Looking for a way to get place positive reviews of your company to the top of the search results? All it takes is a little know-how. In fact, the steps are fairly simple! Start by consistently encouraging customers to share favorable testimonials on social media networks, establish backlinks for pages that have positive reviews and create press releases that will be posted on independent sites. Sounds easy, right? Here is a step-by-step look at how to implement strong search engine PR.
Searching for Negative Testimonials
According to one analysis, more than 27 percent of potential customers will look for poor reviews of an enterprise in the search engines before making an online purchase from the company. Moreover, a separate study showed that approximately 25 percent of patrons search for testimonials on at least one social media network. Don't be afraid of negative reviews, after all not all negative reviews are bad for business. But when reviews are just plain mean or nasty, a carefully worded response can go a long way!
The Importance of Dominating the First Two Pages of the Search Results
When a person types a phrase into Google's search box, each page will typically contain 10 organic results. An extensive study indicated that only 12 percent of customers who are researching a company will view the third page of the search results, and approximately five percent of potential buyers will reach the seventh page.
Boosting the Rankings of Pages With Positive Reviews
Many marketers look to boost rankings for webpages that contain favorable testimonials about a business. This can be done by encouraging incoming links, which will substantially enhance the page's authority, leading to a greater chance of ranking in search engine results. One good example of a page with positive reviews is Nu Skin's Glassdoor page. While people outside the company may have mixed emotions about Nu Skin, their employees rate it with 4/5 stars and their CEO has a 100% rating. Find a page like this for your business and make sure it shows up well in searches.
Answering Questions
When a buyer posts a negatively phrased question on the social media networks, the business should publicly respond within 12 hours. The company can also add a link to a webpage that contains the answer to the question. Hulu Support does this brilliantly via Twitter. They field heaps of customer complaints and help in pretty much any way they can.
The Impact of Extensive Content
The more often a marketer adds fresh content to the website, the more swiftly the site will reach the first page of a search engine. By posting especially long articles that focus on the business, an advertiser will cause the rankings of the website's pages to eclipse the positions of webpages with negative reviews, which typically have a length of less than 250 words.
Selecting Keywords
When creating a webpage that contains positive reviews of a business, the marketer may add words with a negative connotation to the page's content. As a result, the webpage will appear at the top of the results if a person searches for negative keywords and for the company's name.
Yelp
Due to its design, Yelp's website typically receives a large amount of traffic from visitors who are searching for local businesses. The site's reviews commonly reach the top of the search results because the level of competition for local keyword phrases is much lower than the competition for groups of words that are utilized nationally.
A business can provide a discount for patrons who add positive reviews on the site. Subsequently, the advertiser may share each excellent review on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit in order to increase the testimonial's position in the search results.
Google+
When a customer posts a review on Google+, the testimonial is automatically added to the company's business profile on Google Maps. This type of profile is frequently catapulted to the top of the search results. Furthermore, approximately 35 percent of people will read reviews on Google+ or on Google Maps when they are utilizing their mobile devices to find a local company. Google's local business listings are a powerful way to get your company's reviews featured prominently in searches.
While you may not view search engines as a key PR outlet, the truth is that your customers are searching for exactly what you have to offer every single day. Take the time to implement a few solid "search engine PR" techniques and you may just be surprised at the results.