Reputation Management Required For All Businesses, SEO Expert States

Chicago, Illinois -

All businesses need to employ reputation management if they wish to survive and do well. Especially the online reputation of a business. No matter what type of business, reputation is everything.

Many people use review sites such as Yelp in order to decide where to eat or what store to use to buy certain items. Business owners often list their business with Yelp, hoping that good reviews will bring more customers. This is where reputation management is important.

This news interview brings up some scenarios that could happen to a business who does not manage their reputation well or does not follow the directions closely of review sites like Yelp.

Some of these review sites, Yelp included, seem to have filters that push good reviews down and place negative reviews at that top. According to Jack Lombardi, "I do think it is flawed to some level there are a lot of legitimate reviews that have been filtered that are worth reading.” Also, according to some business owners, many of the reviews seem fake. Not knowing exactly what the filters are looking for or how they work, make it hard to turn a negative review positive.

This is why hiring an SEO company is important. Business owners should hire a reputable SEO company that has a proven track record to help with an SEO marketing campaign on social media platforms as well as review sites such as Yelp.

By paying attention to the reviews, generating positive informative articles and posts on social media platforms and the business site can help put the negative reviews in perspective. Every business will have one, two, or even four or five negative reviews out of hundreds. This is usually people who may have a legitimate complaint, felt they waited too long for action, so they post a negative review; some of these people, however, take the negative review to a form of revenge. These are the negative reviews one must be leery of.

Local SEO is important too. This helps capture locals or those passing through looking for something specific for example a restaurant to eat or a hardware store to purchase an item that is needed. Whatever the person searching for is looking to buy local SEO not only gives a phone number and address of the store but will also provide directions and a map. This helps make sure that customers find their way to the store. Once in the store it is up to the store personnel to make sure that customer is treated right by providing help if needed and a pleasant greeting with a smile.

Lombardi says it is not enough to have 21 different burgers on the menu or that hard to find piece of hardware in the store if the customers are not treated right they will not be back. More importantly, they will tell others that service was poor, rude, or the store was dirty; whatever their complaint others will base their decision to visit on that negative review.

It is important to understand what Reputation management service is and why it is needed, Lombardi states. Businesses who employ a reputation management service do much better than those who do not. A business trying to do this on their own will naturally miss many things that can change their reputation to negative or may not know how to change the negative to positive whereas a service that manages reputations will know just how and what to do to change and safeguard a companies reputation. Besides no company can spend all their time combating negative reviews, there are many other aspects of their business that require their attention.

Lombardi says that it is extremely important in this modern age of wall to wall social media and online content where anyone with a grudge or who feels they have been wronged can use those outlets to tarnish and ruin the reputation of a business without facing consequences.