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Growing Your Business with Online Reviews

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There is a huge opportunity to use online reviews to grow your business, and in this post I will give you some tips on how to do exactly that.

How to grow your business with online reviews

This is the second episode in a two-part post about using online reviews to grow your business. The previous post, The Impact of Online Reviews, talked about the huge discrepancy between the way business owners and consumers look at online reviews. Close to 95% of consumers trust and are paying attention to online reviews, and less than half of business owners do the same. Less than a third of business owners are proactively managing their online reviews. The post also discussed some of the reasons why business owners are not leveraging online reviews as much as they could.

We also looked at some studies by Harvard Business School, Berkeley, Microsoft, etc. on how much you can grow your business and sales with online reviews. We saw how a one-point jump in your star rating can have a huge impact on your conversion rate and your sales. We also talked about the difference that one review can make in your average star rating if your rating is on the fence.

Even if you get all your business through referrals (which is good), you may not realize how much your online presence—and reviews in particular—are affecting your referrals. Our last post explained why some people are losing referrals right and left because of online reviews.

In this post, we’ll get into some of the details of how to get reviews, best ways to manage online reviews, as well as some specific tips regarding Yelp.

We’ll get to best practices for growing your reviews, managing your reviews, and responding to reviews in a minute. But because of all the questions I’ve gotten about Yelp, I want to address the question of Yelp first.

Where are my Yelp reviews?

A lot of business owners that I talk to—a lot of my clients—have complained to me about Yelp.

You probably are aware that Yelp has a history of lawsuits filed by business owners, and there’s even a documentary coming out about Yelp. The documentary alleges a “mafia style protection racket” being run by Yelp. Now, I’m not suggesting that this is the case. I do understand, though, the frustration that business owners feel. Yelp has some pretty aggressive sales people, and it’s probably true that they may have said some things to business owners to insinuate that they’ll get favored if they advertise with Yelp. But I believe Yelp is genuinely trying to bring some objectivity to the reviews process. I think their approach is misguided in some ways, but I don’t think it’s malicious.

Differences with Yelp

There are ways to deal with these issues on Yelp, and it’s one of the things we help our clients with. Yelp does a few things that are different from a lot of review sites.

First, Yelp has a policy against asking for reviews. If you say to a customer, “Hey, if you like our service could you leave us a review on Yelp?” you are violating Yelp’s terms of service. If Yelp finds out about that, they reserve the right to delete all your good reviews or to remove your listing from their website. I think this is misguided. There is an inherent bias toward negative reviews, because it’s the people that are upset who are more likely to post a review. I believe we need to regularly ask all our customers for reviews to counter that bias.

Yelp has even gone so far as to say that if you’re asking your customers to review you anywhere—Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, etc., they can terminate your account or penalize you. To me, this is over the top. Yelp should not be dictating the terms of service for other companies’ websites. But anyway, that’s what they say, although I don’t know how they can police it.

Second, another thing that Yelp does differently is that they are really aggressive about not publishing reviews that may be fake. It’s more of a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later policy. Yelp admits on their website that 28% of reviews—almost a third of reviews—don’t actually get published. So the business owners that talk to me are really frustrated, because they’ll see a fake review from somebody who’s not a customer get published on Yelp when it shouldn’t be and three or four really positive, very legitimate reviews that don’t get published and aren’t being factored into their star rating. That’s just really frustrating to people.

I don’t believe that this is deliberate or malicious on Yelp’s part. I believe they’re genuinely wanting to filter out fake reviews. But it doesn’t appear that they’re taking an approach that most people would agree with.

Help with Yelp

So one of the things that we’re doing with our clients is getting them Help with Yelp. This is part of our MoxyBoost Guardian review management program. We help our clients learn how to take those positive reviews that have been hidden on Yelp and are not published and get them published. We’ve looked at some of the factors that makes Yelp label a legitimate review as a fake one, and when you change those factors you stand a good chance of getting the good reviews published. A lot of it has to do with whether the user has a fully completed Yelp profile and how much content they’ve contributed to Yelp.

We also help our customers with how to get fake negative reviews removed. You can flag fake reviews if they violate Yelp’s terms of service, and it’s really helpful to point out what term of service is being violated when you do the flagging.

So we help our customers learn how to grow their Yelp presence without paying Yelp’s advertising fees, because that same money would be a hundred times more effective if invested in a good local SEO program or some other more efficient form of advertising.

The point is that there is a way to manage your Yelp reviews, and there are ways to manage all of your reviews across the major review sites.

Best practices for managing online reviews

So, let’s talk about best practices. Here are just a few tips, in no particular order.

Have a system for asking for reviews.

