to some of the most important elements that are going to ensure the site maximizes its visibility on the Internet.  Below is a brief list of some of those strategically important elements:

1.    Keyword-Rich Copy:  Make sure that the most commonly searched keywords for your business are built into the framework of the site.  This should include having a dedicated page (i.e. Profit Center Page) for each of these major keywords as well as ensuring the body-copy language used through each profit center page is written richly with those keywords and correlating keyword in mind.

2.    Responsive Design:  Make sure that the site is built with Responsive Design technology.   This is the most current technology that facilitates making sure your website functions, loads and looks proper on all hardware devices (Desktops, Laptops, Tablets AND Smartphones).  Over 50% of searches originate from a mobile device these days and this technology makes sure that the user has a positive experience and doesn’t “bounce” off the site.  Additionally, this is the preferred technology and configuration to Google, so it is your best option for delivering a great search and browsing experience to your prospective and current customers.

3.    Proper Admin Architecture:  Make sure to have 4 necessary ingredients embedded into the architecture of your site:

a.    XML Sitemap

b.    Diclaimer Page

c.    Privacy Policy Page

d.    Robots.txt file (and make sure once the site is launched that this file is updated so that Search Engines are unblocked so they can crawl and index the new site)

4.    Analytics:  Add Google Analytics to your site so you can track any and all behaviors on the site and use the information to make decisions.  This is the only scientific way you will be able to properly track the performance of the new site.

5.    User Experience:  Look at the site wearing the hat of a prospective client and see what their experience is like.  You want their experience to be intuitive and you want to make it VERY easy to become a “lead” for one of your sales people.  Therefore, having lead-gen forms, call to action and phone numbers in lots of strategic places is important.

6.    Marketing:  Make sure you site is properly positioning your brand, your products and your services in a compelling and persuasive fashion.  You have to look at the site as a marketer and make sure that you are sufficiently highlighting the features and benefits of your products as well as why someone should choose you rather than your competition.  This needs to be done in a very creative way because users will not typically read lengthy copy to garner this information.  One of the most effective ways to do this is to embed video into your site that tells the story you want customers and prospective customers to have about you.

7.    SEO Compliance:  Make sure the site is fully Search Engine Optimization (SEO) compliant.  All Meta data should be written within the constraints of Search Engines and should be very keyword-rich. Each page, should have unique Title Metatags that delineate the contents of just that page (similar to a chapter title within a book).  All images should be ALT tagged properly with a keyword-rich description of the image.  There are many third-party tools that will grade the SEO Compliance of your site.  One such tool from a recognized third party can be found at https://marketing.grader.com/

While there are many more considerations that go into the construction of a site, this list encapsulates some of the most commonly neglected items and can be used as a reference for making sure your new site it a step ahead of the norm.