Handling Negative Online Reviews of Your Business

IT's really great to get your name out there on sites like "Yelp", "Yahoo!", "Google Business", etc. , but with it comes a price. Negative reviews. Many that aren't even legit complaints, but just plain rude for the sake of it. Not to mention the amount of times I have seen people give glowing reviews, yet still mark it by accident as a 1 star review out of 5 stars.

According to Boston-based strategy and communication agency Cone: "80 percent of consumers said they changed their minds about purchases based on negative information they found online."

That seems a bit high, but may not be that far off. I personally do a lot of research online for things I buy, or places I visit. Not typically for stores, or restaurants I go to "offline" since I don't live in a metropolis, and there just aren't that many places out there I haven't heard the real breakdown on already. For places like Amazon, or when I buy online though, these reviews are pretty important for me. Especially Amazon when I am buying something that has 4-5 different competitors for the same thing. Price might not be an issue, but those reviews steer me to the best one of the 5 most definitely. So if I see positive reviews when looking for flowers for our anniversary on a comparison site I will likely lean towards that store.

Waht can you do about it if you get bad reviews? Personally, I wouldn't want to list on places that didn't allow a business response to reviews. If it is a bad review with legit complaints I'd want to be able to "make it right" and take care of the customer. IF it was a BS complaint, I'd still want my say. Here's a few more tips.

You Want to Annoy People With Text Marketing?

I'm not sure about you, but this is one form of marketing I put absolutely no stock into. I won't even read a spam text if I get one no matter who it is from. Do others? Apparently so since text marketing is being used by many.

I get very few of these, but when I do it is nothing but an annoyance, and the first thing I think of is: "How the hell did this person get my number, and how to I prevent them from sending me more texts?".

Here's an article on how to use them effectively, but honestly, I don't think there is a way to market this way to me. Even if I were looking for some sweet Luminox watches, sending me pics of them is not likely to get me to go onto the website if it is sent to my phone.

Not only is it a hassle to get them, but not everyone has unlimited texting plans so getting a bunch of spam texts is something that could completely backfire for you. Others don't even have internet on their phones still (This is a lot more common than I think people realize). If I got a text and it cost me extra money due to it going over my text limit someone would be getting some serious wrath from me about it. Not just a phone call either. I'd make sure I spread the word about your marketing tactics. So...you still want to text market?

Avoiding Over-optimization For Search Engines?

You don't need to be a search engine expert to know that the higher you appear in Google, the better off you are with your website. That is if it isn't a bunch of links about how your company is a fraud anyways.

Entrepreneur.com is offering ways to not over-optimize, but the thing is, Google doesn't care that much about it unless you break their rules. These are things you should already know before you go out and try to optimize your site. These aren't "new" tricks to stay under the radar. These are the Google RULES. for how they want you to optimize your site.

Mostly it is one rule you need to know about how you run your website. CONTENT IS KING. Everything else is secondary. Google wants informative pages in their index. Not spammy junk that will be a waste of time for readers. If you want to buy say amish furniture the website should have it, and be well presented and easy to use. If it has that you can do pretty much whatever you want afterwards without going completely insane with it like say...running spam programs all over the place and auto-software.