Tips On Dealing With Negative Reviews And Low Ratings

Tips On Dealing With Negative Reviews And Low Ratings

Last week, we talked about the Importance of Reviews on Search Engines, especially the reviews left on Google. But what didn’t tackle in our previous post, is the importance of responding to reviews or managing your reviews.

Why Does It Matter What My Reviews Are Like?

Aside from building your SEO, reviews are what get people looking at your business and serve as a Key Performance Indicator.

If you were to type the name of any local business on Google, you’ll likely find that they have been rated by Google users that have either been to the business or have used its service. What you’ll notice is a star-rating system and a cluster of comments on the company.

Now what you don’t have control over, is how people are going to rate your business and what comments they will leave. Of course, you hope that your business or service has left a positive impression, but sometimes there are instances when there’s going to be a nasty comment or a low star-rating.

So what should you do when you have negative Google reviews?

Negative Reviews Have Their Purpose Too

Negative reviews left on Google are first and foremost, a great learning point.

There is a customer or client of yours that is taking the time to reach out, talk about their experience and share their knowledge with the world and likely the community of people you are trying to reach.If the customer or client has left a negative review online, you’ll want to take the time to read through the review and see if there are any places where you can actually improve your service. This is more for internal purposes, and not necessarily to do with your web presence.

After this, it is highly recommended that you respond to the review as quickly (and carefully thought out) as possible.

Keyword: Quickly. If you leave it floating around, you’ll run into a few risks.

If you don’t address a review, it doesn’t mean that it has magically disappeared from Google. It will stay on Google for other potential customers or clients to see. By leaving a negative review to stew, you are demonstrating that you aren’t committed to customers and can’t deliver results in a timely manner.

3 Tips on Handling Negative Reviews

  • Try and make things right with the customer or client by replying. Don’t defend your company or lash out in the process.
  • Get more positive reviews to balance out the negative. At Bailey Creative, we suggest that our clients send out a follow up email that helps get feedback on their business and helps them with getting those Google reviews
  • Most times, the reviewer has the option to edit or change their original post. If you manage to correct the situation or reach out to them they may have the notion to change their original response.

Focus On the Positive

Although any review will boost your SEO, you want to make most of them positive because the online impression counts for a large portion of your potential audience.

Make sure to keep an eye on the reviews to see what your customers and clients are saying. With good management and timely responses to reviews, you will be headed in the direction of more positive than negative. Don’t let one bad review turn away your potential customers and clients.

Keep in mind, your reviews can also extend further than those on Google. If you can grow your social presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media giants, you’ll likely be getting reviews in your comments or replies. Now, these don’t count towards your Google reviews and your Google rankings, but they do have quite in your business presence. So, be sure to keep an eye on those as well!

Need to know more about SEO, Reviews and Social Media?

In next week’s post, we’ll talk about reviews and comments on social media and how you can work with them to make your business stand out.

In the meantime, be sure to contact Bailey Creative if you need any help boosting your local SEO, especially if you need guidance navigating Guelph SEO, Kitchener SEO, Waterloo SEO or Cambridge SEO. We also offer SEO practices for clients throughout Canada.

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