by DG | Oct 8, 2018 | Branding, Digital Marketing
Fake reviews are an unfortunate reality that many businesses have to deal with.
It’s so easy for people to create a new anonymous account and leave a review that is positive or negative. The worst part is that it doesn’t matter if they are a customer or not, they are free to leave a review and say whatever they like. So what do you do when you want to remove Google reviews?
Before we go further I’ll just say that when dealing with negative reviews that are real it is important write a response as soon as possible, be polite, courteous and professional. DO NOT ever be defensive. Try to understand their problem and offer to resolve the problem.
The rest of this post is about dealing with reviews that you know are fake. I get asked about this often so let’s get to it…
Google Policies
Google has a huge list of policies around this topic but they do not do a very good job of catching policy violations. There is hope however! If you can track these fake reviews and make a case as to why the review is violating Google’s policy guidelines you can get them removed. To do so you can contact them through Facebook, Twitter or on the Google My Business forum.
When you are logged in to GMB find the review that you believe is a fake. You will see three dots stacked on top of one another, click those. Then you will see the option to “flag as inappropriate.” Fill out the form and that’s it. You can also expedite the process by calling GMB support. You will find their support number within your GMB account.
Why won’t Google remove that fake review?
If you can’t show that the reviewer has made a policy violation, they won’t remove the review. The most difficult reviews to get rid of are the ones with 1 star and no comments. Google’s response will likely be that it didn’t violate the guidelines — since there’s no text in the review. Personally I think that reviews without comments should not be accepted by Google – call me crazy – I guess it’s it too much to ask!
If the review is completely off-topic and complaining about a service you don’t even offer then you will most certainly be able to get it removed by Google.
What do you when Google won’t remove that fake review.
The huge problem with fake negative reviews is that Google doesn’t know your customers. Therefore, telling them that the person leaving a review is not an actual customer is not a strong enough case to get that review removed. If the reviewer is anonymous it’s very difficult to prove their identity.
Another problem is that they might not have been a customer. They are eligible to leave a review even if they just called you and you didn’t return their voicemail. Maybe you have a store and they couldn’t find parking… Oh yeah, it’s hard to make everyone happy.
Most small businesses bend over back wars to keep customers satisfied and you just know when you have an unhappy customer so when there’s a fake review, you can just smell it. It seems out of place and it seems to come out of nowhere.
Like I said, sometimes Google just won’t remove it, then what, should you just leave it sitting there?
Absolutely not, there are some strategies to deal with it. Encouraging your satisfied customers is of course one of the ways to help bring up your rating average. However that fake review is still festering and annoying you to no end.
What’s the best way to deal with a fake negative review that Google won’t remove?
Challenge that Faker! Be polite by writing a response something like: “We are quite certain that [username] is not a customer of ours. In fact we are so certain that we would like to offer a 100% refund if you send us the receipt from the gmail account you used to write this review.”
Give them a few days to respond. If they don’t respond to that, then you know it’s a fake review and you should update your review response.
Update your response with something like: “After waiting 1 week for a reply to our 100% refund offer we never got a response. Sadly, it is likely from one of our competitors engaging in the writing of fake reviews for their own gain.”
If by some miracle you are wrong and the review was real, they may send you a receipt. If their reasoning for the complaint is legitimate, then you might want to refund them and in return ask them to delete the review. It’s probably worth it for your business and you have learned something. You might also be able to settle it by fixing the problem that they have complained about.
USEFUL TIP – Make it easier for people to leave a Google review.
To make it easier for people to leave a positive Google review about your business, follow there steps:
- Search for your company by name in Google.
- Click on the button “Write a review”.
- A Google review box has pops up, click away for the popup window and copy the URL from the address bar (see image below).
- The URL will be very long. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly to get a nice short URL that you can share with people.
Here an example of ours – Click to review: https://bit.ly/2PhcT7b
We hope these tips will be helpful. We have a Reputation Management App to help you get control of your reviews. If you don’t have the time to deal with all this, we do have Reputation Management Services to take care of it for you.
Beyond Google
We have focused entirely on getting reviews on your Google My Business page in this post but you should of course not ignore other review sites, Google should be your prime focus though. There are many other review sites that you can benefit from like Yelp, Yahoo Local, Trip Advisor, Trust Link, Trust Pilot etc.
The more you list on, the more you will help build trust for your business, and boosting your local search rankings at the same time.
Have you experienced fake reviews? If have, we would love to hear about it, please leave a comment.
by DG | Nov 12, 2021 | Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO
Updated: Nov, 12, 2021
You are likely well aware of the concept of content marketing by now. It’s a tactic that helps you engage and attract customers and prospects by delivering quality content that provides value for everyone who visits your site. And the strategy has a lot of staying power.
Here are just a few areas in which content marketing can help you.
