Online Reputation Management

It’s remarkable how the basics of good business are just as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago. If you’re running a business, your reputation preceded you – quite literally.

It’s easier than ever for people to throw a few Google searches in to find exactly what they want to know about your business – the reputation. If you aren’t putting enough efforts into making sure that your online reputation helps close deals and not scare customers away, you’re losing out on opportunities.

Online Reputation Management: What It Is and Why Your Business Needs It

Regardless of the nature or size, most businesses find themselves trying to ‘do the digital’. There’s one solid reason – every demographic you can think of is already out there scanning SERPs, posting pictures on Facebook or Instagram and reading bite-sized news on Twitter.

If every one of your customers is out there and has access to a lot of information about you, what would you want this information to be? A bunch of poor reviews with a scathingly critical blog post thrown in, or a dozen of good reviews with a few five-stars to boot?

We all know the answer – and that’s why business reputation matters. Online reputation management is a method of digitally assessing what people are saying about your business, building onto the positives and pushing the negatives down the SERPs.

Negative SEO – Have Your Competitors Been Up To Something Fishy Lately?

SEO is a lengthy process that’s getting more complicated by the day. While the returns on investment usually justify its prominence, it’s important to know that not everyone has got time or money for this.

You will invariably come across mischievous competitors who will run negative SEO campaigns against your website. These include building spammy links to your website, leaving a spate of negative reviews, writing terrible posts about your business on social media and – the worst of the lot – impersonating your business online.

Negative SEO can undo much of the SEO progress you’ve made, but most importantly, it leaves your online reputation in tatters.

Four or more negative articles in Google SERPs are enough to scare 70% of your potential customers away and towards your competitors.  

This is an obvious situation when you need a specialty reputation management service on your side.

Managing Online Reviews

No business is immune to the effect a bad word of mouth can have. If your business is present online in any form – from a Google My Business listing to a Facebook profile, everything counts – you need to claim these properties and manage them in a systematic way.

This allows you to be notified when the reviews come in and resolve any concerns the customers may have. Generating reviews is a massively important task – but managing reviews is even more critical to keeping your online reputation in good health.

At HQ SEO, we use sophisticated and diverse tools to find out if the negative feedback is reasonable or unnecessarily (often maliciously) harsh. We integrate our review process creation service with your reputation management campaigns to push the average rating for your business up.

Managing Damaging Feedback

Damaging feedback often comes from two places – competitors who believe in the ‘spam your enemy’ ideology, and disgruntled customers. We help your brand engage in active communications with unhappy customers to resolve their problems and have them update their feedback. It’s a powerful tool – a whopping 95% of unhappy customers can be won back using these methods.

We use carefully developed, cross-platform strategies to deal with such events to make sure that all unreasonably damaging feedback is either updated or revoked.

Reputation Management for Local Businesses

Local businesses are more easily affected by bad online reputation than most other businesses. Not a lot of customers are going to press the ‘call’ or ‘see directions’ buttons if the first thing they see about your business is a couple of bad reviews.

What this also means is that local businesses can benefit immensely from managing their online reputation.

HQ SEO’s digital reputation management services work in tandem with our bespoke local strategy to ensure the best results.

Who Is This For?

Reputation management is not a luxury anymore. With as many as 65% of internet users trusting the ‘first-look’ information they see on SERPs, the need for safeguarding your online reputation is real.

Our bespoke reputation management services are ideal for businesses that have any sort of online presence.

Restoring Reputation Is an Uphill Task. It Pays to Rather Be Safe Than Sorry.

For centuries, businesses have used public relations as a medium of growth. PR, however, has little to offer when it comes to managing online reputation.

Bad online reputation can hurt your sales – but that’s the least important aspect here. Reputation, once damaged beyond a certain point, just cannot be salvaged. When it comes to managing business reputation, it – quite literally – pays to be proactive.

At HQ SEO, we know how intimately sensitive the issue at hand is. Having helped dozens of businesses around the world improve their online reputation through creative tactics, we know what it takes to get your business to enjoy that good word of mouth again. To know more, get in touch with us. You can also request a quick and free proposal by filling in the form below.