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This might be too off-topic for Moz, but I think many of us might face the same issue, so I thought I would ask.

Love them or hate them, we get 90% of our business from being #1 on Trip Advisor.  My biggest competition is trying very hard to take over that #1 spot, so we are working to keep it.

Has anyone found a seamless way to ask customers for TripAdvisor reviews?  We email, text, ask over the phone.  But here the problem, Trip Advisor is not the easiest site to leave a review on.  If you are on your phone, they want you download the app.  Some people don't like to download apps. Or, if they have the app already and click "yes" to open the site in the app, it goes to the app store instead.  There doesn't seem to be as much of an issue on the PC, but most people do everything from their phones now.  And if something is a little bit hard, people are less likely to go out of their way to leave a review.

So, here's my question.  Has anyone found a better way?  Maybe a form on my website?  Or a process that seems to work better?

This does have some SEO implications in that my Trip Advisor page does show up in search results quite a bit as well as much home page.  Sometimes they are #2 and #3 together.

I have two businesses, one is my main bread and butter and the other is an invest and try to grow type of business. This second business is a nature / education related business, so I would like to have a repository of informative nature articles with some splashes of our experience with that particular plant or animal.

I spend a lot of time on SEO and article writing on my main business, but I am running out of myself to go around. I would like to outsource article / blog writing on my second businesses, but I'm not sure where to start. If I use one of those work for hire sites in the Moz outsourced content article, can I get them to format the blog with photos as well.  I need to have a complete as possible final product.  Ideally, I'm thinking of this process:

1. Give the outsourced writer the subject matter (i.e. article about right whales)

2. I provide my own photography or photos I have purchased

3. Writer researches subject matter and writes an informative article

4. Writer logs into my blog and formats the article with interesting fonts and the photos I have provide

5. I edit the article to add my own experience with the subject matter

6. I publish the article

I'm thinking I would do this twice a month.  Is this a reasonable thing to outsource?  Could it work this way?  Any idea what an article like this might cost me?  I'm doing some marketing budget planning. Thanks in advance!

Thank you Miriam, I am pins and needle to see how this shakes out. I would like to expand on why this does NOT improve the user experience. In our case, there is a cruise terminal right next to our Marina. Anyone searching for a fishing charter would think they have 1 choice. And like you said, if they are booked, then who? Then they would have to take a taxi to the next fishing charter instead of seeing there are 8 to chose from within walking distance.

I also want to point out that we come back in the results of you choose "top rated". So why not show us to begin with?

My husband wonders if there is any connection to Adwords (I told him I don't think so, that would be unethical). We had stopped using Adwords because our position was good. We just turned Adwords back on because of this change. It feels like organic search results are almost irrelevant on mobile now. You have to go past 3-4 ads, the 3 pack and then you get to organic results. So, now to be found, it seems like you either have to have ads or be in the 3 pack.

Is the practice of having keyword focused pages a thing of the past?  Here is what I am seeing.  My biggest competitor ranks #1 or #2 in most of my relevant keyword phrases (about 20 that I consider most important).  They DO NOT have keyword focused pages.  They have a PA of 42.5 and a DA of 33.8. They have 72 root domains that link to them. Their home page is fairly lite for content.  Only 1 paragraph of text really... and a few reviews local to their page (not TA or anything). Socially, we we have the same FB following... but I also have  blog, G+, twitter, pinterest, flickr, instagram, youtube, and linkedin.

My keyword pages will rank #8 or #9. My home page hardly ever ranks. My home page has a PA of 40.3 and a DA of 29.1. I have 60 root domains that link to me.

BUT... my keyword pages fall much lower.  For instance, one has a PA of 16.1 and only 1 root domain link.

So, my question is... are my keyword pages actually hurting me?  Meaning... is google seeing my keyword page as more relevant content wise (because they are perfect for keyword placement, % of keyword to text, etc), but they rank them lower because of PA and back-links?

Should I take down my keyword focused pages (one at a time maybe???) and work on building my home page?

Incentivizing is against Trip Advisors rules.    They don't want to you to even offer something in exchange for review.  And you certainly can't ask to offer anything in return for a 5 star review.

Yeah, honestly... I'm not sure how you can change a business based on tourism to not be reliant on Trip Advisor.  I don't really like them to be honest with you.  It is a headache managing the reviews and the process. I rank well on all organic searches .. 1 to 3 on most of the terms I track.  But, its the market dynamics right now.  Most people go to Trip Advisor to find things to do while on vacation... or at least check out your reviews.  And if there is someone that out ranks you, then they will go to their webpage regardless of finding you first.

Do you have any suggestions, because I am all ears...lol!  

Is it possible for me to take my Google reviews and show them under my homepage as stars when my page is shown in search results.  I provide a service, so I don't have separate product reviews.  My homepage is what ranks most in the searches I target.  If this is possible, what is the best way to do it technically? I have a wordpress site.  Thank you in advance!

I also wanted to add that before this change, we ranked in the top 3 for 16/24 of my top tracked search terms.  Now we rank for 1/24 of them.  I can get us to come up on most of them after I click on "top rated" on a mobile site.

Thank you  I'll stick with writing my own code for now.  Thanks for responding!  I am really trying to understand all of this and improve my SEO.  I'm good at making a lovely website... just not so good at getting it to rank.

Really great video, thank you!

I wanted to give an update of what I am seeing for our Google My Business page.  I am seeing that there are 2-3 fishing charters listed at each marina now, which is good.  I am only seeing my business in about 25% of them.  The good thing is that my adwords account is working and I am showing up for most of my tracked terms in adwords.

That is what I did.  It now says

You don’t have any listings that need Foursquare authorization.

You have 1 listings managed by 1 account.

Thank you!  I do plan to keep the internal linking the same, except the URL will change of course.  The site structure is staying the same, except the blog will be moving to the root directory instead of being in a sub directory.

Thanks for the advice on the XML sitemap!

I know I have read that Google doesn't give much value to paid link backs.  My company has worked with a charitable organization (marine research and conservation) in the past and we were considering a corporate donation to them.  My question is, would there be value in this from an SEO standpoint?  There are many many other company links listed on this page.  The area we would be listed would be towards the top of the page. Also, they have a really good DA, 71.  I don't believe I have many if any .org / charitable organizations in my link profile.  Thanks!

This is an interesting experiment.  I am also hesitant to do this because NAP has been the best practice for so long.  It would be impossible to change all of the citations as well.  I am really interested to see how this plays out, however.

I am in the process of having a wordpress site developed to replace my current HTML site. (I currently have my website in html and a blog in wordpress in a sub directory).  I am doing this in phases to try and preserve as much of my good rankings as possible.  My first phase is to replicate my site with the exact same pages, meta data, and site structure.  I'm hoping that google will see this as not much change and not change my rankings for the worse.  I also made it a goal that my site speed tests be at least equal to what they are now. We will have to 301 all of the URLs however since it will be going from /example.html to /example.  I believe my blog will also need to move into the root directory as well, so I need to 301 all of those pages.

I plan to wait a couple months for Phase 2.  Phase 2 involves replacing old content (photo galleries), and introducing new content (virtual tours, videos, new pages, etc.) One of my reasons for moving to wordpress is to keep up with current trends a little easier since I have very little time.  (I am owner, website maintainer, SEO - all on my own).

My question here is three parts.  1. Do you think this strategy will work to preserve my current rankings? 2. Do you have any lessons learned or advice to share with me to make this as smooth as possible? 3. Do I really need to wait to add new content?  I might get antsy and want to do it sooner!  

Thank you in advance!