Do review sites like consumer affairs negatively affect SERPs?
-
Hey all,
So when googling the name of our site we see consumer affairs pop up around 5th with a 1 star rating. These negative reviews are mostly spammy (competitors, etc.) since we have an awesome support team that deals with all unhappy members very effectively. We reached out to CA and they came back asking for $10k+ (highway robbery) to "help us improve our rating."
My question is: do poor ratings on review sites like these negatively affect your SERPs? And if so, how can we work to combat their effect?
Thanks in advance,
Roman
-
Roman,
Here are my thoughts:
1. Can we PM our followers on twitter or facebook and directly ask? As long as you stick to people you know would be a brand advocate for you, I don't see why not.
2. Which medium is generally most successful? We've generally only done email, but primarily because that's how we communicate with them on a normal basis anyway.
3. What if we tweeted something like: "we need your help, anyone that leaves an honest review on yelp will get _____ (money, gift card, appreciation, etc.) - I know it's tempting and seems logical to make offers like that, but it violates Google's guidelines. Even if it's not for Google reviews, they might get wind of it and discount those reviews. Reviews are supposed to show a reflection of your business, not what you've offered in exchange for good reviews.
4. Which review site is the best for improving reputation and SERP- google plus, yelp, bbb? Those 3 are the top ones I'd stick to.
5. Would you recommend sending people to consumer affairs to try to offset the bad rating or to just focus on all the other review sites and have them usurp consumer affairs' position? Definitely try to get some better ratings on CA to cancel out the bad.
-
Patrick,
Thank you for your response. I was hoping I could also get some input from you. So we're going to up our efforts for getting positive reviews. I was curious to know if you had any insight into what's acceptable practice and what isn't. For example:
1. Can we PM our followers on twitter or facebook and directly ask?
2. Which medium is generally most successful? Email, twitter, facebook
3. What if we tweeted something like: "we need your help, anyone that leaves an honest review on yelp will get _____ (money, gift card, appreciation, etc.)
4. Which review site is the best for improving reputation and SERP- google plus, yelp, bbb?
5. Would you recommend sending people to consumer affairs to try to offset the bad rating or to just focus on all the other review sites and have them usurp consumer affairs' position?
Thanks again for your help!
Roman
-
Logan,
Thanks for your response. So we're going to up our efforts for getting positive reviews. I was curious to know if you had any insight into what's acceptable practice and what isn't. For example:
1. Can we PM our followers on twitter or facebook and directly ask?
2. Which medium is generally most successful? Email, twitter, facebook
3. What if we tweeted something like: "we need your help, anyone that leaves an honest review on yelp will get _____ (money, gift card, appreciation, etc.)
4. Which review site is the best for improving reputation and SERP- google plus, yelp, bbb?
5. Would you recommend sending people to consumer affairs to try to offset the bad rating or to just focus on all the other review sites and have them usurp consumer affairs' position?
Thanks again for your help!
Roman
-
Hello,
You may respond to ALL negative reviews and encourage your customers to post reviews on this site. And try to get a lot of reviews from trusted sources like Yelp, Google Local, ... You can also use service like GetFiveStars to improve your rankings and get rich snippet for your home page or product page.
-
Hi Roman,
According to Google's Search Quality Raters Guidelines, third party reviews can have a negative impact on your organic visibility. Google is actively pursuing reputation information from third party sites and factoring that into the way they determine the "best results" for a query.
The best thing you can do to curb this, and hopefully improve your overall ratings, is to get some new good reviews to overpower the bad ones. My suggestion would be to start by picking a handful of customers you know have been happy with your products/services and reach out to them. If you've (or the client if you're not in-house) got some staff internally that interact with these customers, have them do it. People are much more likely to be responsive if they're asked by someone whom they've dealt with before. The message should be very candid, but not canned, people see right through that.
And as Patrick mentioned, always follow up on bad reviews. The only thing worse than a bad review, is one that goes unaddressed.
Hope that's helpful!
-
Hi there
While it may not hurt you in a lower search ranking, it will hurt you in the user's eyes. What I would suggest doing is adding a review feature to your website, focus on Yelp! or Google Reviews, and certifications like the BBB or other relevant industry certifications. These are usually where Google and other search engines will pull from and they are usually harder to manipulate. I would focus on reviews there and getting established on those sites.
