North Star Web Services LLC

Friday, March 25, 2011

20 User Review Websites Critical to Small Business - Website Magazine - Website Magazine

Friday, March 11, 2011

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Dealing with Findability Disaster

As Business owners, it is rare to completely satisfy every client, every time.
However, these days if one customer gets upset they have myriad Internet sites to express their discontent. One of the worst cases I have seen was a disgruntled former employee who blasted a company after they were fired. Imagine searching for your company name and finding a scathing Yelp review from an employee you just let go. Your next thought might be, where else?
Now with some free time, that ex-employee makes it their life’s work to “stick it to the man.” I can tell you, you have not experienced panic until your website is ranking next to RipOffReport.com or a similar site loaded with brutal reviews. I have spent my entire career helping people be found on the Internet, and now I want to address the topic of how not to be found. The question is, When ugly content is posted, what can you do as a business owner?
My response is to strike back, but with an attack of “goodness” and happy customers! Yes, use sugar, not vinegar to push them off the page. (My mom would be so proud.)
Problem:

Someone on the Internet does not like your company. You are seeing a rise in negative reviews on Yelp, Google Local and RipoffReport.com. How do you plan a counter attack to push them off the search results page?

Action Plan:

Start by looking rationally at this problem with a plan of attack that does not include calling in a “favor” or hiring an expensive lawyer who specializes in lawsuits. There is a much faster and safer way to address the problem.
Displace the disgruntled with positive, happy customers — therefore knocking the naysayers off the results page. Most companies have tons of happy customers; it’s always the one percent of unhappy customers on which we tend to focus.
As the old adage goes, “A happy customer tells one friend, an unhappy customer tells ten.”
1) Secure your company profiles on review sites.
2) Optimize your profiles, making sure data is accurate and up-to-date.

3) Actively request positive feedback from happy customers.

4) Setup and capture all brand names in social media portals.

5) Watch the negative reviews drop down and surround profiles with happy customer reviews.
STEP 1: GRAB YOUR COMPANY’S BRAND PROFILES AND SECURE THEM

Find your company on major review sites that actively rank in search engines like Yelp.com, Places.Google.com, Local.Yahoo.com, Citysearch.com, etc.

Secure the account on record with the review site and identify yourself as the official business owner. Lock it down with your correct information. It is never pretty when a competitor or disgruntled customer takes the account before you get around to capturing it.

Complete the profiles as much as possible, paying particular attention to detailing your customer service policies and disputing resolution records. Link to your Better Business Bureau rating, if possible. Make sure to add your customer service hotline or link to a page that addresses customer issues.

STEP 2: OPTIMIZE YOUR REVIEW SITE PROFILES FOR FINDABILITY

Include your target keyword phrases in the following areas for a good user experience: Title, Company Description, Promotions and “Other”.

Make sure to use keywords in your profile like “Television Repair Denver” or “Family Medicine Brea, CA.” This elevates your profiles inside the review site, when searchers are really digging to validate their purchasing decision. They want the real skinny on your services, your products and past customer experiences. Ranking highly inside the review sites helps validate buying decisions when customers are in the final shopping stages.

STEP 3: ACTIVELY FILL REVIEWS WITH POSITIVE FEEDBACK FROM HAPPY CUSTOMERS

Initially, reach out to your most loyal customers, explain the circumstances and politely request they help you combat this very negative review. You will get many customers who will immediately jump at the chance to help you.

Next, if you have a physical store location, instruct your employees to ask customers to write a review on Yelp.com or Places.Google.com. Then, tell them that if they provide proof of the review, you will have a small gift for them. Coupons for discounts or $5 Starbucks Gift Cards make great thank-yous.

Record an extra message on your business voicemail to actively campaign for reviews. This may sound something like, “Please post a review on Yelp.com or Citysearch.com and receive a little gift for your appreciation! Thank you for your business and helping us to serve you and the community better.”

STEP 4: SET UP, CAPTURE AND MONITOR YOUR COMPANY’S BRAND ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Companies often forget where their happy and unhappy customers communicate. Social media sites are a great place to commiserate with others about good and bad experiences.

Make sure to set up, actively monitor and participate in your company’s presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Use free tools such as Alerts.Google.com and Tweetbeep.com to keep track of what people are saying about your company and brand so you can respond accordingly. If you have the budget to monitor your reputation online, consider sources like Radian6 (pictured), Buzzlogic and Nielsen.