Now, I know this is not necessarily easy to do. You really have to stop and think about your process and incorporate this into your process and train your employees; but, have a system. Tools can really help. One of the things we give our customers in our MoxyBoost Guardian program is a feedback page and a mobile app. So, they can put in their customer’s mobile number or email address and click a button and the customer gets an invitation to provide feedback. You just make it part of your process. You train your employees to make it part of their process, and every time you serve a client you say, “Hey, can I send you a request for some feedback?” Then our tool takes any kind of negative feedback and sends it directly to you, and if there’s positive feedback, we invite the customer to provide an online review and give them some direction on where to go to do that—because that’s a challenge for a lot of your customers. Even if they want to leave you a review, they may not know where to go or how to do it. So, having tools is good. But having a system and making it part of your process is also important.

Respond to negative reviews promptly and properly.

If you get a negative review, respond to it promptly and politely. Although it may not feel like it, people are doing you a service by providing feedback. Even if it’s feedback that you don’t want to hear, it’s probably something that you need to hear. And even if it’s not something you need to hear, it is probably something you need to address.
The best way to respond to a negative review is to do it politely. In our MoxyBoost Guardian program, we provide lots of sample responses to our clients, and we even have a service where we respond for our clients right away to any new reviews.

If you take the negative review personally, it’s hard to formulate a good response. But if you respond to the review quickly and well, many times you can get customers to modify their negative review. They were posting a review because they’re upset and they want to be heard. When you respond politely and appropriately, they feel heard. Maybe you’ll be able to address their concerns, and you might change that negative review into a very positive one. At the very least, most review sites allow you to respond publicly, and so anyone who’s looking at that negative review can also see that you are responsive and care about customer service. And they can also see your side of the story.
So respond to negative reviews right away, and respond politely, without getting upset. Or, hire someone to monitor and respond to reviews for you.

Respond to positive reviews.

It’s also good to respond to positive reviews. You don’t have to post a thank you to every positive review that’s put up on Google or Yelp or TripAdvisor or Facebook; you can if you want to. But many review sites also allow you to respond privately. You can actually respond privately to both negative and positive reviews. You can respond privately to positive reviews and say, “Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate your taking the time to leave this review.” You can also respond publicly, and people who are looking at your online reviews know that you’re paying attention, that you’re engaged with your customers, and that you care. So it’s a really good thing to respond to reviews.

Don’t incentivize reviews.

Don’t pay for reviews. Don’t offer people a coupon. It’s not just that you shouldn’t pay for positive reviews or offer a coupon for a positive review, which violates the terms of service on every review site and can get you in trouble with the government. You also don’t want to incentivize people to leave a review. The reviews should be something objective. If you’re providing an incentive, you’re making it less objective and the FTC has something to say about that. So don’t incentivize people to leave a review.

Don’t create fake reviews, and don’t hire someone to create fake reviews.

Yes, I know probably a few of your competitors have fake reviews created for them, and it’s frustrating to see those not get flagged. If you want to, you can go and flag them, or have a friend of yours flag them as fake reviews. But don’t go create those yourself. It’s just not ethical.

Watch out for guaranteed minimums

Don’t hire someone who is guaranteeing a certain number of reviews or a certain number of positive reviews, because the only way they can guarantee that is to create fake reviews. Avoid any kind of service that is guaranteeing that you’ll get positive reviews, because I can almost guarantee that they’re creating fake reviews to do that. You just don’t want to deal with those people.

Comply with Yelp TOS

Be aware that Yelp penalizes businesses that ask customers for reviews—at all. It’s not just asking for positive reviews. If you’re asking customers to leave a review on Yelp in any way and Yelp finds out, they can penalize you. You can say that you’re on Yelp, and you can say, “Find us on Yelp.” But you may not want to link directly to your Yelp profile. At a minimum, don’t link to your Yelp profile and say, “Leave us a review.” If you do ask customers for reviews and they are Yelp users, tell them to find your business on Yelp and review it.

How to ask for reviews

Let’s talk about how to ask for reviews. This is one of the biggest things that comes up with my clients. They say, “I don’t know how to ask for reviews. It feels awkward. When do I do it? What do I say?”

People want to share

The thing to keep in mind is that people want to share. Asking for reviews may feel awkward, because it feels like we’re asking people for something. But in reality, people love to share their opinions. They love to be heard. A lot of times they just don’t think about it. They don’t think about posting a review, or they don’t know that that opportunity is there. But they love to share their opinions, and they might be quite flattered that you asked. If somebody’s really happy with your service, they want to repay you in some way. If leaving a positive review is something that they can do for you, that will help you out and help out some future customers, they’re generally happy to do that.

Ask in person

The best way to ask for a review is in person. Especially if somebody is saying, “Thank you for your wonderful service,” or telling you how good your service was, you can say, “That’s great to hear. We do our best to take care of people that way. Thank you so much for providing that feedback.” You can then go on to say, “You know, it’s that kind of feedback that can really help other prospective customers feel more confident in choosing us. So if you don’t mind, could you write what you just said in a review on Google (or Facebook or TripAdvisor or Better Business Bureau, or whatever site you want to send them to). That would be really helpful.”