Also, whether a legit review is good or bad, always follow up, thank the person, and see where you could be of more service. It's a good look for your brand and company when doing so.
Let me know if you have any other questions or comments, good luck!
Patrick
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why is Google appending a different website's brand name to the end of SERP title?
I've recently been shown some SERP results where Google is appending a different website's brand name to the end of the SERP title. It's actually rewriting the brand's name to that of the other website. (This is obviously not ideal.) Why would this be? The other website doesn't even stock the same product, so there shouldn't be any confusion there. But even if it did, many websites stock the same products. Just confusing...
Branding | | Ria_1 -
Really, what are the benefits of creating a Google Brand page for an e-commerce site?
We have a jewellery store client who already have a Google My Business page set up for its store front business. Should we also create a Google Brand page for its e-commerce site (which has a different business name to the jewellery store)? This client already has a pretty robust Facebook profile. Is it worth it maintaining a Brand page then - since it targets Google plus users?
Branding | | Gavo
And what are the chances of a Brand page appearing on search results when you're not a Nike or a Calvin Klein? Thanks heaps in anticipation of your response.0 -
Path to getting reviews on Google and Yelp
Yelp and Google, what would be the right path customers have to follow in order for their reviews to be posted and more importantly, to stay there?
Branding | | echo10 -
Sites we can submit web design news to...
Hey Mozzers - happy 2013 to one and all, I hope everyone had a great festive season! Now we're all back into the swing of things, we're in the process of getting our new website up and running. We're a web and graphic design agency, and I'm putting together checklists to ensure we get new projects some coverage where deserved. There will be a different checklist for the different disciplines - brand design, packaging, web design and so on. For many of these disciplines, there are multiple news sites that we can reach out to when we have relevant stories - Dieline for packaging, for example. But for web design, any searches I do either show up CSS Galleries / portfolios (which I already have on the checklist under another section) or web tutorial sites. I don't seem to be able to find decent, trustworthy sites that exclusively feature web news. I'm sure they exist and it's just a case of 'can't see for looking', but does anyone know of decent sites that carry news stories about new websites going live? Obviously we know not every new site will be newsworthy - and indeed we wouldn't try to submit every new site we have go live for that very reason - but it would be good to have a clutch of high authority, well visited sites to turn to when we do have something of note. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks Mozzers!
Branding | | themegroup0 -
Need to create more profile pages for my brand, any suggestions for strong sites that will rank high? Done the obvious ones like Twitter, FB and Linkedin
I am looking for sites that will rank high in SERP's for my brand name, any suggestion would be great. I am not looking for links from these sites.
Branding | | PottyScotty0 -
Should I host my blog on-site or off-site?
I'm working on a personal project at the moment...basically the blog will be active before the website - it's one of those things where the blog is the journey to the finished website kinda thing (picture it sort of like an adventure traveller who plans to write a book about his travels, and also blogs about his experiences as they happen - eventually leading up to the launch of the book). Ideally the blog would be a part of the website, so all the links the blog gets help your website to rank (and it's the website I'm interested in ranking obviously, not the blog). But there are two problems: 1. I don't really want people using my website before it's completed. 2. I'd kinda like to have a different design and theme to the blog, and for it to have it's own domain and branding. I also don't want to clog up my website with random blog posts - and I'd like the freedom of an independent platform to do things that my website is not designed for. Any suggestions on how to solve this problem? Is there a way to let Google know that the blog is a part of my site even though it's on a different domain? How would I funnel all of the link-juice from the blog most effectively?
Branding | | makeshiftyy0 -
Facebook, Google Plus - What to share/like?
Hi everybody! We are planning to offer an incentive to all our customers who interact with us on social media websites. What's the most important thing to ask from a customer? Facebook to like our Facebook business page or to like our own website through Facebook? to just follow us on Facebook or to actually comment / interact on our wall? Google + to +1, share, add to circle our Google+ business webpage or to +1 or share our own website? So basically what do we need to promote most? Our Facebook / Google+ business pages or our own website through social media marketing? While we understand it's important to actually interact with the customers and offer value on social media websites, we are looking to boost our SEO efforts. Thank you!
Branding | | echo10 -
Product Reviews
I have an ecommerce client who is willing to give a free product in return for a review of the product on their blog/site/etc.. Does anyone know of any sites where we can find these types of users?
Branding | | waqid0