STEP 5: WATCH NEGATIVE REVIEWS FALL AND HAPPY CUSTOMERS SPEAK FORYOUR COMPANY

As you capture your social media accounts under your company name and fill review sites with happy customers, the negative review will be surrounded by positive commentary. You have killed the negativity with kindness!

As you optimize your profiles with your company name and keyword phrases, you will start to fill the search results pages under your company name. You now “own” every search result when someone searches for your business. If a negative review is posted on RipOffReport.com or another review site and ranks under your name, it is surrounded by a resounding number of happy customer reviews.

As business owners, we will probably never think its okay to have an unhappy customer. But it’s important to always be prepared for them. In today’s social Internet community, the voice of an individual can have long-term, detrimental effects on your company’s brand and profitability. Be prepared to fight back by asking for help from your loyal customers who know the truth about your company. It has been my experience that loyal customers will jump through hoops to help you.

About the Author: Heather Lutze has spent the last 10 years helping business owners get their enterprises noticed on the Web by their target audiences. She is the author of “The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing.” Visit FindabilityFormula.com for tools and resources to increase your site’s findability.
Posted Dec 28 2010, 01:22 PM by Administrator

Filed under: 2011-02

Friday, January 7, 2011

Are Google’s local results costing your site traffic?

Google now integrates local results (Google Places) into ‘standard’ organic results and it’s going to push your site down and off the page. That means less traffic and response unless you do something about it. Mark Nunney investigates and shows you how to fight back.
In the following image you’ll see a Google search engine result page (SERP) for the keyword quality shoes. Only the top two ‘standard’ organic results (highlighted with a yellow border) will be seen without a scroll down the page.

After that top two, the results are ‘integrated local’ results (see these ’Place’ pages inside the red border below).

Google has decided that I (as the searcher) am based in Paddington, UK (part of central London). Google thinks I might want ‘local’ results – real world shops I can leave my house and go buy quality shoes in.

(By the way, I live in Cornwall, 260 miles away from London, but we’ll put that bit of lame geolocating to the side whilst acknowledging that Google will let me ‘Change Location’.)

There’s a ‘Places’ (local) map in the top right too.

Google has decided that my Keyword Deserves Local (KDL) results (or Query Deserves Local - QDL).

I’m not going to argue about whether or not my keyword does deserve local results. Nor shall we spend any time looking at the sometimes seemingly random choices of keywords that G decides do. Not here, anyway ;-)

I’m interested in what’s happening, how it will affect your sites’ traffic and response and what you might do about it.

Below is another Google SERP for which keyword deserves local (KDL). This time for debt advice and the local (Places) results are presented with a subheading (‘Places for debt advice near ...’).

But there are just three standard organic results showing above the fold. (Notice how hard it’s getting to distinguish the ads from the organic too?)

Keyword Deserves Local could cost you visits and response
. So Google is delivering more and more local results.
If your target keywords are deemed to ‘deserve local’ results then if:

• your site can’t appear in local (Google Places) results for every location in your target market (and whose can?); or

• you aren’t ranking top two or three

... then you’re going to be losing visitors in 2011.

Even the standard organic results (including those top two or three positions that might remain your last shot at getting any decent traffic from some searches) are influenced by the searchers’ location.

Searches made on mobile phones (increasingly important, of course) are even more likely to see local results.
You get the idea – your hard-worked-for organic results are getting squeezed of the first page of Google’s results pages. That means less traffic and response.

So what can you do about?
How to fight back against Keyword Deserves Local results

Unless you have an office or a shop in every town in every country you’re selling to, this is not going to be easy. Here is a list of actions you can take ...

• Get a Google Places listing for every office and shop you have.

• Find affected keywords. Monitor Google SERPs results to find out which of your prioritized target keywords Google deems deserve local. For those affected keywords ...

• Make the top two. Work like never before to get into those precious top two or three positions.

• Target other integrated results. Is Google also integrating results for Images, Videos, News, Products, Real Time or any other non-standard organic results? If so, target those results.

• Consider PPC.

• Hit the long tail. A major target keyword might get local results, eg debt advice and quality shoes in our examples. But their long tails might not eg, the many thousands of other keywords that contain debt advice and quality shoes.

An ironic example of this is that a search for local debt advice does not show integrated local results. Work that one out.

by Mark Nunney, 7 January 2011

Sunday, October 17, 2010

You were told repeatedly that your participation on Facebook was no longer optional (but mandatory) and now you have proof.