In the tools that we provide our clients in our reviews management program, MoxyBoost Guardian, we make it easy to link to the top sites that you want people to leave reviews on, and you can use our app to share those links with your customers. But you can also do the same thing yourself and help them know where to go. When they let you know how much they appreciate you, you say, “Thanks for the feedback. That kind of feedback can help other potential customers in deciding to work with us. If you’re willing to share it, it would be great if you could share what you said to me in an online review.” If you have an app or some online tools, you can put in their mobile number or their email and the process is automated. Or you can give them a list of your review sites and they can then write the review when they go back home.

Strike up a conversation

When you’re looking for reviews, it reminds you to keep tabs on your customer service. You can strike up a conversation with clients in your office or store and ask them, “How was your experience?” Don’t jump directly to asking for the review, but if they keep the conversation going and you have the sense that they’re open to it, you can ask at the close, “Well, thanks for the feedback. We love sharing that kind of info with potential customers so they can feel more comfortable choosing us. If you’re willing to share it, it would be great if you could share what you said to me in an online review”

Not in your office or store

Here’s another Pro tip: Don’t have people leave reviews while they are in your office or in your store. Google, Yelp, and all the major review sites know when someone is posting from your office. If customers do post from your office, there’s a high likelihood it will get flagged as fake. So, have your clients go home or back to their own office to leave the review.

Ask over the phone

If you don’t have the opportunity to ask the customer in person, you can also ask over the phone. In the same kinds of conversations, especially if somebody’s appreciating your service or if you just concluded your transaction, you can say, “Have we taken care of everything? How was your experience today?” If you have a sense that they are open to it, say, “Hey, if you wouldn’t mind would you share that in an online review?”

Ask via email

You can also ask customers via email. You can send out an email blast to all of your past clients. Or even better, send a personalized email to your client. It’s much better than a bulk email.

You can also incorporate your request for a review into your email templates, and make it part of all your organization-wide emails. You can have something at the bottom of each email that says “Did you like your experience? Leave us a review.”

You can make this part of your service delivery process via purchase receipts, thank you pages, etc.

Or, if you’ve got some kind of review management tools, instead of asking directly for reviews you can say, “Provide your feedback here.” Then the tools will catch the negative feedback, and if the feedback is positive, it will ask the customer for an online review in an automated fashion.

Vendors and partners too

It’s not just customers that you can ask for reviews. You can also ask your vendors or your partners or other people that you’re doing business with. They might be very happy and willing to give you a review.

Review management tools

I don’t know your situation. Maybe you already have a review management program, or maybe you’re not in a position right now to grow your business with online reviews. But I would be very remiss if I didn’t tell you about our programs. We have a reviews management program called MoxyBoost Guardian which costs less than half a cup of coffee a day. But it’s actually not a cost. It’s an investment, one that could have a huge return on investment for you.

With MoxyBoost Guardian, we’re actually monitoring 50-plus different websites for you every single day, letting you know when somebody leaves a review so you can respond. We also have tools that allow you to solicit feedback from customers and direct them to the right places, the places you want them to go to leave an online review.

We have a step up from the MoxyBoost Guardian program called MoxyBoost Alpha Team, where we are actually managing and responding to the reviews on your behalf. If somebody leaves you a review, we’ll go in and make the response, using your voice and interacting with your customers for you.

I highly recommend using a reviews management program like this, because it’s not about what the program costs; it’s about what it’ll cost you not to use it.

How much will it cost you if you have negative reviews you don’t know about?

How much will it cost you if your competitors have much better reviews than yours?

How much will it cost you to accept 20% slower sales growth than you deserve?

Your potential customers are online searching for you every single day, and I really want them to find you.

One quick request from me: If you are a regular listener of our podcast, or if you found this post useful, or if you’ve been a client of ours, I’d like to ask you for a review. If you could go to Google or Yelp or SuperPages or YellowPages or Facebook—whatever your favorite platform is—and leave a review for Cloud Mountain Marketing, I would surely appreciate that.

Also if you’ve enjoyed this post and found it beneficial, pass it on to others. Feel free to forward the email you received, or send this link to somebody else.

To your success!

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen
Growing Your Business with Online Reviews

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Filed Under: Marketing, Podcasts, SEO, Websites & Internet marketing

The Impact of Online Reviews

by Steve Johnsen 2 Comments

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The impact of online reviews on your business

This is the first of a two-part series about using online reviews to grow your business. In this post, we’ll get into some of the reasons that business owners are not leveraging online reviews as much as they could, and look at some studies by Harvard Business School, Berkeley, Microsoft, etc. on how much you can grow your business and sales with online reviews. In the next post, Growing Your Business with Online Reviews, we’ll get into some of the details of how to get reviews, the best ways to manage online reviews, as well as some specific tips regarding Yelp.