Driving Conversion
A great benefit of content marketing is that it helps your company drive more conversions over time. Research shows that companies that create consistent marketing content experience conversion rates almost six times higher than their competitors.
Increasing Traffic and Brand Awareness
Publishing consistent blog posts that engage audiences will help you bring in more traffic to your site over time. According to HubSpot, companies that published more than 16 blog posts per month got almost three and a half times more traffic than those that only published fewer than four posts.
It also helps educate people about your brand and raises the level of brand awareness that is otherwise not there when you don’t publish blog posts outlining what your company does or sells.
Check out our Pro Blogging Packages
Building trust and Fostering Relationships
You can build real relationships with your customers through content driven marketing. It allows customers to really absorb your philosophy and thinking patterns and associate themselves with your values. This allows them to take a peek in to the way that your company does business. It’s a lot more personal and less presumptuous than an advertisement.
Building Credibility and Expertise
Well written and polished content automatically comes across as professional and authoritative. It allows people to see your company as an expert or an authority on the subject of your business. It also allows you to be seen as a major player in the industry.
Cost Effectiveness and SEO Visibility
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing even though it generates three times as many leads. It also helps your company and topics trend better in search engines, specifically Google. Allowing your content to trend well allows for greater visibility.
Targeting Specific Audiences
It’s important to know exactly who you’re selling to when you’re selling a product or a service. For this reason, content driven marketing is useful to get your message across to your target demographic. It sounds extremely cold and calculating, but it’s useful without a doubt.
Engaging Content Makes a Personal Connection
As outlined above, it’s more engaging and personal than an advertisement. The written word, when written well has a much better connection with your readers and customers than an ad ever can, hence, the emphasis on content driven marketing.
Can bring you Unexpected Customers
It’s incredible that content marketing can bring you customers from so many different places that are not your target demographic. You can use trends and current hot topics to market your products or services to people that won’t normally look twice in your direction.
Do you need great content for your website? As on of the top small business branding agencies, we have great writers standing by that can produce excellent, affordable content on any topic. Check out our packages.
It’s also important to get as many backlinks as you can in order to generate organic traffic. If you need help with that or any other SEO tasks, checkout our SEO services page.
by DG | Oct 1, 2018 | Content Marketing
Updated Oct, 4, 2019
Using blogs and other social media can be very effective for getting more local business. Most people think of social networking as only a way to drive global traffic. However, it can be used very effectively for getting local business as well. Here are four tips to make it work:
#1) Target local keywords
This can seem somewhat limiting, because you can only targeted “area specific” keywords but if you’re a local service business it’s the way to go. There is no sense in trying to compete with the whole world for a keyword like “carpenter” when you do all you business within a 100 mile radius. If you wrote a book or sell tools related to “carpenter” then that is of course a whole different story. Then maybe you want to be able to sell globally and it’s worth the expense to compete beyond your borders.
#2) Use social media sites
Getting involved in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is a great strategy to get more people to your blog. When used right, they can be very effective.
How do you use them correctly?
You have to get involved in the community and answer people’s questions. People won’t buy from you until they know that you are really interested in helping them. If they can tell that you only care about your wallet, they will avoid you.
Therefore, you want to get involved and answer people’s questions without expecting anything in return. When you do this, you build up the trust factor. When people realize you really want to help them, they will then purchase your products.
Many people just go to social media sites and start spamming them by putting a bunch of links to their website. By doing this you are not contributing anything to the community and not providing no real value. This won’t work in the long run.
#3) Provide value
You want to use the social media sites to get people to come to your blog. Once you get people to your blog, you have to convert that traffic into sales.
This is where a lot of marketers mess up.
Most bloggers fail to profit because they have boring posts. It’s important not to make every post a sales pitch, you need to contribute and provide value by giving free information. It proves your authority on the topic and builds trust.
OCEANONE Design – one of the Top Small Business Web Design Companies in DesignRush. See the designrush agency listings.
#4) Tell a story
It’s been proven time and time again that the more value you deliver, the more you will profit. You also want to deliver that value in an interesting and exciting way.
One of the best ways to do this is to tell a story. People are interested in stories so they will be more engaged. So if you make your marketing about your own life, you will see better results. More personality in marketing = better results.
The bottom line is, using social media can be very effective for local advertising. Implement these four tips, and your profits will increase substantially.
by DG | Mar 27, 2021 | Content Marketing, SEO
Updated: March 27, 2021
Good SEO involves many elements. There is the technical audit where you make sure there are no technical problems that prevent your site from ranking. Then there is the whole keyword research and optimization process which is the most important step and beyond the scope of this article. Don’t forget about backlinks of course.
