A great reputation can take years to build, and seconds to be destroyed.
In today’s competitive digital environment, it is essential to have a business reputation strategy in order to acquire new customers who are more likely to become repeat visitors. Better still, if your reputation is so good it's is worth promoting, your customers can become your marketers, saving you time and earning you revenue.
Your online marketing can help you build your brand reputation, allowing you to stand out from the competition earlier in the funnel. However, it’s not easy as you might think. Consumers no longer believe in advertisements like they used to, and instead rely on other customers’ opinions and feedback to get an idea of what kind of service a brand can offer them.
With more and more people performing their own research as part of the purchase decision process, businesses now need to build their reputation directly on search engine results pages (SERPs) in order to stand out to a potential consumer. Businesses need to adapt to this new consumer behaviour trend or risk becoming irrelevant.
So how can you improve your brand reputation on search?
In this article, we’ll go through 3 of the best ways.
Stay active on social accounts
Social media has become an essential tool to target customers, engage with them, and improve your customer service. While social channels might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of customer service, it is one of the most visible ways of highlighting your company’s commitment to customer service. And the better the customer service, the better the engagement, the better the reputation.
Today, online reputation management is truly incomplete without social media channels. Social accounts are essential to building and maintaining an engaged audience and keeping your interactions active and public. When trying to influence your customers’ decisions, building trust and customer confidence in your brand is essential, and this is more likely to happen if you interact with your customers and show yourself as a friendly customer-centric brand on the channels they’re already using.
When trying to improve your brand reputation management on search, it’s important to know that your brand’s social accounts are very likely to appear on the first page of search engine results page, which means it’s absolutely essential for businesses to work on their social media strategies. While social signals aren’t one of Google’s search ranking factors, social channels and accounts are indexed and crawled like any other web page would.
In 2016, Starbucks was voted #1 Top Brand on Facebook
Consider hiring a social media manager, or a community manager that will be trained to handle any situation, help customers, and continuously post relevant content to your accounts to increase your search visibility. This will help boost customer confidence at the top of the funnel, when consumers are still researching your business and reputation on search engines.
Pay attention to what your customers are saying
Did you know that when researching your business and its reputation on search engines, 88% of online shoppers include reviews into their purchase decisions?
Today, 92% of consumers trust their peers more than advertising when making a purchasing decision. And for many digital shoppers, an online review is the same as a peer recommendation, making it very likely that consumers will look at reviews when researching your brand.
Are you getting worried about what a consumer might find? Don’t be!
If someone is talking negatively about your brand, it’s better to know what they’re saying and understand why they’re saying it. If people leave bad reviews, this is a great opportunity for you to fix the broken relationship and improve your business’s reputation.
Instead of ignoring the negative comments you receive, reach out to your customers and try to understand how you can help them. Take their opinions into consideration and use the insights to learn how you could be improving your customer experience and service. Everyone deserves a second chance and customers are more forgiving than you might think. If you’re helping your frustrated or unhappy customers, they’re more likely to reuse your service or buy from you again.
Argos handles negative feedback the right way
The valuable information your customers give you through online reviews will help you build a better product, a better customer service, and therefore a better reputation, and this will considerably improve your reputation management on search when consumers are specifically looking for what your customers have said about you.
You can’t delete or avoid negative reviews, no matter how awesome your company is. Part of the challenge is responding and showing potential consumers how you deal with negative reviews. Maybe the problem your customer had is fixed already. Perhaps it was just a misunderstanding. Responding to the problem publicly offers more context than an isolated complaint.
Transparency leads to better customer relationships, more trust, credibility, and loyalty. And all of that always leads to better business.
Boost your online visibility
Online reviews are one of the best ways to increase traffic through search engines and improve PPC and SEO results. How?
Online reviews are a form of quality content that can improve your search visibility and ranking while showcasing your business reputation on search results. Depending on how you collect reviews, your business can start displaying rich snippet stars on organic search results, and Google Seller Ratings stars for Google Ads.
These benefits affect the way browsers find you and view your business. If you have positive business’s ratings, review snippet stars and Google Seller Ratings will display and help you build trust early on in the customer journey, leading to a positive impact on your click-through rate and your traffic. These advantages have been measured in countless case studies that show review snippets and Google Seller Ratings improving CTR and increasing quality traffic.
Review snippets is structured data markup consisting of your customer feedback, allowing search engines to display yellow stars that show useful information to the person researching. These often include the company rating and the number of reviews left about a company.
Reviews snippet stars make a search engine result more attractive to users
Google Seller Ratings is an automated Google Ads extension that demonstrates that other people’s experiences and trust in your business directly on search engine results page. Seller Ratings are stars that display under your ad’s URLs, just like the ones in the example below:
Google Seller Ratings display when a company has 150 verified reviews
Today, customer feedback is the 5th most important ranking factor and Moz, a marketing analytics software, recently attributed 13% of traffic value to online reviews. Without a review management strategy, you’re missing out on a major contributor to your reputation management.
Taking your brand reputation to the next level
Following these 3 steps to great search engine reputation management can put your business in a stronger position and help you make the most of every comment your customers make, whether negative or positive.
By managing your online reviews properly, interacting with your customers, and delivering great service, you can improve your reputation, which will impact your visibility directly on search.
A great brand reputation is not about trying to avoid any negative feedback; it’s about learning to handle criticism and bad reviews the right way. Managing your reputation through customer relationships, great customer service and online reviews is easier than you think. Don’t abandon your social accounts, update your blog, listen to your customers’ feedback, talk to them and take their opinions into consideration to prove that you’re constantly trying to improve, and the rest will follow.
How can we help? Trustpilot reviews can help you manage your reputation directly on search engine results pages by showcasing your review score through Google Seller Ratings in Google Ads, and Review Snippet Stars on organic results.
Start build your reputation on search today, request a demo with one of our review experts.