Most business owners ignore reviews, and most consumers really pay attention to them. Why is this? Well, let’s talk about some of the reasons why business owners don’t pay that much attention to online reviews.

  • Insider’s skepticism—The first reason is that many business owners have an insider’s view. They realize that sometimes reviews can be a less-than-accurate indication of how good a business is. At least, many times that’s the experience with their own business. So they don’t trust online reviews as much as the consumers do.
  • They’re too busy—Another reason is very simple. Business owners are too busy running their business and taking care of customers to worry about online reviews.
  • They’re a low volume business—There are different types of businesses, with different types of volumes. For example, a restaurant has hundreds of guests a day, whereas a contractor may have only a few clients a month. Or with bigger projects, maybe even a few clients a year. For example, in the past I provided a very high-value service to a small number of clients (although the number of clients that I serve is probably about to change with the availability of the new local SEO programs and reviews management services). Businesses with high volumes of customers have a much easier time getting reviews than businesses with high-ticket, low-volume customers. Thus, with different kinds of businesses, some businesses are much more aware of reviews than others.
  • They don’t know what’s posted—If somebody has left a review, whether it’s positive or negative, and you don’t know about it, then you don’t have an opportunity to respond. Many times if there’s a negative review, after a few weeks have gone by you really have no idea who the customer was, and it’s difficult to respond. It’s much better if you know immediately when something gets posted.
  • They don’t know how to respond—If a review has been posted and you’re aware of it, you might simply not know how to respond. Perhaps you’re not sure where to go to respond, or you’re not quite sure what to say, or how to respond to that negative review.
  • They don’t know how or when to ask for reviews—A lot of times we have really satisfied, really happy customers, but we don’t know how to ask for reviews. We feel awkward asking for reviews. We don’t know when to ask for them; what the right time is.
  • They don’t know how to deal with negative reviews—Sometimes we business owners don’t pay attention to reviews simply because we just don’t know how to deal with negative reviews. So maybe we just ignore it and it’ll go away.
  • They’re frustrated because Yelp hides a lot of our good reviews—One reason I hear frequently is that people are frustrated, especially with Yelp. It seems that many business owners are frustrated because Yelp hides a lot of their good reviews. They say “I’ve asked customers for reviews. I’ve had really good reviews left on Yelp, but they don’t get published. So, why bother?” Well, we’ll address that a little bit in the next post.

Business Owners and Online Reviews—The Stats

Here are some statistics that are really important for you and your business. It may sound like I’m just going to throw some numbers at you, but these statistics are really important and could have a big impact on your business.

  • The percentage of consumers that rely on online reviews has grown from 25% to 50% to 70% to 85%, to now close to 95%. More than 90% of consumers really pay attention to online reviews when they’re making a buying decision.
  • In contrast, only half of business owners think that reviews are important, and 25% of business owners think that reviews are not important at all.
  • While 95% of consumers trust or pay attention to online reviews, at least 80% of consumers (whether it’s right or it’s wrong) trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Think about it—8 out of 10 of your customers believe that online reviews are at least as trustworthy as their friend’s recommendation. Nine out of 10 (or more) of your potential customers are paying attention to those reviews.

The majority of business owners do not trust online reviews, while the vast majority of consumers do. Here is another interesting discrepancy:

  • More than half of business owners think that if they get online reviews it should be on a specialized industry-specific website.
  • In contrast, most consumers look at Google, Facebook, BBB, and Yelp more than an industry specific website.

And here are some stats from a recent independent survey of business owners.

  • Almost 90% of business owners do not ask for online reviews. Their customer is happy with the service, but they just don’t ask for the review. At least half the time, it’s because they didn’t think of it. We just don’t think of it at the right moment to ask the customer. If you are actively managing your online reviews, you will have an advantage over 90% of your competitors.
  • Seventy percent of business owners do not monitor their online reviews, and of those that do, most do not look at more than a few websites a month (out of the more than 50 important review sites).
  • Two thirds of business owners think online reviews are biased or unfair. Many believe that Yelp (a large player in the review space) favors businesses that advertise with Yelp (even though Yelp advertising is 70 to 100 times more expensive than Google or FB advertising or a well run local SEO campaign). Therefore, they just don’t think it’s worthwhile paying attention to their Yelp reviews.

Now here’s something you might want to just keep in the back of your mind. The next time you’re looking for a vendor, notice how reviews affect you. A lot of times if I ask someone outright, “Do you pay attention to online reviews?” they might say, “No. No, I don’t. Not really.” But when they go out and they’re searching for a plumber when the toilet is broken, they might pay attention to those online reviews a lot more than they think.