You were told repeatedly that your participation on Facebook was no longer optional (but mandatory) and now you have proof. According to Website Mag, Bing announced an expansion of its partnership with Facebook yesterday and it’s a doozy. Bing will be enhancing its search results with Facebook Likes.

When you search for information on Bing, with “Liked Results” you will now see which of your Facebook friends liked that same result listing. Bing will also be enhancing its index with Facebook profile search. By pulling in your Facebook friends, Bing is essentially narrow down your list to those included in your own social graph. Bing is even enabling users to take action and add the friend directly or send them a message.

Before the Web’s privacy advocates double-over with worry, Bing’s “Liked Results” surface content that is specifically designated as “public” and linked to a person’s Facebook friends. According to Bing, “This is the same information someone could access by viewing their Facebook network directly, except it adds relevancy by being presented alongside “traditional” Bing search results.” Users will also be notified when the feature goes live and have an opportunity to disable the functionality if they so choose. The features will start rolling out this week with full features expected over the next few weeks – it will initially only be available in the U.S.

You were told repeatedly that your participation on Facebook was no longer optional (but mandatory) and now you have proof.

Bing announced an expansion of its partnership with Facebook yesterday and itâ€™s a doozy. Bing will be enhancing its search results with Facebook Likes. When you search for information on Bing, with â€œLiked Resultsâ€ you will now see which of your Facebook friends liked that same result listing.

Bing will also be enhancing its index with Facebook profile search. By pulling in your Facebook friends, Bing is essentially narrow down your list to those included in your own social graph. Bing is even enabling users to take action and add the friend directly or send them a message.

Before the Webâ€™s privacy advocates double-over with worry, Bingâ€™s â€œLiked Resultsâ€ surface content that is specifically designated as â€œpublicâ€ and linked to a personâ€™s Facebook friends. According to Bing, â€œThis is the same information someone could access by viewing their Facebook network directly, except it adds relevancy by being presented alongside â€œtraditionalâ€ Bing search results.â€ Users will also be notified when the feature goes live and have an opportunity to disable the functionality if they so choose.

The features will start rolling out this week with full features expected over the next few weeks â€“ it will initially only be available in the U.S.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Survey: More Americans get news from Internet than newspapers or radio

Is your business still relying on print media to reach your target market? This study will shed some light on why your advertising strategy isn't working. Social networking sites like Facebook have made news a more participatory experience, the survey suggests.

(CNN) -- More Americans get their news from the Internet than from newspapers or radio, and three-fourths say they hear of news via e-mail or updates on social media sites, according to a new report.
Sixty-one percent of Americans said they get at least some of their news online, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
That's compared with 54 percent who said they listen to a radio news program and 50 percent who said they read a national or local print newspaper.
Almost all respondents, 92 percent, said they get their news from more than one platform.
"In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices," reads the report, based on a survey conducted in December and January. "The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone."
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made news a more participatory experience than ever before, the survey suggests.

People share links to news stories by e-mail, post articles on their Facebook and other networking feeds and tweet them on Twitter -- often following up by discussing the articles on message boards and other sites.
Seventy-five percent of respondents said they get news forwarded through e-mail or posts on social networking sites, while 37 percent of online users said they've reported news, commented on a story or shared it on sites like Facebook and Twitter, the survey said.

"To a great extent, people's experience of news, especially on the Internet, is becoming a shared social experience ... ," reads the report. "[T]he advent of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience in fresh ways for consumers."
Most people said they use between two and five online news sources, and 65 percent said they don't have a single favorite Web site for news.

When looking for news online, people said they're most often seeking information about a common topic: the weather.
Eighty-one percent said they search for weather information online, followed by national news at 73 percent. Just over half -- 52 percent -- said they look for sports news, while 47 percent said they look for entertainment or celebrity news.

Online news users are generally younger than the average population, according to Pew. About two-thirds of the study's online news users were younger than 50, and nearly 30 percent were younger than 30.

Racially, that group is more white and Hispanic than the national average, while half of non-Hispanic black respondents said they get all of their news from offline sources.

Only television news still outpaces the Internet, with 78 percent of respondents saying they watch local news and 73 percent saying they view a national network or cable news channel like CNN, Fox News or MSNBC.

The report was based on a daily tracking survey of 2,259 adults age 18 or older. The margin of error for all respondents is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points -- 2.7 percentage points for Internet users. A combination of land line and cellular numbers was used in the survey.
By Doug Gross, CNNMarch 1, 2010 12:12 p.m. EST

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