The Maine SEO Blog

Search these days sometimes makes me feel like we’re all back in 3rd grade on the playground.  Managing our reps.  Hmm, maybe that was just my elementary school…

Nevertheless, all of these bailouts got me thinking about real life reputation management.  While all of these poor Fortune 500 car companies have to deal with reputation management on a large scale, it’s still just as important for small businesses.

Local Reputation

Local search obviously pertains more to businesses who differentiate geographically.  And as we all know, word of mouth can often make or break you - maybe even in search results.  Find an all-star within your staff to keep an eye on these:

• Local Search Reviews - Reviews in Google Maps or Yahoo! Local are relatively easy to manage.  Not only managing them, but also responding quickly and efficiently to customer reviews and ratings can make a difference - whether it’s just that one person, or your entire online customer base.
• Yelp - An example of a localized service provider customer review site.  (There are a bazillion - yes, that’s official jargon - of other industry-specific review sites out there other than Yelp.)  The same applies for these sites as far as managing your business reputation.

What are people saying about you?

• On your blog - If you have a blog, be sure to respond to comments (especially negative ones) - it can result in much more satisfied customers.
• Google Search + “sucks” - Something I like to do for fun.  Search for your company name and add “sucks” to the end.  “Microsoft sucks” is the ever popular example.  This should pull up any bad press or negative comments about your business.  Take steps to fix any problems from there.
• Twitter Search - If you use Twitter, the Search feature can be overwhelmingly helpful for businesses.
  Just recently, I was complaining that my Pandora radio station had played the same song four times in a matter of a few hours.  Within minutes of my tweet, a woman from Pandora direct messaged me kindly explaining that I could use the “Don’t play this song for a month” feature so this wouldn’t happen to me again.  It was a 15 second conversation, but I must say, I was incredibly impressed and have a whole new respect for Pandora (I would’ve highly recommended it even before this).
• Google Alerts - This feature allows you to choose which term to alert you on, what type of search (news, blogs, web, comprehensive, video, or groups), and how often (whether as-it-happens, once a day, or once a week); then sent to you via email.  You could be alerted every time someone searches for your business, or even that “your business + sucks” search.
• Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc. - Like Yelp, there are a ton of more generalized (and mostly social) networks out there: tools to see what people are talking about in your industry.

Damage Control

So now what?  You’ve figured out what people are saying about you through the various channels I’ve outlined.  Hopefully it’s positive feedback, but let’s face it, there’s going to be some negative.  What do you do?

1. Respond appropriately to customer reviews and ratings.
   a.   Just listen.  It’s amazing the number of people who just need a listening ear to hear their complaint.  Empathize with and console them.
   b.  Offer something for their trouble.  A coupon for a percentage off, a free stay at your hotel.  Offer what you’re able to.
   c.  “It will not happen again.”  (Important: Only say this if you can actually follow through with that statement.  I am not liable for empty promises.)
2. Comment on blogs, whether your own or others.
3. Bad news stories or press releases about you?  (Think the Jet Blue fiasco almost two years ago.)  Write press releases of your own. Make sure they are properly optimized, so they rank higher than other (negative) releases.

Never underestimate a sincere apology and personal touch.  Truth be told, if a customer happened to have a bad experience with you, they may not ever buy your product or service again.  But, if you make the effort to “ease their pain”, they probably won’t storm off telling their friends you are the worst bakery or plumber or car dealership they’ve ever dealt with.  Instead, they might tell a different story, something that might go this way: “I had a bad experience with [so and so company], but you know what?  They emailed me [or better yet, called] and apologized and offered me [this] in return for my troubles.”

Think about how you would want a company to respond to your bad experience.  What would you want to happen?

Nicki Hicks
Manage A Good Rep

The most recent edition of the Google Search App has a number of cool new changes, including automatically launching other Google apps.  But the coolest addition, by far, is voice search.  Here’s the official video on it:

The voice recognition is surprisingly accurate and much simpler than typing your search queries…go check it out!

Nicki Hicks
Vocal Searcher

One of the best compliments a business can get is a referral.  Word of mouth marketing has been an effective tool for ages, and why wouldn’t it be?  Could even the most brilliant ad hope to compete with the sincerity of a referral from a friend?

Referrals are still as persuasive as ever, but now there is a more modern equivalent.  Online customer reviews were the first big step.  You see them everywhere - Amazon is especially famous for it - their “people who had your taste in books had this to say about this novel” reviews, plus the list of “oh by the way, they also liked these” books.  Upselling?  Maybe.  But effective?  Absolutely.  Perfect strangers can affect the books you buy more than Amazon can themselves!

Now, Google is using reviews, and might even be taking them into account for rankings.  Local Search results (Google Maps, in this case) include five-star ratings and reviews.  My question is: what affect do reviews (whether good or bad) have on local rankings?

I think we can all agree that local rankings seem to be based on location, first and foremost.  In other words, the closer to the address or city in the query a business is, the higher that business will rank.  What if we factor in the small matter that a business (perhaps further away) has both more reviews and stars than the competition?

Case in point, a search for “lobster portland me”.  Here are the first five search results.  Notice only The Lobster Shack (#4) has reviews and stars, and is the only one on the first SERP with them.

It may not seem to prove anything at first.  But take a look at the accompanying map.

Whether you’re from Portland (or Maine, for that matter) or not, you can see that Cape Elizabeth is not Portland.  The entire first page, plus most of the second and third pages, are filled with Portland results; except for spot #4, which is also coincidentally the only company with customer reviews.

Maybe it is a coincidence.  Then again maybe not.  I’ve been noticing this trend for a while now, and while it is not a perfect science (sometimes un-reviewed sites rank much better than reviewed ones), it might be something.

The takeaway?  Optimizing your site is important - it will help with rankings initially.  But reviews (especially if you’re local) are critical.  We often suggest our clients use a sort of new-age comment card system: by asking their customers to review their product or service on these local sites.  Reviews might just be the icing on the cake, enough to give your company the edge!

Nicki Hicks
Local SEO

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speaker: Bryan Horling, Group Product Manager, Google Inc.

• Web History – saves web history within google account
• Localization - Using the searcher’s geolocation to affect search, different levels of granularity, both explicit and implicit information
• Localization by: country, region, city
• Personalization - Using searcher’s personal context to rank results, recent search (short term), web history (long term)
• Universal search (mixed results) affected by localization
• Recent searches: Disambiguation (Example: search for “ethan allen” then “jordans” – Jordan’s furniture #1, 2; search for “jordans” – Air Jordan’s #1, 2)
• Web history: disambiguation - skew results based on history, website preference, refinding (shows visits)
• What’s this mean for SEM? Half empty: collecting metrics is difficult, seeing how your pages rank
• What’s this mean for SEM? Half full: easier for people looking for your service to find you, easier to retain customers who prefer your business
• What’s this mean for SEM? Top position is not winner-take-all, create compelling and interesting content, appeal to users, not search engines, you can control personalization for your searches (use search details, disable it by appending &pws=0 to searches, sign out, firefox extension: greasemonkey script, edit or turn off web history)

NOTE: These notes are the major points of the presentations, and do not include every point the presenter made.