So if you think about it right now you might say, “I don’t pay attention to online reviews,” but next time you’re searching for a vendor you might catch yourself doing so. I just want you to notice that, and notice how the reviews actually do affect you in your search.

Reviews affect your referral business

Now, some business owners say “Oh, I get all of my business by referral.” And that’s wonderful. That is absolutely the best and top way to grow your business. However, this is something you really need to keep in mind if you’re dependent on referrals for growing your business.

Eighty percent of consumers trust online reviews at least as much as that personal recommendation from their friend. Here’s what happens. I ask my friend or my neighbor, “Hey, do you know a good plumber?” and he gives me a name. The first thing I’m going to do before I call that plumber is I’m going to look them up on Google. And I’m going to check out their website. And if I type in the plumber’s name in Google and I see some negative reviews, guess what? I’m really going to hesitate about calling. A lot of consumers do this. So you may not think that your digital marketing or your online reviews are that critical in growing your business but they can have a huge impact on the number of referrals you get that are actually calling you.

This is just like Robert, a local contractor, who told us, “I get all my business from referrals.” What Robert didn’t realize was that more than half of the referrals he got were not calling him! People got his name from a friend, but either they couldn’t find him online when they went to look him up later or they found him but they wouldn’t call a business that didn’t have many online reviews or they found a negative review that Robert didn’t know about and decided based on that not to call him. Think about it—fully half of Robert’s business was going to his competition because of reviews.

So here’s the bottom line:

Reviews can really help grow your business.

I’ll give you a couple of different studies that were done. One is from Berkeley School of Business. Another one is from Harvard University School of Business. Another study was commissioned by Microsoft, jointly done with Boston University. A couple of studies were from marketing firms.

  • A study by two Berkeley researchers published in The Economic Journal found that a half-point difference in the average review rating (the average number of “stars”) increased a restaurant’s chance of selling out its evening seats by almost 50%.
  • Another study by a marketing firm found that a one-point difference in star rating will increase the click-through rate of people who find you in online search by 10% to 15%. They also found that businesses that had a negative average review rating (one or two stars) got even fewer clicks than businesses with no reviews. So obviously, if you’ve got some reviews, you want the rating to be pretty good.
  • In the same study, jumping up three points in your star rating will double your click-through rate and presumably will double your business as well.
  • Another study found a 20% increase in sales from a one-star increase in review rating.
  • Another study done by a marketing firm found that going from a 2-star rating to a 3-star rating more than quadrupled the number of mobile phone calls generated, and going from a 3-star rating to a 4-star rating doubled that number again! So that means going from 2 stars to 4 stars increased the phone calls on the mobile phone (mobile search) 8-fold.
  • The joint study done by Microsoft and Boston University looked at hotels, and found that increasing the star rating by one point created a 26% increase in hotel bookings, and the hotels were also able to charge more at the higher demand level. So the hotels with a one-star increase in rating were able to charge more, and still get a 20% to 26% increase in bookings—so their revenues were up significantly.

One Review Can Make a Difference

One review can make a difference in your star rating, and here’s how that works. If your average review rating is 3.24, it will display on most review sites as 3.0. That means even one more 4 or 5 star review can tip your average up to 3.26 or higher and bump you up by half a star. It makes you display as three and a half stars. So one review can make a big difference if you’re on the fence in your point swing.

In our next post, Growing Your Business with Online Reviews, we’ll cover best practices for building your online reviews. We’ll talk about how to ask for online reviews, and we’ll talk about Yelp issues in more detail.

I’d like to close by asking you for a review. If you’ve enjoyed this post, or my other posts and could take 60 seconds to leave an online review, go to your platform of choice (Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc.), look up Cloud Mountain Marketing, and make your voice heard.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen
The Impact of Online Reviews

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Filed Under: Podcasts, SEO, Websites & Internet marketing

Myth: Posting on Facebook helps you rank at the top of search results

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Myth: Posting on Facebook will help you rank at the top of search results.

Not true. Although Facebook can be part of a valuable marketing strategy, you can post on Facebook a million times and still not have any impact on your website–or your business–getting found by new customers.

Here’s a question I got this week from one of the readers of my book:

“Dear Steve:

“I’ve been considering to hire a company for our website management and SEO that is basically relying on regular postings to our Facebook to improve SEO. They charge $300 initial set up and $99 every month for help with our postings. When I read your book it doesn’t seem like you post to social media. Can you please explain how you improve SEO? It seems like that there is more than one way to increase traffic to our site?.Also, how do I measure traffic to my site, and how do we measure whether we are successful or not? Please feel free to educate and enlighten me. Thank you.”

So, thank you to my reader for sending that. Those are all great questions.