Then there is the most powerful aspect of all and that is high-quality content. Stop thinking in terms of ‘SEO’, ‘blogging’ and ‘social media marketing’ as separate things and instead think about your SEO in terms of ‘content marketing’.
Think of SEO as a combination of all your marketing strategies – merge them together. You need to remove technical issues first. That is an absolute. Beyond that you need to use all the digital marketing strategies, keyword relevant blog posts, guest posts, social media posts, backlinks, videos and more to really succeed at getting ranked on high in Google searches.
Now “Good SEO” also means writing amazing posts and when you share them you have a better chance of getting more backlinks. That great content will keep people on your page longer – another Google ranking factor. Yes, Google notices how long visitors stay on your page.
Regardless of your strategy, there is no doubt that content is absolutely the most important asset when it comes to attracting traffic and impressing Google.
But just what is content marketing?
Content Marketing – What is it Exactly?
Content marketing is about creating content that will build a readership on your site and ensuring that people begin to hold you as an authority and trust what you have to say. While this is powerful and useful is in its own right, it’s actually only one part of what content marketing is about. At the same time, your excellent blog post articles will also help Google make sense of your site, its posts, and its content. This greatly aids organic search.
It means demonstrating your knowledge and point of view. Ultimately, you want people to seek you out as an authority. Once you get to that point, you’ll be considered an expert in your field and you’ll be able to greatly influence your audience – possibly influencing their buying behaviour. The content doesn’t just have to be posts on your blog. Content can be presented in Guest posts, Social media posts, Presentations, Infographics, Case Studies, White Papers/Reports, Ebooks, Email Newsletters, Webinars, Quizzes, Polls, Podcasts, Checklists, Photos and of course Videos.
DOWNLOAD Our Free Content Marketing Planner (In Google Sheets, click FILE > make copy). It has a daily, monthly and archive view as well as a brainstorming tab.
How to Build Trust and Authority with SEO
So what is the process behind reaching authority? The key is to think about the sites and blogs that have influenced you over the years – the ones you read regularly.
How do you think they did it? This isn’t about building trust with Google alone but rather with your readers so that they want to keep coming back. That means delivering value time after time in posts and content.
Each post that you create for your blog should provide highly useful and relevant information that is not fluffy but is actionable.
At the same time, users should be able to see that your site offers something unique compared to competition sites, something which isn’t available elsewhere. The differentiation between your sites and others is extremely important, especially in crowded niches. You can’t simply follow the pattern of other sites, you need to try and take your own perspectives.
There are hundreds of thousands of posts covering almost everything possible. Offering something different amongst this content mountain may seem like an impossible task but with the infinite opinions of people, you can always find a unique angle to take on even the most run-of-the-mill subjects.
Once you’ve conceptualized your posts, you should ask yourself: would you read the content?
You also need to be consistent and reliable and always live up to your brand ethos. Make sure you establish a mission statement and objectives and portray these through your content efforts to create a continuous self-branded stream of information.
Always work hard on reflecting your brand with design. Logos and website designs are extremely important. You must remain consistent throughout different forms of marketing on different platforms, including on different forms of social media.
When writing, always bear your reader in mind. This ties into the fact that Good SEO is about making things great for the reader. That way, people can actually get excited about you and will really get behind what you’re trying to do!
What’s Your SEO Goal?
The immediate goal should be to offer consistent value and to become a source that people start to trust. That way, when someone searches for the answer to a question, they might read your post and be impressed. That leads to more shares, more engagement and better SEO.
If you then repeatedly come up in search results, individuals who were impressed might recognize you and be more likely to click your listing over the rest. Then they might decide to look around the rest of your content after they’ve been impressed a few times. Eventually, you become their “go-to source” for answers in your niche. Well done: you just won at content marketing!
The key to content marketing is consistency and value. Always deliver good information that is manageable. By doing this, you’re working with Google to serve the user and Google are promoting you as they know you are delivering relevant and effective content. It makes sense from both an SEO and business perspective – you want to build trust, reputability and authority alongside a base of repeat users.
After investing a lot of time writing a blog post, you should certainly consider repurposing it. Maybe it would make a good video or slide presentation. Perhaps write a few related post a create an ebook that you can distribute or use for a lead magnet.
While the focus of this post is content marketing and how it relates to SEO there is certainly a lot more you can do. We’ll write more about that in future posts. If you need some free tools check out this list of free content creation tools by .
Needless to say, before you dive deep into content marketing, you need to make sure that you you have optimized your on-site SEO factors. The amazing @Neil Patel recently made that a little easier with his awesome SEO Analyzer which will show you what you need to fix in a few seconds. It provides your overall SEO score and your competitors score. You can check your site speed score, keywords and more. Plus you can download the report as a PDF so you can send it to your webmaster.
Here’s a great resource from Guru99 that has a list of the 20 Best Web Analytics Tools to Track Your Website Performance.