First of all, a brief word of caution. If anyone tells you they’re going to improve SEO by helping you post to Facebook, I recommend you consider looking for a different vendor. Although Facebook can be a valuable part of an overall marketing strategy, Facebook posts will not do anything directly to improve your ranking on the search engines. And, while it’s possible to make an impact on SEO for $99/month, many of the packages I’ve seen at that price are smoke and mirrors, and I’d ask a lot of questions before buying. Where social media can have a small impact on SEO is when a lot of people are actually talking about you on social media. And that doesn’t happen just by posting on Facebook (or Twitter, or anywhere else).

The good news is that you do have options. And in a minute I’ll talk about what does work for SEO.

But first I want to clarify something the reader said. Actually, I do post on social media. I have some clients for whom that’s an integral part of their content marketing strategy that we helped them develop. We also do a very good job with Facebook marketing for certain types of clients.

I also have a number of SEO clients for whom I regularly post on Facebook (like the service my reader asked about), and I do not even charge them for the service. I think a lot of them may not even know that I’m posting for them, because I often fail to “toot my own horn,” so to speak, to tell people what I’m doing for them. For these SEO clients, I don’t post on Facebook because of any value it has for SEO. Rather, it’s so that their Facebook business page stays current with regular activity, and so that Facebook won’t deactivate the page due to inactivity.

Why does someone offer this Facebook posting service and call it SEO? Well, it’s easy to do and extremely inexpensive, so they’re making a very high margin on the service. And even though it has no value for SEO and probably has no value to the business, it’s highly visible. So the business who subscribes to the service can see the activity and feel like they’re getting something for their money–even though they’re not. The real SEO work that I do is mostly invisible. The client can’t see my code changes, or server optimizations, or all the work that I do out in the “ether” in creating citations and backlinks. The clients who measure their revenue growth, and ask new customers “How did you hear about us?” know the tremendous value of what we deliver. But they can’t see any of the SEO work.

That begs the question: What does work for SEO? And what is SEO anyway?

SEO is the science and art of getting your business found by people who are searching online for your business. The strategies we use will vary depending on the type of business we’re working for. My reader who asked the question is working for an eye doctor. So their potential customers are searching online using terms like “optometrist,” “ophthalmologist,” or “eye doctor.” Here are the key factors that will make a difference for them?and this will also be true if you’re any type of service professional in a local market (dentist, chiropractor, veterinarian, eye doctor, lawyer, or any type of home improvement contractor?remodeler, home builder, electrician, plumber, landscaper, door & window company, tree surgeon, etc.):

  1. Picking the right terms to target. This can make the difference between getting found by 5 people or 5,000. Often the best terms are not the most obvious ones.
  2. Optimizing your website so the search engines understand what you’re all about. This includes website code, title tags, description tags, local search schema, alt tags, and quality hosting.
  3. Building accurate and well-thought-out directory listings for your business (citations).
  4. Building quality inbound links (backlinks). These are very hard to do right, and can hurt you if done wrong, so typically you will want to steer clear of a cheap backlink service.
  5. Managing and improving your online reputation (reviews).

There are lots of other ways besides SEO to get people to your website and to get new customers for your business, like social media, PR, content marketing, email marketing, online advertising, direct mail, media advertising (in TV, radio, magazines, etc.), mail inserts, billboards, and more. But SEO is often the most cost effective.

The best way to measure traffic is to install some type of analytics software, like Google Analytics (but there are others) and track the website visitors. Measuring traffic is not always the best way to measure success. It is possible with a good local SEO campaign to get lots of new customers with a proportionately smaller increase in site traffic. And it’s possible to increase site traffic a lot without significantly increasing your business. Ultimately the best measure of success is business growth?more customers and more revenue?and it is very helpful to ask each new customer how they heard about you.

It’s also very important to look at how well your website converts visitors (traffic) into leads (potential new customers who are contacting you). If 1,000 potential customers come to your website but only 10 of them contact you, that’s a pretty low conversion rate. For that matter, your website itself can increase or decrease your referral business (without reference to any SEO), because people who are referred to you often check out your website first, and your website may determine whether or not they actually call.

Marketing strategies are not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are quite a wide range of options for you, not only for SEO (ranging from a light SEO campaign all the way up to a very intensive campaign), but also for your website, social media, and other ways to improve your marketing. Typically I make recommendations for my clients based on what they’re wanting to accomplish, how much they want to grow their revenue, and what the overall marketing budget is. So I ended up inviting my reader into a conversation where we can decide on a strategy together based on a reasonable budget for their specific goals.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen
Myth: Posting on Facebook helps with SEO

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Steve Johnsen, MBASteve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

Filed Under: Myths, Podcasts, SEO

Myth: SEO Is Simply Pay-As-You-Go

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Myth: SEO is simply pay-as-you-go.

Not true! There’s actually a huge difference between pay-per-click and SEO, or search engine optimization.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen and I’m going to talk about pay-per-click advertising and search engine marketing, as well as search engine optimization (or SEO), and how these can be done more effectively and how they can help you grow your business.

One of the things that I hear sometimes is that SEO or search engine optimization is pay-as-you-go, which means that it’s simply a matter of more dollars in resulting in more visitors to my website. The more dollars I put in, the more visitors I instantly get to my website.

Well, that’s just simply not true. And a lot of times people confuse what is called pay-per-click advertising with search engine optimization or SEO. Both are ways to get people to your website who are online searching for a service provider. But the two models work very, very differently.

Pay-per-click is exactly what it sounds like; it means I am paying the search engine to have somebody click on the link that leads to my website. In that kind of model, it is true in a sense that the more dollars I pay for clicks, the more people I’m going to get to my website. With a pay-per-click model like Google AdWords?that’s a very common example of a pay-per-click type of advertising?the more money I pay, the more people I’m going to get as a kind of a general rule. And as soon as I stop paying, I’m going to stop getting people to my website.

Search engine optimization works very, very differently. Search engine optimization means doing a whole lot of technical things (which I’m not going to get into) to make the search engines think that your website is the best result for people who are online searching for a service provider. Therefore, when somebody goes in and searches for the kind of business that you provide, the search engine is going to display you as the best link. You’re not paying to be put in that position?at least not directly. You’re not paying the search engine to be put in that position, but rather you’ve done a whole lot of work to make the search engine consider you as the best result for certain people.

Now with SEO, you’re not going to see an immediate result. It usually takes time to do the work to get your website to the place where it is seen as one of the best options by the search engine. But once you get there, it’s very easy to maintain that position if you keep doing the work. You can stay ahead of the competition at a much lower overall cost than with the pay-per-click campaign.

Now the funny thing is, even with a pay-per-click campaign?although it is a model where if I pay more, I get more traffic?most of the pay-per-click advertisers give quality scores to the campaigns and the ads and the web pages, which means that there can be as much as an 800% difference on Google AdWords with the amount of traffic you’re getting for your campaign with the exact same budget, depending on how well it’s done.

So, one person may be running a Google AdWords campaign spending $3,000 a month and getting half of the visitors that somebody else is getting on a budget of $1,000 a month, because the one who’s investing $1,000 a month is doing it right, and doing it really, really well, with high quality scores, whereas the person who’s spending $3,000 a month is just throwing money at the wall and it’s not getting nearly as much result.

Every day, there are hundreds of people online searching for you and the service you provide, and I want them to find you. So this is not a simple pay-as-you-go model, but rather it’s a matter of figuring out what is the best strategy, short-term and long-term, for your business?whether to use a pay-per-click search-engine-marketing campaign, or to use search engine optimization campaign, or both?and to do them in such a way that you get the maximum result for your investment, to make your website effective as your number 1 employee.

 

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen
Myth: SEO Is Simply Pay-As-You-Go

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Steve Johnsen, MBASteve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

Filed Under: Myths, Podcasts, SEO, Websites & Internet marketing

How to respond to negative reviews online

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Q: Steve, What’s the best way for a small business owner to respond to negative reviews online? And to eliminate them from search results?

A: There are several things you can do to manage your online reputation.

It’s important to keep your emotions in check when this happens. Rarely does someone post a negative review that seems reasonable. And, it also doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. Sometimes people just have a bad day and you’re the trigger for them to vent.

Smart business owners also realize that negative feedback can be a tremendous opportunity to learn and improve your service. It’s also an opportunity (possibly) to win that person back and make them a customer for life if they feel you’ve made an effort to resolve their issues.

To that end, here are some best practices.

1) Regularly monitor review sites to see what people are saying.

2) Do your best to respond to the person leaving the negative review.

If you are checking regularly and you see a negative review, very often you can figure out who the customer is who has an issue. Call them up and ask how you can resolve the problem to their satisfaction.

Some sites do allow the business owner to respond to negative reviews right on the web page. Be sure to claim your profile as the business owner. You may even be able to get an email notification if someone leaves an online review. Best practices for responding on the website:

  • If you can respond, it is best not to dispute what a negative reviewer has posted.
  • Instead, you might want to post a comment inviting that person to contact you. E.g., “Sam, that sounds very frustrating and we’re sorry that you had a negative experience. Could you please call us at xxx-xxx-xxxx so that we can help you resolve this issue?”
  • You can also post a comment thanking someone for an especially positive review, if you want.

3) In order for negative reviews to not hurt your business, you want to do your best to encourage a large number of positive reviews.

  • Whenever someone expresses appreciation for your service, invite them to leave a review.
  • Feel free to share the URLs for review sites on your website or in your email signature.