If you need help with SEO for your website, checkout our SEO services page.
Also check out our recent post “10 MUST-KNOW SEO TIPS TO BOOST YOUR SEARCH RANKINGS“
by DG | Jan 7, 2019 | SEO
Updated January 7, 2019
SEO is considered as the main element to ultimately getting more website traffic. This means that you also want to be sure to use the best white hat methods and search engine optimization strategy On-Site and offsite for best results. Here are some of the most important fundamental SEO tips.
Whether you have a small or big business website, using proper SEO techniques can help Google, Yahoo, and other search Engines to rank your website higher in the SERPs. (Search Engine Results Pages) when customers or clients search for keywords that are relevant to your business.
- Operating a great website is not all about having the slickest or coolest looking website. It is equally important to have a site that users will find easy to navigate and employing the best SEO techniques to drive traffic towards your site.
- Before writing content for your website, you will need to make a set of keywords to utilize that provides the best SEO results. You can do this by checking out the keyword’s monthly search volume. Choose keywords that contain good search volume level and lower competition and avoid the keywords with the best and lowest search volume. Do this and you’ll you’ll be a more successful in your online endeavours as a website owner. Quite simply, don’t make an effort to rank in search engines for the keywords like “Houses” or “Doors” as this is a complete waste of time and money. The intent of the keyword is now more crucial than ever. In the last couple of year we have seen a significant change in the way Google delivers search results.
Google Keyword Planner is definitely one of the tools you must use. You can access this in your Google adwords account. There are some other amazing tools for keyword research…
Checkout
Answer The Public. We really love this amazing tool. It will provide you a ton of questions that people ask about any topic. Just put in your target keyword and it will generate an overwhelming number of questions you can work with. Many bloggers use this to come up with blog post ideas.
Also try
UberSuggest. It is now run by SEO and online marketing expert Neil Patel. If you haven’t heard of Neil, you should check out. He gives away amazing online marketing advice. Try UbberSuggest, it’s free and it will help you come up with a lot of keyword phrases that you may never think of.
Keywordtool.io is another excellent keyword research tool worth trying out.The above tools are free to use. If you need more intensive research tools and advanced options there are plenty for great tools that have a monthly subscription based model. Some of the best ones are Ahrefs, Wordracker, SEMRush, MOZ, SEOBook
- Your website budget must be shared between Web Design, SEO, and Online Marketing. Be sure to reserve a large portion of your website budget for search engine optimization and Online marketing, it’ll be the best investment you make for your business if done effectively.
- Once you build the best keywords or keyword phrase for every single of your website web pages that phrase should be present in the title Meta tags, descriptions, and URLs. For On-Site, content writing the keyword or keyword phrase should be within the first three or four words of the headings on the page. This is also true for article writing titles.
- When you don’t have any pages that currently rank well, you have a greater chance of ranking when you choose less competitive, keyword phrases or long-tail keywords related to your niche. Focus on relevant low volume keywords at first and then once they rank well it means you are building authority on that topic. Once you have done that you can focus in on the more competitive high search volume keywords. It applies to writing content for your site or articles as well.
- Don’t overuse any keyword phrases in your web page content because search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing consider this spam and although they don’t claim to penalize, it will feel like they do because you will end up with a lower page rank for keyword stuffing/cramming your web page content. This also applies to the blog posts you write. Always strive for high-quality content that will provide value to your readers.
- While creating a web page bear it in mind that it is best to use a hyphen rather than an underscore in the URL Because this can result in better search engine optimization and keyword search results. This page is a good example. After the domain URL ending in .com/ you will add the title of this page with a hyphen between each word – “10-must-know-seo-tips-to-boost-your-search-rankings”
- Another one of the greatest SEO techniques for best search engine optimization is giving your viewers with content that offers great information, answers to a relevant question, a solution or something that just entertains them. The content must be well crafted, clear & concise, and totally correct. Keep the website frequently up to date with great content and overtime; it could even become an authority website. Answering questions is one of the most powerful methods you can use to write content. For one, it will provide you with endless possibilities for topics to write about when you have difficulty coming up with ideas. You can find excellent sources for questions at Quora as well as Answer The Public mentioned above.
- All SEO strategies start at the top of each of your website page. Use your keyword phrase in the first word of the first paragraph on each of your site web pages, like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines focus more on keywords nearby to the top of the page, a lot more than other parts of your website.
- Include your keyword phrase in anchor text links for your On-site web content and also within articles, PR releases or blogs. When you get an Off-site anchor text link, it will help you get a backlink from do follow sites, and that subsequently helps boost your page rank. Having more backlinks can and will surely get you better search results.
Also check out our recent post – WHY CONTENT MARKETING IS THE KEY TO GOOD SEO