It can be valuable to use a professional service provider to help with online reputation management. Part of the MoxyBoost Local SEO service from Cloud Mountain Marketing includes reputation management tools to monitor online reviews and encourage positive reviews.

Steve Johnsen, MBASteve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

Filed Under: SEO, Websites & Internet marketing

To SEO or not to SEO

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“To SEO or not to SEO, that is the question.”

I had a number of follow up questions to last week’s article on getting prospects to your website. Namely, when does it make sense to use search engine optimization (SEO), and when does it make sense to use something different?

There is a lot that goes into the decision process, including knowing what is SEO, what are the different types of SEO, what are the SEO tactics that work and what can get you into trouble, etc. However, here is a simple four-question inquiry that can greatly simplify the decision process.

All websites will benefit from following SEO best practices. In other words, everyone will benefit from a minimum level of SEO. But whether or not SEO as an investment can result in a large financial return varies greatly from business to business.

1) Is your customer searching for a known commodity?

When someone could really use your product or services, but they don’t know that you exist, what would they type into the search engine to find you?

  • If my pipe is broken, I type in “plumber”
  • If I need my basement finished, I type in “remodeling company” or “basement finishes” or “home builder”
  • If I need something to play movies, I type in “best DVD players”
  • If I need a home loan, I type in “mortgage company” or “home loan” or “refinance”

These are all searches for a known commodity. If someone is making the search, and you rank well in the search results, you can make a sale. Hence, SEO could potentially be a viable marketing strategy.

But, what if you have a truly innovative product that most people have not heard of?

  • A light bulb with a special frequency that induces weight loss
  • A portable, cardboard folding table to take with you to the airport
  • A wrist watch that monitors blood glucose levels

Since most people have not heard of these products, they are not searching for them. Hence, SEO would not likely provide a high return on investment for these businesses.

2a) Are you selling a product or a service?

2b) Is what you are selling (product or service) a need or a want?

Services

People tend to perform an online search for service providers when there is a need. For example, people are searching all day long for plumbers, dentists, chiropractors, electricians, veterinarians and real estate agents. When the service is something that I may greatly benefit from, but I could also live without it, it’s generally not top of mind. For example, there are relatively few searches for business consultants and life coaches.

Where there is a want (but not a need), people tend to search for information rather than service providers. Here in Denver there are hundreds of searches per month for information about how to swing a golf club, but only a few searches a week for a golf instructor.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. When the need is extremely high (i.e., life threatening), then I am more likely to rely on a referral than an online search. Think heart surgeons and really high-powered criminal attorneys. And some businesses, like restaurants, fall into both categories.

Products

In general, people are not searching online for the products that they need, like fruit, milk, bread, meat, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc. They are searching for products that they want, like “fishing boat,” “large screen TV” and “Tickle Me Elmo doll.”

3) In what market am I competing?

Once we know how many people are searching, we also need to know what the competition is like. Is your market local, or regional, or national, or International? How many competitors do you have in your market?

If you’re selling TVs, you may consider your market to be local, but in online search you are competing at a national level. There may be 100,000 searches per month for “large flat-screen TV,” but if there are 10,000 competitors, it’s going to be a very large investment to rank well enough to get any business. In contrast, if you are a manufacturer of deep draw metal stampings, there are relatively few competitors nationwide, and a good SEO campaign could capture a significant percentage of the market.

Google’s personalized and localized search results have created huge opportunities for local service providers. If you are a chiropractor, you are competing in a local market. There may be 45,000 chiropractors across the US, but when someone performs an online search, you actually only have around 200 competitors. Since most of them are not properly optimized for search, if you do your SEO right, there is a good chance of getting a lot of business.

Another factor is how much your competition is investing in their marketing. Many law firms invest heavily in SEO, but most lawn care companies do not. So if you’re a lawn care company, you could get a good return from SEO with a much smaller investment than the law firm down the street.

4) What’s the value of a new customer?

To do SEO right is not cheap. It takes a lot more work to run a good SEO campaign than it does to build a website. So if you do end up at the top of the heap, what is the value of a new client?

For most businesses, depending on profit margins, a reasonable marketing investment may fall between 5% and 15% of revenues. It does not make a lot of sense to invest $1,000 in order to sell an additional 1,000 widgets at $2 each, if the profit margin on each widget is only 20 cents.

If a $1,000 investment in SEO will get me 15 new dental patients, and the value of 15 new dental patients at $1,200 each is $18,000, I’d want to do that in a heartbeat.

Or if I’m a specialty manufacturer and each new client is worth $150,000, getting one client will pay for the entire campaign!

I hope this simple, four-question inquiry will help in evaluating whether or not you should consider SEO as part of your marketing mix.

To your success!

Steve Johnsen, MBASteve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

Filed Under: SEO

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